To my view Evans' Mills at first appeared a lonely place; but a further acquaintance with it materially altered my opinion. Were it not that the restraints which discipline imposes upon the soldier, living in this place would be quite agreeable. There was no lack of game of all kinds, from the red deer, the nocturnally rambling coon and possum, to the partridge, wild pigeons, grouse, waterfowl, and fish. The latter were the only legitimate sport for the soldiers (and many a finny inhabitant of those sluggish streams--though shy at times--graced his tin platter), as the necessities of war forbid the use of fire-arms upon any other game than men (butternuts--and some of them mighty hard nuts at that). Occasionally, however, the negroes, and such of the white inhabitants as were left behind 'when the rush of war was past,' with their coon dogs, and well provided with pine knots to guide them, would sally forth of a night and traverse the banks of the numerous streams and branches, and rarely would they proceed far until the peculiar bay of the dogs denoted that they had lit upon the track of a wary possum or coon, in the direction of which the hunters would hasten, to find the 'critter treed,' and if the tree was too large to cut down, one climbed, and with a club killed or dislodged him. A coon hunt has rarely been unsuccessful, from the great number of the 'animals' abounding, and the excellent training of the dogs, which seem to take after this kind of game as naturally as a cat takes after mice. The streams are generally belted with fine groves of cedar, gum, black walnut, locust, and ash trees, intermixed, the whole bearing their proportion of parasites, some of which entwine themselves so closely round the trees they select to climb on as almost to become incorporated with them in the process of time, and look like huge serpents endeavoring to crush out their life but they look beautiful in the summer time, covered with leaves and fruit (for they are not all poisonous or profitless), and many a bunch of rich, purple grapes has the writer purloined from the midst of those masses of tangled creepers. This intermingling of hardwood trees with the evergreen pines had a pleasing effect upon me, as it recalled the remembrance of the northern forests where the pine, hemlock and spruce were often in the minority.