would be difficult to give a clear conception of their peculiarities. Equally strange are the people who inhabit those solitudes. Time would not permit me to describe the "Cajans"--corruption of "Acadians,"--descendants of the exiles who early settled the territory of Louisiana, but who have been driven from their first places of settlement by those more ambitious and unscrupulous. Living in isolated communities, with their artless and unambitious characteristics, their simplicity and exclusiveness, they would furnish material enough for an elaborate paper. Many reminiscences occur to me in connection with my service on General Cameron's staff, but any attempt to detail them would transgress the proper limits of a paper. In spite of the surrender of Lee and Johnston, a show of hostilities was kept up in the trans-Mississippi department, it being supposed that Jeff Davis was making his way in that direction to still retain a semblance of power in a country which had not felt the severest ravages of the war. Upon his capture, however, the rebel army in western Louisiana, rapidly crumbled to pieces, and while the rank and file were seeking their homes, the officers were continually coming in to our headquarters, to make their peace formally with Uncle Sam. Having occasion to remove our headquarters from Brashear City, to a place called Thibodaux, probably not more than fifty miles distant by rail, we were obliged, by reason of the overflow, to take a steamer and make a circuit of some four hundred and fifty miles, going up the swift flowing and extremely crooked, Atchafalaya, much of the way through a very desolate country, then down the Red River and the Mississippi to Algiers, and thence, by rail, to our place of destination. On our journey we had the company of several rebel officers, some of high rank, who availed themselves of the General's courtesy to reach the Cresent City. In a few weeks the General was mustered out, and soon afterwards, I returned to my company, which, with the battalion, had in the meanwhile, been ordered to Donaldsonville. Among the duties here assigned to me, was service as Provost Marshal of the Parish, an office which combined as varied a responsibility as can well be imagined. In certain civil cases I had, as judge, jury and executioner of my own decisions, plenty of employment. With an occasional call to join in matrimonial bonds sundry pairs of hearts that beat as one, I had much more frequent cause to settle disputes between planters and employees, where neither party was disposed to meet the other halfway. Vexatious and varied as my employments were, and anxious as I might be to do justice, I was liable to be overhauled by headquarters from misrepresentations made by angry and disappointed suitors. One event in my administration of the office, caused quite a sensation for the day. In the presence of a crowd of whites and blacks, I heard a case in which a colored woman, who had till recently been a slave, was