LETTER XI.

FORT PICKENS AND PENSACOLA--A VISIT TO BOTH CAMPS.

MOBILE, May 18, 1861.

I AVAIL myself of the departure of a gentleman who is going to New York by the shortest route he can find, to send you the accompanying letters. The mails are stopped; so are the telegraphs; and it is doubtful whether I can get to New Orleans by water. Of what I saw at Fort Pickens and Pensacola here is an account, written in a very hurried manner, and under very peculiar circumstances.

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TUESDAY, May 14, 1861.

Two New Orleans gentlemen, who came overland from Pensacola yesterday, give such an account of their miseries from heat, dust, sand, and want of accommodation, in the dreary waste through which they passed for more than seventeen hours, that I sought out some other way of going there, and at last heard of a small schooner, called the Diana, which would gladly undertake to run round by sea, if permitted to enter by the blockading squadron.

She was neither clean nor neat-looking; her captain, a tall, wild-haired young man, had more the air of a mechanic than of a sailor, but he knew his business well, as the result of the voyage showed. His crew consisted of three men and a negro cook. Three gentlemen of Mobile, who were anxious to visit General Bragg’s camp, agreed to join me, but before I sailed I obtained a promise that they would not violate the character of neutrals as long as they were with me, and an assurance that they were not in any way engaged in or employed by the Confederate States’ forces. “Surely you will not have Mr. R---- hanged, Sir?” said the Mayor of Mobile to me when I told him I could not consent to pass off the gentleman in question as a private friend. “No, I shall do nothing to get Mr. R---- hanged. It will be his own act which causes it, but I will not allow Mr. R---- to accompany me under false pretences.” Having concluded our bargain with the skipper at a tolerably fair rate, and laid in a stock of stores and provisions, the party sailed from Mobile at five in the evening of Tuesday, May 14, with the flag of the Confederate States flying; but, as a precautionary measure, I borrowed from our acting Consul, Mr. Magee, a British ensign, which, with a flag of truce, would win the favorable consideration of the United States squadron. Our craft, the somewhat Dutch build of which gave no great promise of speed, came, to our surprise and pleasure, up with the lights of Fort Morgan at nine o’clock, and we were allowed to pass unchallenged through a “swash,” as a narrow channel over the bar is called, which, despite the absence of beacons and buoys, our skipper shot through under the guidance of a sounding-pole, which gave, at various plunges, but few inches to spare.

The shore is as flat as a pancake--a belt of white sand, covered with drift logs and timber, and with a pine forest; not a house or human habitation of any sort to be seen for forty miles, from Fort Morgan to the entrance of the harbor of Pensacola; cheerless, miserable, full of swamps, the haunts of alligators, cranes, snakes, and pelicans; with lagoons, such as the Perdida, swelling into inland seas; deep buried in pine woods, and known only to wild creatures and to the old fillibusters,--swarming with mosquitoes. As the Diana rushed along within a quarter of a mile of this grim shore, great fish flew off from the shallows, and once a shining gleam flashed along the waters and winged its way alongside the little craft--a monster shark, which plowed through the sea _pari passu_ for some hundred yards leeward of the craft, and distinctly visible in the wonderful phosphorescence around it, and then dashed away with a trail of light seaward, on some errand of voracity, with tremendous force and vigor. The wretched Spaniards who came to this ill-named Florida must often have cursed their stars. How rejoiced were they when the Government of the United States relieved them from their dominion! Once during the night some lights were seen on shore, as if from a camp fire. The skipper proposed to load an old iron carronade and blaze away at them, and one of the party actually got out his revolver to fire, but I objected very strongly to these valorous proceedings, and, suggesting that they might be friends who were there, and that, friends or foes, they were sure to return our fire, succeeded in calming the martial ardor on board the Diana. The fires were very probably made by some of the horsemen lately sent out by General Bragg to patrol the coast, but the skipper said that in all his life-long experience he had never seen a human creature or a light on that shore before. The wind was so favorable and the Diana so fast, that she would have run into the midst of the United States squadron off Fort Pickens had she pursued her course. Therefore, when she was within about ten miles of the station she hove to, and lay off and on for about two hours. Before dawn the sails were filled, and off she went once more, bowling along merrily, till with the first flush of day there came in sight Fort M’Rae, Fort Pickens, and the masts of the squadron, just rising above the blended horizon of low shore and sea. The former, which is on the western shore of the mainland, is in the hands of the Confederate troops. The latter is just opposite to it, on the extremity of the sand-bank called Santa Rosa Island, which for forty-five miles runs in a belt parallel to the shore of Florida, at a distance varying from one and a quarter to four miles. To make smooth water of it, the schooner made several tacks shoreward. In the second of these tacks the subtle entrance of Perdida Creek is pointed out, which, after several serpentine and reëntering undulations of channel, one of which is only separated from the sea for a mile or more by a thin wall of sand-bank, widens to meet the discharge of a tolerably spacious inland lake. The Perdida is the dividing line between the States of Alabama and Florida.

The flagstaff of Fort M’Rae soon became visible, and in fainter outline beyond it that of Fort Pickens and the hulls of the fleet, in which one can make out three war steamers, a frigate, and a sloop-of-war, and then the sharp-set canvas of a schooner, the police craft of this beat, bearing down upon us. The skipper, with some uneasiness, announces the small schooner that is sailing in the wind’s eye as the “Oriental,” and confesses to have already been challenged and warned off by her sentinel master. We promised him immunity for the past and safety for the future, and, easing off the main sheet, he lays the Diana on her course for the fleet.

Fort M’Rae, one of the obsolete school of fortresses, rounds up our left. Beyond it, on the shore, is Barrancas, a square-faced work, half a mile further up the channel, and more immediately facing Fort Pickens. A thick wood crowns the low shore which treads away to the eastward, but amid the sand the glass can trace the outlines of the batteries. Pretty-looking detached houses line the beach; some loftier edifices gather close up to the shelter of a tall chimney which is vomiting out clouds of smoke, and a few masts and spars checker the white fronts of the large buildings and sheds, which, with a big shears, indicate the position of the Navy Yard of Warrington, commonly called that of Pensacola, although the place of that name lies several miles higher up the creek. Fort M’Rae seems to have sunk at the foundations; the crowns of many of the casemates are cracked, and the water-face is poor-looking. Fort Pickens, on the contrary, is a solid, substantial-looking work, and reminds one something of Fort Paul at Sevastopol, as seen from the sea, except that it has only one tier of casemates, and is not so high.

As the Oriental approaches, the Diana throws her foresail aback, and the pretty little craft, with a full-sized United States ensign flying, and the muzzle of a brass howitzer peeping over her forecastle, ranges up luff, and taking an easy sweep lies alongside us. A boat is lowered from her and is soon alongside, steered by an officer; her crew are armed to the teeth with pistols and cutlasses. “Ah, I think I have seen you before. What schooner is this?” “The Diana, from Mobile.” The officer steps on deck, and announces himself as Mr. Brown, Master in the United States Navy, in charge of the boarding vessel Oriental. The crew secure their boat and step up after him. The skipper, looking very sulky, hands his papers to the officer. “Now, sir, make sail, and lie to under the quarter of that steamer, the guardship Powhatan.”

Mr. Brown was exceedingly courteous when he heard who the party were. The Mobilians, however, looked as black as thunder; nor where they at all better pleased when they heard the skipper ask if he did not know there was a strict blockade of the port. The Powhatan is a paddle steamer of 2,200 tuns and 10 guns, and is known to our service as the flag-ship of Commodore Tatnall, in Chinese waters, when that gallant veteran gave us timely and kindly proof of the truth of his well-known expression, “Blood is thicker than water.” Upon her spar-deck there is a stout, healthy-looking crew, which seems quite able to attend to her armament of ten heavy 10-inch Dahlgren columbiads, and the formidable 11-inches of the same family on the forecastle. Her commander, Captain Porter, though only a lieutenant, commanding, has seen an age of active service, both in the navy and in the merchant steam marine service, to which he was detailed for six or seven years after the discovery of California. The party were ushered into the cabin, and Captain Porter received them with perfect courtesy, heard our names and object, and then entered into general conversation, in which the Mobilians, thawed by his sailorly frankness, gradually joined, as well as they could. Over and over again I must acknowledge the exceeding politeness and civility with which your correspondent has been received by the authorities on both sides in this unhappy war.

Though but little beyond the age of forty, Captain Porter has been long enough in the navy to have imbibed some of those prejudices which by the profane are stigmatized as fogyisms. Until the day previous he had, he told me, felt disposed to condemn rifled cannon of a small calibre as “gimcracks,” but had been rapidly converted to the “Armstrong faith” by the following experiment: He was making target-practice with his heavy gun at a distance of some 2,600 yards. At anything like a moderate elevation the experiment was unsatisfactory; and, while his gunners were essaying to harmonize cause and effect, the charge and the elevation, he bethought him of a little rifled brass plaything which Captain Dahlgren had sent on board a day or two before his departure. To his astonishment the ball, after careering until he thought “it would never stop going,” struck the water 1,000 yards beyond the target, and established a reputation he had never believed possible for a howitzer of 6lb. calibre carrying a 12lb. bolt. He observed that the ancient walls of Fort M’Rae would not resist this new missile for half an hour.

If it comes to fighting, you will hear more of the Powhatan and Captain Porter. He has been repeatedly in the harbor and along the enemy’s works at night in his boat, and knows their position thoroughly; and he showed me on his chart the various spots marked off whence he can sweep their works and do them immense mischief. “The Powhatan is old, and if she sinks I can’t help it.” She is all ready for action; boarding-nettings triced up, fieldpieces and howitzers prepared against night boarding, and the whole of her bows padded internally, with dead wood and sails, so as to prevent her main deck being raked as she stands stern on toward the forts. Her crew are as fine a set of men as I have seen of late days on board a man-of-war. They are healthy, well fed, regularly paid, and can be relied on to do their duty to a man. As far as I could judge, the impression of the officers was that General Bragg would not to expose himself to the heavy chastisement which, in their belief, awaits him, if he is rash enough to open fire upon Fort Pickens. As Captain Porter is not the senior officer of the fleet, he signaled to the flag-ship, and was desired to send us on board.

One more prize has been made this morning--a little schooner with a crew of Italians and laden with vegetables. This master, a Roman of Civita Vecchia, pretends to be in great trouble, in order to squeeze a good price out of the captain for his “_tutti fruti e cosi diversi_.” The officers assured me that all the statements made by the coasting skippers, when they return to port from the squadron, are lies from beginning to end.

A ten-oared barge carried the party to the United States frigate Sabine, on board of which Flag-Captain Adams hoists his pennant. On our way we had a fair view of the Brooklyn, whose armament of twenty two heavy guns is said to be the most formidable battery in the American navy. Her anti-type, the Sabine, an old-fashioned fifty-gun frigate, as rare an object upon modern seas as an old post-coach is upon modern roads, is reached at last. As one treads her decks, the eyes, accustomed for so many weeks to the outlandish uniforms of brave but undisciplined Southern Volunteers, feel _en pays de connaissance_, when they rest upon the solid mass of three hundred or four hundred quid-rolling, sunburnt, and resolute-looking blue-shirted tars, to whom a three years’ cruise has imparted a family aspect, which makes them almost as hard to distinguish apart as so many Chinamen.

A believer in the serpent-symbol might feel almost tempted to regard the log of the Sabine as comprising the Alpha and the Omega of, at least, the last half century of the American Republic. Her keel was laid shortly after our last war with Brother Jonathan, and so long as the Temple of Janus remained closed--her size having rendered her unfit to participate in what is called the Mexican war--she remained in the shiphouse of the Navy Yard which had witnessed her baptism. In the year 1858 she was summoned from her retirement to officiate as flagship of the "Paraguay expedition,” and after having conveyed the American Commissioner to Montevideo, whence he proceeded with a flotilla of steamers and sloops-of-war up to Corrientes, and thence in the temporary flagship, the steamer Fulton, to Assumpcion, she brought him back to New York in May, 1859, and was then dispatched to complete her cruise as part of the Home Squadron in the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico. During the concluding months of her cruise the political complications of North and South burst into the present rupture, and the day before our visit one of her lieutenants, a North Carolinian, had left her to espouse, as nearly all the Southern officers of both army and navy have done, the cause of his native State. Captain Adams is in a still more painful predicament. During his eventful voyage, which commenced a six days’ experience in the terrible Bermuda cyclone of November, 1858, he had been a stranger to the bitter sectional animosities engendered by the last election; and had recently joined the blockade of this port, where he finds a son enlisted in the ranks of the C. S. A., and learns that two others from part of the Virginia divisions of Mr. Jefferson Davis’s forces. Born in Pennsylvania, he married in Louisiana, where he has a plantation and the remainder of his family, and he smiles grimly as one of our companions brings him the playful message from his daughter, who has been elected _vivandière_ of a New Orleans regiment, “that she trusts he may be starved while blockading the South, and that she intends to push on to Washington and get a lock of Old Abe’s hair”--a Sioux lady would have said his scalp.

The veteran sailor’s sad story demands deep sympathy. I, however, cannot help enjoying at least the variety of hearing a little of the _altera pars_. It is now nearly six weeks since I entered “Dixie’s Land,” during which period I must confess I have had a sufficiency of the music and drums, the cavaliering and the roystering of the Southern gallants. As an impartial observer. I may say I find less bitterness and denunciation, but quite as dogged a resolution upon the Roundhead side. Some experience, or at least observation of the gunpowder argument, has taught us that attack is always a more grateful office than defence, and, if we are to judge of the sturdy resolution of the inmates of Fort Pickens by the looks of the officers and crews of the fleet, Fort Pickens will fall no easy prize, if at all.

After some conversation with Captain Adams, and the ready hospitality of his cabin, he said finally he would take on himself to permit me and the party to land at the Navy Yard and to visit the enemy’s quarters, relying on my character as a neutral and a subject of Great Britain that no improper advantage would be taken of the permission. In giving that leave he was, he said, well aware that he was laying himself open to attack, but he acted on his own judgment and responsibility. We must, however, hoist a flag of truce, as he had been informed by General Bragg that he considered the intimation he had received from the fleet of the blockade of the port was a declaration of war, and that he would fire on any vessel from the fleet which approached his command. I bade good-by to Captain Adams with sincere regret, and if--but I may not utter the wish here. Our barge was waiting to take us to the Oriental, in which we sailed pleasantly away down to the Powhatan to inform Captain Porter I had received permission to go on shore. Another officer was in his cabin when I entered--Captain Poore, of the Brooklyn--and he seemed a little surprised when he heard that Captain Adams had given leave to all to go on shore. “What, all these editors of Southern newspapers who are with you, Sir?” I assured him they were nothing of the kind, and after a few kind words I made my adieu, and went on board the Diana with my companions.

Hoisting one of our two table-cloths to the masthead as a flag of truce, we dropped slowly with the tide through the channel that runs parallel to one face of Fort Pickens. The wind favored us but little, and the falling breeze enabled all on board to inspect deliberately the seemingly artistic preparations for the threatened attack which frowns and bristles from three miles of forts and batteries arrayed around the slight indenture opposite. Heavy sand-bag traverses protect the corners of the parapet, and seem solid enough to defy the heavy batteries ensconced in earthworks around the Lighthouse, which to an outside glance seems the most formidable point of an attack, directed as it is against the weaker flank of the fort at its most vulnerable angle.

A few soldiers and officers upon the rampart appeared to be inhaling the freshening breeze which arose to waft the schooner across the channel, and enable her to coast the mainshore, so that all could take note of the necklace of bastions, earthworks, and columbiads with which General Bragg hopes to throttle his adversary. We passed by Barrancas, the nearest point of attack (a mile and a quarter), the Commander-in-Chief’s head-quarters, the barracks, and the hospital successively, and as the vessel approached the landing-pier of the Navy Yard one could hear the bustle of the military and the hammers of the artificers, and descry the crimson and blue trappings of Zouaves, recalling Crimean reminiscences. A train of heavy tumbrils, drawn by three or four pairs of mules, was the first indication of a transport system in the army of the Confederate States, and the high-bred chargers mounted by the escorts of these ammunition wagons corroborated the accounts of the wealth and breeding of its volunteer cavalry. The Diana now skirted the Navy Yard, the neat dwellings of which, and the profusion of orange and fig groves in which they are embosomed, have an aspect of tropical shade and repose, much at variance with the stern preparations before us. Our skipper let go his anchor at a respectful distance from the quay, evincing a regard for martial law that contrasted strangely with the impatience of control elsewhere manifested throughout this land, and almost inspiring the belief that no other rule can ever restore the lost bump of veneration to American craniology.

While the master of the Diana was skulling his leaky punt ashore to convey my letters of introduction to the Commander-in-chief, I had leisure to survey the long, narrow, low sand belt of the island opposite, which loses itself in the distance, and disappears in the ocean forty-seven miles from Fort Pickens. It is so nearly level with the sea that I could make out the main-yards of the Sabine and the Brooklyn, anchored outside the island within range of the Navy Yard, which is destined to receive immediate attention whenever the attack shall begin. Pursuing my reflections upon the _morale_ of the upper and nether millstones between which the Diana is moored, I am sadly puzzled by the anomalous ethics or metaphysics of this singular war, the preparations for which vary so essentially--it were sin to say ludicrously--from all ancient and modern belligerent usages. Here we have an important fortress, threatened with siege for the last sixty days, suffering the assailants of the flag it defends to amass battery upon battery, and string the whole coast of low hills opposite with every variety of apparatus for its own devastation, without throwing a timely shell to prevent their establishment.

War has been virtually declared, since letters of marque and a corresponding blockade admit of no other interpretation, and yet but last week two Mobile steamers, laden with £50,000 worth of provisions for the beleaguering camp, were stopped by the blockading fleet, and, though not permitted to enter this harbor, were allowed to return to Mobile untouched, the commander thinking it quite punishment enough for the Rebels to thus compel them to return to Mobile, and carry up the Alabama River to Montgomery this mass of eatables, which would have to be dispatched thence by rail to this place! Such practical jokes lend a tinge of innocence to the premonitories of this strife which will hardly survive the first bloodshed.

The skipper returned from shore with an orderly, who brought the needful permission to haul the Diana alongside the wharf, where I landed, and was conducted by an aide of the Quartermaster-General through the shady streets of this graceful little village, which covers an inclosure of three hundred acres, and, with the adjoining forts, cost the United States over £6,000,000 sterling, which may have something to do with the President’s determination to hold a property under so heavy an hypothecation. Irish landlords, with encumbered estates, have no such simple mode of obtaining an acquittal.

The Navy Yard is, properly speaking, a settlement of exceedingly neat detached houses, with gardens in front, porticoes, pillars, verandahs, and Venetian blinds to aid the dense trees in keeping off the scorching rays of the sun, which is intensely powerful in the summer, and is now blazing so fiercely as to force one to admit the assertion that the average temperature is as high as that of Calcutta to be very probable. The grass-plots under these tree are covered with neat piles of cannon balls, mostly of small size; two obsolete mortars--one dated 1776--are placed in the main Avenue. Tents are pitched under the trees, and the houses are all occupied by officers, who are chatting, smoking, and drinking at the open windows. A number of men in semi-military dresses of various sorts and side arms are lounging about the quays and the lawns before the houses. Into one of these I am escorted, and find myself at a very pleasant mess, of whom the greater number are officers of the Zouave Corps, from New Orleans--one, a Dane, has served at Idstedt, Kiel, Frederichstadt; another foreigner has seen service in South America; another has fought in half the insurrectionary wars in Europe. The wine is abundant, the fare good, the laughter and talk loud. Mr. Davis has been down all day from Montgomery, accompanied by Mrs. Davis, Mr. Maloney, and Mr. Wigfall, and they all think his presence means immediate action.

The only ship here is the shell of the old Fulton, which is on the stocks, but the works of the Navy Yard are useful in casting shot, shell, and preparing munitions of war. An aide-de-camp from General Bragg entered as we were sitting at table, and invited me to attend him to the General’s quarters. The road, as I found, was very long and very disagreeable, owing to the depth of the sand, into which the foot sank at every step up to the ankle. Passing the front of an extended row of the clean, airy, pretty villas inside the Navy Yard, we passed the gate on exhibiting our passes, and proceeded by the sea beach, one side of which is lined with houses, a few yards from the surf. These houses are all occupied by troops, or are used as bar-rooms or magazines. At intervals a few guns have been placed along the beach, covered by sand-bags, parapets, and traverses. As we toiled along in the sand, the aide hailed a cart, pressed it into the service, and we continued our journey less painfully. Suddenly a tall, straight-backed man in a blue frock-coat, with a star on the epaulette strap, a smart kepi, and trowsers with gold stripe, and large brass spurs, rode past on a high-stepping, powerful charger, followed by an orderly. “There is General Bragg,” said his aide. The General turned round, reined up, and I was presented as I sat in my state chariot. The commander of the Confederated States Army at Pensacola is about forty-two years of age, of a spare and powerful frame; his face is dark, and marked with deep lines, his mouth large, and squarely set in determined jaws, and his eyes, sagacious, penetrating, and not by any means unkindly, look out at you from beetle brows which run straight across and spring into a thick tuft of black hair, which is thickest over the nose, where naturally it usually leaves an intervening space. His hair is dark, and he wears such regulation whiskers as were the delight of our generals a few years ago. His manner is quick and frank, and his smile is very pleasing and agreeable. The General would not hear of my continuing my journey to his quarters in a cart, and his orderly brought up an ambulance, drawn by a smart pair of mules, in which I completed it satisfactorily.

The end of the journey through the sandy plain was at hand, for in an inclosure of a high wall there stood a well-shaded mansion, amid trees of live oak and sycamore, with sentries at the gate and horses held by orderlies under the portico. General Bragg received me at the top of the steps which lead to the verandah, and, after a few earnest and complimentary words, conducted me to his office, where he spoke of the contest in which he was to play so important a part in terms of unaffected earnestness. Why else had he left his estates? After the Mexican war he had retired from the United States Artillery; but when his State was menaced he was obliged to defend her. He was satisfied the North meant nothing but subjugation. All he wanted was peace. Slavery was an institution for which he was not responsible; but his property was guaranteed to him by law, and it consisted of slaves. Why did the enemy take off slaves from Tortugas to work for them at Pickens? Because whites could not do their work. It was quite impossible to deny his earnestness, sincerity, and zeal as he spoke, and one could only wonder at the difference made by the “stand point” from which the question is reviewed. General Bragg finally, before we supped, took down his plans and showed me the position of every gun in his works and all his batteries. He showed the greatest clearness of unreserved openness in his communications, and was anxious to point out that he had much greater difficulties to contend with than General Beauregard had at Charleston. The inside of Pickens is well known to him, as he was stationed there the very first tour of duty which he had after he left West Point. It was late at night when I returned on one of the General’s horses toward the Navy Yard. The orderly who accompanied me was, he said, a Mississippi planter, but he had left his wife and family to the care of the negroes, had turned up all his cotton land and replanted it with corn, and had come off to the wars. Once only were we challenged, and I was only required to show my pass as I was getting on board the schooner. Before I left General Bragg he was good enough to say he would send down one of his aides-de-camp and horses early in the morning, to give me a look at the works.