Chapter 66

SPECIMEN CONVERSATION WITH AN AVERAGE NATIVE GEORGIAN--WE LEARN THAT
SHERMAN IS HEADING FOR SAVANNAH--THE RESERVES GET A LITTLE SETTLING DOWN.

As the train left the northern suburbs of Savannah we came upon a scene
of busy activity, strongly contrasting with the somnolent lethargy that
seemed to be the normal condition of the City and its inhabitants. Long
lines of earthworks were being constructed, gangs of negros were felling
trees, building forts and batteries, making abatis, and toiling with
numbers of huge guns which were being moved out and placed in position.

As we had had no new prisoners nor any papers for some weeks--the papers
being doubtless designedly kept away from us--we were at a loss to know
what this meant. We could not understand this erection of fortifications
on that side, because, knowing as we did how well the flanks of the City
were protected by the Savannah and Ogeeche Rivers, we could not see how a
force from the coast--whence we supposed an attack must come, could hope
to reach the City's rear, especially as we had just come up on the right
flank of the City, and saw no sign of our folks in that direction.

Our train stopped for a few minutes at the edge of this line of works,
and an old citizen who had been surveying the scene with senile interest,
tottered over to our car to take a look at us. He was a type of the old
man of the South of the scanty middle class, the small farmer. Long
white hair and beard, spectacles with great round, staring glasses,
a broad-brimmed hat of ante-Revolutionary pattern, clothes that had
apparently descended to him from some ancestor who had come over with
Oglethorpe, and a two-handed staff with a head of buckhorn, upon which he
leaned as old peasants do in plays, formed such an image as recalled to
me the picture of the old man in the illustrations in "The Dairyman's
Daughter." He was as garrulous as a magpie, and as opinionated as a
Southern white always is. Halting in front of our car, he steadied
himself by planting his staff, clasping it with both lean and skinny
hands, and leaning forward upon it, his jaws then addressed themselves to
motion thus:

"Boys, who mout these be that ye got?"

One of the Guards:--"O, these is some Yanks that we've bin hivin' down
at Camp Sumter."

"Yes?" (with an upward inflection of the voice, followed by a close
scrutiny of us through the goggle-eyed glasses,) "Wall, they're a
powerful ornary lookin' lot, I'll declah."

It will be seen that the old, gentleman's perceptive powers were much
more highly developed than his politeness.

"Well, they ain't what ye mout call purty, that's a fack," said the
guard.