One unpleasant old Dutch woman came in, bursting with wrath, and told the whole narrative of her blameless life, diversified with sobs:-- "'Last January I ran off two of my black people from St.Mary's to Fernandina,' (sob,)--'then I moved down there myself, and at Lake City I lost six women and a boy,' (sob,)--'then I stopped at Baldwin for one of the wenches to be confined,' (sob,)--'then I brought them all here to live in a Christian country' (sob, sob).

"Then the blockheads' [blockades, that is, gunboats] 'came, and they all ran off with the blockheads,' (sob, sob, sob,) 'and left me, an old lady of forty-six, obliged to work for a living.' (Chaos of sobs, without cessation.) "But when I found what the old sinner had said to the soldiers I rather wondered at their self-control in not throttling her." Meanwhile skirmishing went on daily in the outskirts of the town.
There was a fight on the very first day, when our men killed, as before hinted, a Rebel surgeon, which was oddly metamorphosed in the Southern newspapers into their killing one of ours, which certainly never happened.

Every day, after this, they appeared in small mounted squads in the neighborhood, and exchanged shots with our pickets, to which the gunboats would contribute their louder share, their aim being rather embarrassed by the woods and hills.

We made reconnoissances, too, to learn the country in different directions, and were apt to be fired upon during these.

Along the farther side of what we called the "Debatable Land" there was a line of cottages, hardly superior to negro huts, and almost all empty, where the Rebel pickets resorted, and from whose windows they fired.