Our route and next camp I will now describe. Having received our orders and a train of cars standing in readiness for us, we got aboard about six o’clock one morning, in box cars with plank seats, which, by the by, was very good. We travelled over the well known track all day, until about one o’clock at night, being delayed by having to wait on other trains to pass us, the cars were very crowded and warm, we knocked off several side planks to admit the air, sometimes riding on top of the cars, which is very dangerous, but is not thought of. We arrived in Charleston about one o’clock at night and landed at the depot, where a substantial supper of bread and coffee awaited us, of which I did not partake very heartily. After supper some of the men slept in the depot, others in the cars, I went back to the car and picking out the softest plank I could find, lay down, and was soon wrapped in the arms of Morpheus. The next day we disembarked our baggage, shouldered our knapsacks, marched through the city and crossing the Ashley River by bridge, encamped immediately on the other side, that is on the right bank, this camp was christened Camp Lee. We remained here nearly a month, passing our time with the daily routine of camp duty and occasional visits to the city. Sometime I would hunt squirrels , of which I found plenty, but it being the proper season for fishing, and fishing in salt water being something new to me, I spent a great deal of my time fishing, but my luck here hardly ever exceeded anything else than catching any amount of crabs, a sport I took great delight in at first, but of which I soon grew tired, especially as I could never bring myself to eat them or oysters, of which we had plenty, nor any other thing of the kind, although my two uncles gloried in them. I went out several times rowing in row boats on the river, and sometimes trying a sail boat, in one of which myself and uncle one day trying our skill in managing a boat with sail, run aground, and stuck fast until we hired some negroes to pull us out. But I soon learned to row a boat very well. It was at this camp that measles and mumps broke out among us, and for a time laid up nearly the whole Regiment, some dying from the effects of them. I fortunately had had the measles, but not the mumps. A great many were sent home on furlough to get well, and our Regiment for a time was thinly reduced. It was about this time also that one of my cousins came down and joined the Company, and who was with us as long as I stayed, and is still a member. William Dunovant being about my age we were nearly always together.
