It is an interesting and suggestive fact connected with the want of transportation facilities in our last days, and showing the dire extremity to which we were reduced, that coal was carried from Deep River by rail and river past Fayetteville to Wilmington, thence by rail _via_ Goldsboro, Raleigh, and Greensboro, to supply the government workshops in Salisbury and Charlotte. South-Carolina also sent trains for it to Wilmington. This coal was pronounced to be of the first quality, equal to the Cumberland coal, and one hundred per cent superior to the Richmond for blacksmith purposes. This want of transportation was one of the many stumbling-blocks in the way of the fainting Confederacy, and connected with the scarcity of provisions, and the strict military surveillance established in every district, brought many of us to the verge of starvation. Provisions were confined by military order to particular districts, each general taking care of his own. I have been told by Kemp P. Battle, Esq., our present State Treasurer, at that time President of the Raleigh, and Chatham road, that on one occasion he was compelled--though he could have bought an abundance of provisions in Eastern Carolina--to send for bacon to South-western Georgia. He had to go to Richmond to see Secretary Seddon himself, and send an agent to General Beauregard at Charleston, in order to get permission to move it to North-Carolina. He was endeavoring; on one occasion to get some corn for his own family up to Raleigh from his plantation in Edgecombe county, when the general in command of that department seized it, and in reply to application for it said, "If the owner is in the field, he may have his corn; if otherwise, not." In this connection what were called "the bonded plantations" were a curious institution in those latter days, which greatly added to the distress of our non-producers. For instance, the owner of a large estate with slaves, in order to keep an overseer out of the army to attend to it, gave bond with good security to deliver to the Government, or to soldiers' families, all his surplus produce at Government prices. By this arrangement of course our large planters could only sell their produce at much below the market price, and in fact for almost nothing, considering the value of our currency. And even this the Government did not pay. It died in debt to many: to Mr. Battle for nearly his whole crop of 1864. With great difficulty he got from a quartermaster, in March, 1865, six thousand dollars, which he immediately exchanged for fifty-seven dollars in gold. Besides this the Government impressed half the working mules, a source alone of no little vexation and distress among our small farmers. Our quartermasters were not always fair in their assessment, nor competent to decide.