"Ought to go to work, Sa,--don't believe in we lyin' in camp eatin' up de perwisions." Such were the quaint complaints, which I heard with joy.

Looking over my note-books of that period, I find them filled with topographical memoranda, jotted down by a flickering candle, from the evening talk of the men,--notes of vulnerable points along the coast, charts of rivers, locations of pickets.

I prized these conversations not more for what I thus learned of the country than for what I learned of the men.

One could thus measure their various degrees of accuracy and their average military instinct; and I must say that in every respect, save the accurate estimate of distances, they stood the test well.

But no project took my fancy so much, after all, as that of the delegate from the St.Mary's River.
The best peg on which to hang an expedition in the Department of the South, in those days, was the promise of lumber.