On the evening of the third day from home the train which bore our detachment pulled slowly into Cairo. In every direction as far as eye could discern, we saw an unbroken blaze of camp fires. An ear-splitting din of strange and unusual sounds filled the air. Mule drivers were haranguing their teams in blasphemous eloquence, as the poor creatures floundered through the bottomless roads, and liberally applied the merciless lash to the backs of those poor patient, overloaded creatures. The roll and beat of drums blended and echoed and swelled, filling the night with weird hoarse thunder. Distant headquarter bands were concerting noisily, and newly arrived commands went splashing along the muddy highways to some destination beyond the line of our vision. Staff officers and orderlies galloped their smoking steeds hither and yonder at wonderful speed. Black ambulances toiled slowly along the crowded tracks with their freight of the sick and suffering. Steamboats ablaze with signal lights coughed, whistled and wheezed out on the dark bosom of the Mississippi, while the volley of brays from the mule corral smote our ears like the concluding blasts of the very last trumpet. "The hull United States seems to be goin' to roost down here," observed Ike as he leaned out of one of the car windows and observed the situation. "Beats a camp meeting," chipped in somebody else. "Don't seem to be much discipline in this end of the army," said another. "I reckon they'll have to cheese this racket 'fore they catch any fish," another remarked. And all these and many other comical remarks were made by our boys, as they contemplated the new situation from the cars and patiently awaited orders to go to camp. It was indeed a great relief to us when an orderly bestriding a jaded, mud-bespattered horse finally rode up and informed us that he would take us to camp. Accordingly we disembarked, fell into line and set out for our campground. After a deep wading, tiresome zigzagging along miserable roads, devious and uncertain paths and blind trails, across sloppy and splashy summer-fallows, for what seemed an interminable distance, we at last reached camp.