We re-passed the gates which we had entered on that February night, ages since, it seemed, and crawled slowly over to the depot.
I had come to regard the Rebels around us as such measureless liars that my first impulse was to believe the reverse of anything they said to us; and even now, while I hoped for the best, my old habit of mind was so strongly upon me that I had some doubts of our going to be exchanged, simply because it was a Rebel who had said so.

But in the crowd of Rebels who stood close to the road upon which we were walking was a young Second Lieutenant, who said to a Colonel as I passed: "Weil, those fellows can sing 'Homeward Bound,' can't they ?" This set my last misgiving at rest.

Now I was certain that we were going to be exchanged, and my spirits soared to the skies.
Entering the cars we thumped and pounded toilsomely along, after the manner of Southern railroads, at the rate of six or eight miles an hour.
Savannah was two hundred and forty miles away, and to our impatient minds it seemed as if we would never get there.

The route lay the whole distance through the cheerless pine barrens which cover the greater part of Georgia.

The only considerable town on the way was Macon, which had then a population of five thousand or thereabouts.