I spent a good part of the morning going through the regimental camps and giving such encouragement and cheer as I could. The patience and courage of the troops were marvellous, though many of the men were in a pitiable condition as to clothing. They were tatterdemalions in appearance, but heroes at heart. Some had nothing but drawers upon their legs, their trousers being utterly worn to rags. Some had no coats and drew their tattered blankets about them, sitting upon their haunches, like Indians, about the camp-fires. I do not recall a single querulous or ill-natured complaint. It was heart-breaking work to see their misery, but they were so intelligent that they knew as well as I did that it had grown out of the inevitable fortunes of war, in spite of the utmost efforts of their commanders to get supplies forward as soon as the siege of Knoxville had been raised. I estimated that fully one-third of the command had lost and worn out some material portion of their clothing, so as to be suffering for lack of it. A little thing which added greatly to the discomfort of the men was that in some whole brigades they had been without soap for two months. This made cleanliness impossible, and clustering about the fires as they were forced to do, they became so begrimed that a liberal supply of soap would have been necessary to restore their color and show to what race they belonged. Yet, hungry, cold, ragged, and dirty, they responded cheerily to my New-Year's greetings, and at this very time the "veteranizing" was going on without a check until nearly every one of the old regiments re-enlisted for another term. At our headquarters on the hill-top we realized that our picturesque situation had its disadvantages, for we were doubly exposed to the force of the wind. We were on a high dome, as it were, with nothing whatever to make a lee or break the power of the icy gale. In one or two of the tents, furnaces or stoves of stone had been made, on the pattern of those we had used in West Virginia in 1861. The trench in the ground with flat stone covering level with the tent floor and connected with an opening on the outside, proved the most successful device. We collected in these, and used every manner of pastime to kill the tedious hours till the subsidence of the wind made our usual outdoor life and activity possible again. Our efforts at meals were a woeful sort of failure. Cooking under such difficulties was more a name than a fact, and we left the mess tent shivering and hardly less hungry than we entered it. But all things have an end, however tedious they seem in passing, and the 2d of January seemed pleasant in the comparison, for the "blizzard" was over, and the weather was calm though cold. CHAPTER XXXII GRANT'S VISIT--THE DANDRIDGE AFFAIR