February 23rd. I was detailed to go on guard duty this morning for 24 hours. The day was celebrated as Washington's Birthday and the boys had a ball game. At sunset we had a dress parade and brigade review. Most of the boys were getting pretty short of money, and if we sent any letters home we had to have them franked as soldiers' letters. This means that soldiers' letters can be sent without a stamp. February 24th. Came off guard this morning; had the forenoon to myself; in the afternoon we had a brigade drill under General Birge in the unpleasant duty of reversed arms and rest, a duty which we were called upon to perform quite often those days. February 25th. I went to the hospital with Sergeant Sam Harding of our company. It was a sickening sight to go over the hospital and see the thin and wasted sufferers, many of them stretched on the floor with only a blanket and scarce a comfort, let alone a luxury of any kind; many of them stricken down in their strength by swamp fever; and one by one they dropped off. They had not even seen the enemy. Poor fellows! February 26th. It was a very rainy day and we stayed in our tents and cleaned our muskets. Mortar and gunboats are daily arriving at this port. We have six of the former and four or five of the latter. The Confederate gunboats are continually making reconnoissance up the river and occasionally give Port Hudson a taste of their shells. But most of them give her a wide berth and I think they had better. By the way I want to tell you how hard it was for us poor boys to get reading matter. When the New York papers arrived they commanded 25 and 30 cents apiece. You can see that we fellows had to go without, for we had not received a cent of pay since arriving here. You can't imagine what it is to be cut off from all communication from the outer world for a week or ten days at a time as we were and during that interval hear nothing but discouraging rumors and false reports circulated by the Rebels. February 27th. Came off guard in a soaking rain, in a very cross state of mind, but being neither sugar nor salt didn't melt away; but I felt that I could stand it awhile longer if our hard-tack and salt horse held out as well as it had and I felt it would, for I noticed that it stood by pretty well.