[Army Life in a Black Regiment by Thomas Wentworth Higginson]@TWC D-Link book
Army Life in a Black Regiment

CHAPTER 2
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Two crickets sang also, one on either side, and did not cease their little monotone, even when the three volleys were fired above the graves.

Just before the coffins were lowered, an old man whispered to me that I must have their position altered,--the heads must be towards the west; so it was done,--though they are in a place so veiled in woods that either rising or setting sun will find it hard to spy them.
We have now a good regimental hospital, admirably arranged in a deserted gin-house,--a fine well of our own digging, within the camp lines,--a full allowance of tents, all floored,--a wooden cook-house to every company, with sometimes a palmetto mess-house beside,--a substantial wooden guard-house, with a fireplace five feet "in de clar," where the men off duty can dry themselves and sleep comfortably in bunks afterwards.

We have also a great circular school-tent, made of condemned canvas, thirty feet in diameter, and looking like some of the Indian lodges I saw in Kansas.

We now meditate a regimental bakery.

Our aggregate has increased from four hundred and ninety to seven hundred and forty, besides a hundred recruits now waiting at St.Augustine, and we have practised through all the main movements in battalion drill.
Affairs being thus prosperous, and yesterday having been six weeks since my last and only visit to Beaufort, I rode in, glanced at several camps, and dined with the General.


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