and it was presented to him by a lady of Columbia for his efforts in saving her property." But the lady of Columbia, who knew nothing of any such efforts in her behalf, avers that the gallant captain stole the ring.1

Mrs. Minegault, daughter of the late Judge Huger, of Charleston, the same gentleman who was associated with Dr. Bollmann in the attempted rescue of Lafayette from the dungeons of Olmütz, while on a visit to New York last summer, was one Sunday morning kneeling in Grace Church, when she saw upon the fair shoulders of a lady kneeling before her, a shawl which had been lost when her plantation, between Charleston and Savannah, was plundered by the Federals. Her attention being thus singularly attracted, she next observed on the lady's arm a bracelet which was taken from her at the same time. This was to her a very precious souvenir, for it had been presented to her by her father, and it contained his picture. The services ended, she followed the lady home, and rang at the door immediately after she had entered. Asking to see the lady of the house, she was shown into the parlor, and presently the lady appeared, with the shawl upon her shoulders and the bracelet on her arm. Frankly the visitor related the story of the bracelet, and at once the wearer restored it to her with ample apologies and regrets. The visitor, quite overcome by this generosity, and delighted beyond meas

1 An officer taking his punch (they drink punch in the army when the coffee ration is exhausted) from an elegantly-chased silver cup, was saluted thus:

"Halloa, captain, that's a gem of a cup. No mark on it; why, where did you get it?"

"Ye-e-s! that cup? Oh, that was given me by a lady in Columbia for saving her households gods from destruction."

An enterprising officer in charge of a foraging party would return to camp with a substantial family coach, well filled with hams, meal, etc.

"How are you, captain? Where did you pick up that carriage?"

Elegant vehicle, is n't it?" was the reply; "that was a gift from a lady out here whose mansion was in flames. Arrived at the nick of time good thing-she said she did n't need the carriage any longer-answer for an ambulance one of these days."

After a while this joke came to be repeated so often that it was dangerous for any one to exhibit a gold watch, a tobacco-box, any uncommon utensil of kitchen ware, a new pipe, a guard-chain, or a ring, without being asked if "a lady at Columbia had presented that article to him for saving her house from burning."- Story of the Great March.

DESTITUTION.—WAR AND EDUCATION.

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ure at the recovery of the bracelet, had not the heart to say a word about the shawl, but left it in the possession of the innocent wearer.

I talked with some good Columbians who expressed the most violent hatred of the Yankees, for the ruin of their homes. Others took a more philosophical view of the subject. . This difference was thus explained to me by Governor Orr's private secretary, an intelligent young man, who had been an officer in the Confederate service:

"People who were not in the war cannot understand or forgive these things. But those who have been in the army know what armies are; they know that, under the same circumstances, they would have done the same things.” 1

I also observed that those whose losses were greatest were seldom those who complained most. Mayor Gibbes lost more cotton than any other individual in the Confederacy. Sherman burned for him two thousand and seven hundred bales, besides mills and other property. Yet he spoke of these results of the war without a murmur.

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He censured Sherman severely, however, for the destitution in which he left the people of Columbia. "I called on him to relieve the starving inhabitants he had burned out of their homes. He gave us four hundred head of refuse cattle, but he gave us nothing to feed them, and a hundred and sixty of them died of starvation before they could be killed. For five weeks afterwards, twenty-five hundred people around Columbia lived upon nothing but loose grain picked up about the camps, where the Federal horses had been fed. A stranger," he added, "cannot be made to understand the continued destitution and poverty of the people of this district. If a tax should now be assessed upon them of three dollars per head, there would not be money enough in the district to pay it. Ordi

1" The grass will grow in the Northern cities, where the pavements have been worn off by the tread of commerce. We will carry war where it is easy to advance - where food for the sword and torch await our armies in the densely populated cities; and though they (the enemy) may come and spoil our crops, we can raise them as before, while they cannot rear the cities which took years of industry and millions, of money to build."-Jeff Davis in 1861 - Speech at Stevenson, Ala.

narily, our annual taxes in this city have been forty thousand dollars. This year they have dropped down to eighteen hundred dollars."

South Carolina College is a striking illustration of the effect the war has had upon the institutions of learning at the South. Formerly it had about two hundred and fifty students; it has now but eighteen. The State appropriated annually sixty-five · thousand dollars for its benefit; this year a nominal appropri ation of eight thousand dollars was made, to pay the salaries of the professors, but when I was in Columbia they had not been able to get that. One, a gentleman of distinguished learning, said he had not had ten dollars in his possession since Sherman visited them.

Of the desolation and horrors our army left behind it, no description can be given. Here is a single instance. At a factory on the Congaree, just out of Columbia, there remained, for six weeks, a pile of sixty-five dead horses and mules, shot by Sherman's men. It was impossible to bury them, all the shovels, spades, and other farming implements of the kind having been carried off or destroyed.

Columbia must have been a beautiful city, judged by its ruins. The streets were broad and well shaded. Many fine residences still remain on the outskirts, but the entire heart of the city, within their circuit, is a wilderness of crumbling walls, naked chimneys, and trees killed by the flames. The fountains of the desolated gardens are dry, the basins cracked; the pillars of the houses are dismantled, or overthrown; the marble steps are broken; but all these attest the wealth and elegance which one night of fire and orgies sufficed to destroy. Fortunately the unfinished new State House, one of the handsomest public edifices in the whole country, received but trifling injury.

Not much was doing to rebuild any but the business portion of the city. Only on Main Street were there many stores or shanties going up.

FREE LABOR.- LANDS.

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CHAPTER LXXVIII.

NOTES ON SOUTH CAROLINA.

AT a distance from the Sea Islands, the free-labor system in South Carolina, was fast settling down upon a satisfactory basis. General Richardson, commanding the Eastern District of the State, comprising all the districts east of the Wateree and Santee, except Georgetown and Horry, on the coast, assured me that there was going to be more cotton raised in those districts this year than ever before.

In the districts west of the Wateree, the soil is not so well adapted to cotton, and the country abounds in ignorant small planters and poor whites. A planter of the average class, in York District, said to me: "The people of this country formerly lived on nigger-raising. That was the crap we depended on. If we could raise corn and pork enough to feed the niggers, we did well. Now this great staple is tuk from us."

The planters here love to dwell upon the advantages they derived from that crop. One said to me; "Let a young man take three likely gals, set 'em to breedin' right away, and he mought make a fortune out on 'em, 'fore he was old. But them times is past."

The winds of freedom had scarcely reached the more remote western districts. A planter of Union District told me that he was hiring good men for twenty-five dollars a year. "Heap on 'em, round here, just works for their victuals and clothes, like they always did. I reckon they'll all be back whar they was, in a few years."

The South Carolina lands and modes of culture are not well adapted to corn. A rotation of crops is deemed necessary to keep the soil in a condition to raise it successfully.

The decay of cotton seed and waste cotton is its best fertilizer. During the war, when little cotton was raised, planters became alarmed at the yearly decrease of the corn crop. The average yield, throughout the State, the first year, was fifteen bushels to the acre; the second, twelve bushels; the third, nine bushels; and the fourth, six bushels.

Before the war, the city of Charleston exported annually one hundred and twenty-five thousand tierces of rice. This year, it is importing rice of an inferior quality from the West Indies. This fact indicates the condition of that culture. Yet

in the face of it, rice-planters were raising the price of their lands from fifty dollars an acre, for which they could be bought before the war, to one hundred dollars.

As the rice plantations are confined to the tide-water region, where the fields can be flooded after sowing, their present prospects were more or less embarrassed by the knotty SeaIsland question. "If our people this year make one sixth of an average rice-crop," said Governor Orr, "they will be fortunate, and they will be doing well. In old times, our annual crop brought upwards of three and a half million dollars, when rice was only five cents a pound."

The railroads of South Carolina were nearly worn out during the war. All sorts of iron were used to keep them in repair; and the old rolling-stock was kept running until it was ready to fall to pieces. Then Sherman came. The South Carolina Road, wealthy before the war, was relaying its torn-up track and rebuilding its extensive trestle-work and bridges, as fast as its earnings would permit. The branch to Columbia was once more in operation; but, on the main road to Augusta, travel was eked out by a night of terribly rough staging.

Gov

The finances of South Carolina were at a low ebb. ernor Orr told me that there had not been a dollar in the State treasury since his inauguration. The current expenses of the war were mostly met by taxation; and the annual interest on the foreign debt of two and a half millions had been promptly paid, up to July, 1865, by the exportation of cotton.