“Pointing her shining black finger at the old man, crouched in the corner of the fire-place, she hissed out: ‘What for you sit dar? you spose I wait sixty years for nutten? Don’t yer see de door open? I’se follow my child; I not stay. Yes, nodder day I goes ’long wid dese people; yes sar, I walks till I drops in my tracks.’ A more terrible sight I never beheld. I can think of nothing to compare with it, except Charlotte Cushman’s Meg Merrilies. Rembrandt only could have painted the scene, with its dramatic surroundings. “It was near this place that several factories were burned. It was odd to see the delight of the negroes at the destruction of places known only to them as task-houses, where they had groaned under the lash. “Pointing to the Atlanta and Augusta Railroad, which had been destroyed, the question was asked, ‘It took a longer time to build this railroad than it does to destroy it?’ “‘I would think it did, massa; in dat ar woods over dar is buried ever so many black men who were killed, sar, yes, killed, a working on dat road—whipped to deth. I seed em, sar.’ “‘Does the man live here who beat them?’ “‘Oh no, sar; he’s dun gone long time.’ “I have seen blind and lame mules festooned with infants in bags, and led by fond parents so aged and weak they could hardly totter along. ‘Mars’r Sherman was a great man, but dis am de work ob de Lord,’ they said.” The swampy borders were belted with “corduroy,” and their heavy fogs hung over the halting columns. At evening the spectacle was weird-like in its wild romance. “A novel and vivid sight was it to see the fires of pitch pine flaring up into the mist and darkness, the figures of men and horses looming out of the dense shadows in gigantic proportions. Torchlights are blinking and flashing away off in the forests, while the still air echoed and reëchoed with the cries of teamsters and the wild shouts of the soldiers. A long line of the troops marched across the foot-bridge, each soldier bearing a torch, their light reflected in quivering lines in the swift running stream. Soon the fog, which settles like a blanket over the swamps and forests of the river bottoms, shut down upon the scene, and so dense and dark was it that torches were of but little use, and men were directed here and there by the voice.”