“On landing you observe that the wharves are in a very dilapidated condition, that tell very plainly that they have not been much in use the past four years. The palmetto logs that form the cribs are covered with grass, and the planking is much decayed, full of man-traps, and about worthless so far as cartage is concerned. Advancing up the rickety docks, you come to a parapet of sand, over which peer the muzzles of heavy guns, bearing down the channel, for home defence; then around or over the batteries into the silent streets, covered with the _débris_ from shattered stores and dwellings, and bearing at points a tolerably good crop of grass—the same kind of grass that was to have sprung up in the streets of New York when King Cotton exercised his potent sway. Not a building for blocks here that is exempt from the marks of shot and shell. All have suffered more or less. Here is a fine brown-stone bank building, vacant and deserted, with great gaping holes in the sides and roof, through which the sun shines and the rain pours, windows and sashes blown out by exploding shell within, plastering knocked down; counters torn up, floors crushed in, and fragments of mosaic pavement, broken and crushed, lying around on the floor, mingled with bits of statuary, stained glass and broken parts of chandeliers. Ruin within and without, and its neighbor in no better plight. Here a great shell has struck the chimney and crushed a large portion of the roof in; then exploding, distributed its fragments through the ceilings, and burst out great patches of brick and mortar, which now lie on the pavement below, untouched since they fell. Every imaginable portion of buildings have been damaged by our fire, and not a single house in this portion of the town has escaped. Not a building is occupied, save by the brave women to whom I have already referred, and the front doors or windows gape open, through which you may gaze upon battered offices, demolished stores and counting-rooms in ruin, where commerce once dwelt and active business men pursued their respective vocations unmolested and undisturbed. The churches, St. Michael’s and St. Philip’s, have not escaped the storm of our projectiles. Their roofs are perforated, their walls scarred, their pillars demolished, and within, the pews filled with plastering or fragments of mural tablets, which were to perpetuate the memory of some good man long asleep in the grave-yard near by. You may count up a round number of shell-holes in their steeples, and many upturned monuments in their grave-yards. War is cruel, and the howling projectile that takes its start four miles and a half away is indifferent whether it ploughs up the marble that affection has placed over the remains of long buried worth, or crashes into the political halls where treason is plotted or crime against humanity is conceived. The cold iron has been no respecter of property in Charleston. The good and bad, rich and poor, criminal and