I had traveled over the same road time and again, on my way to and from home, but now as I beheld the ruins of grim-visaged war, whichever way I cast my eyes, I must confess to a somewhat rebellious and bitter feeling. There are moments in the experience of every human being when the heart overflows like the great Egyptian river, and cannot be restrained. “O thou great God of Israel!” I cried, “why hast thou permitted this dire calamity to befall us? Why is it that our homes are so despoiled?” And I marveled not at the captive Hebrews’ mournful plaint, as by the rivers of Babylon they hung their harps on the willows.
As the train slowed up on the Alabama side of the Chattahoochee River, I looked eagerly over to the opposite bank, where the home of my father was situated. For a few seconds my pulse must have ceased to throb, as I beheld the ruins of the city of Columbus. With others I took my seat in an omnibus and was driven to the river’s edge, there to await the coming of the ferry-boat which had been built since all the bridges on the river had been burned by the hostile army. The scene seemed so unreal that like Abou Hassan, the caliph of fiction, I was thinking of biting my fingers to make sure I was really awake. Had I not had my coin in my hand to pay the ferryman, I should have imagined we were all shades, flitting about on the shore of the Styx!
In musing silence, I could but say, O swift-flowing Chattahoochee, is it thus I behold thee? Thou flowest in almost pristine loveliness. Where are your huge bridges, that linked the green hills of Alabama with the beautiful city of cottages and flowers? Where are the cotton mills and machine-shops that lined your banks,--mills which from early morn until the sun set sent forth an incessant hum? Is it thus that I behold thee, city of my fathers?
My reverie was broken when the ferry-boat reached her landing; but things all still seemed so strange that I could scarcely believe I was not dreaming. I realized everything better when I saw soldiers in blue moving hither and thither. I had heard while on the train, how General Willson had ravaged, pillaged, and burnt, as he passed through Alabama. Here were his soldiers who had laid Columbus in ruins; here were they of whom I had been told that their route from Columbus to the city of Macon, one hundred miles, could be plainly traced by the curling smoke arising from burning dwellings, gin-houses, barns, bridges, and railroad ties.