8 P. M. The acting Provost Marshal has just come aboard with our passports viseed, enabling us to land here, but I don't care to do that to-night, there being nothing but sand-banks to sleep on, while we have tolerable berths aboard. To-morrow I may go, if there is time before going upstream to Beaufort, though I imagine there is little to see but sand and tents, which look quite as well at a distance. _March 8._ We spent the greater part of the day transferring freight and baggage to the _Cosmopolitan_, a white river-steamer. We got started at last about three P. M. The distance to Beaufort can't be more than fifteen miles, and we had already made half of it at a tolerable rate of speed when we ran aground in the mud, about two hours before ebb tide. We were in the middle of a creek called Beaufort River, between Cat Island and Port Royal Island, whose flat shores did not look very inviting. I fell to reading about cotton-culture in my book, but some of our companions got a boat and went ashore on St. Helena Island, bringing back their hands full of beautiful flowers from some private garden, peach-blossoms, orange-blossoms, hyacinths, fleur-de-lis, etc. We succeeded in getting afloat about 9.30 P. M. and arrived at Beaufort about midnight, after poking slowly along the crooked channel under the glorious moonlight. On getting up in the morning, which we did betimes, we found the deck slippery with hoarfrost, and are told that it is the coldest night of this winter. Somebody has told me that Beaufort was on a bluff, and that its environments were not so flat as the rest of the islands.