They are not required to keep step, though, with the rhythmical ear of our soldiers, they almost always instinctively did so; talking and singing are allowed, and of this privilege, at least, they eagerly availed themselves.

On this day they were at the top of exhilaration.
There was one broad grin from one end of the column to the other; it might soon have been a caravan of elephants instead of camels, for the ivory and the blackness; the chatter and the laughter almost drowned the tramp of feet and the clatter of equipments.

At cross-roads and plantation gates the colored people thronged to see us pass; every one found a friend and a greeting.

"How you do, aunty ?" "Huddy (how d'ye), Budder Benjamin ?" "How you find yourself dis mor-nin', Tittawisa (Sister Louisa) ?" Such saluations rang out to everybody, known or unknown.

In return, venerable, kerchiefed matrons courtesied laboriously to every one, with an unfailing "Bress de Lord, budder." Grave little boys, blacker than ink, shook hands with our laughing and utterly unmanageable drummers, who greeted them with this sure word of prophecy, "Dem's de drummers for de nex' war!" Pretty mulatto girls ogled and coquetted, and made eyes, as Thackeray would say, at half the young fellows in the battalion.