Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. RAPPAHANNOCK AND PAlfUNKY. Port Royal. — Tropical Luxuriance.—Virginia Mocking Birds.— Fire!—The Negroes.—Their Day of Jubilee.—.The Contraband Barge. — Their Evening Hymn. — Miss Gilson's Address. — White House. —Arrival of the Tenth and Eighteenth Corps.— The Fortieth Massachusetts. — Lieutenant-Colonel Marshall.— The Battle of Cold Harbor.—The Field of Carnage.—Horrors of Ambulance Transportation.—Field Hospital at "White House. — Eight Thousand Wounded. —The Death of Mrs. General Barlow. PORT ROYAL, an unimportant post village in Caroline County, Virginia, twenty-five miles below Fredericksburg, on the Rappahannock, was, for two or three days, a temporary base of the army. Its quiet harbor was filled with transport steamers and barges, waiting orders to move up the York and Fa- munky Rivers, where a new base was to be established nearer Richmond. Here we rested, enjoying the beauty of the river, — its calm, full current flowing smoothly on, reflecting the rich foliage of its shores,which gently rose into the highlands, now lost in the purple haze of evening. Upon the wide plateau without the town our forces were drawn up in line. The bugles were sounding and drums were beating, while, as the sun went down behind rich masses of clouds that were bathed in a flood of glory, the bands struck up their grand national airs, which were wafted to us on the still breath of this beautiful evening. We landed on the pontoon pier, which was crowded with negroes unloading forage for the twelve hundred and fifty wagons soon to start for the front, and walked up through crowds of soldiers, picking our way among cavalry horses, ambulances, and army teams. The town is one of the quaint old Virginia settlements, the houses embowered in magnificent shade trees, the gardens fu... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.