"We had been told that the country was very poor east of the Oconee, but our experience has been a delightful gastronomic contradiction of the statement. The cattle trains are getting so large that we find difficulty in driving them along. Thanksgiving Day was very generally observed in the army, the troops scorning chickens in the plentitude of turkeys with which they have supplied themselves.
"Vegetables of all kinds, and in unlimited quantities, were at hand, and the soldiers gave thanks as soldiers may and were merry as only soldiers can be. In truth, so far as the gratification of the stomach goes, the troops are pursuing a continuous thanksgiving.
"In addition to fowls, vegetables, and meats, many obtain a delicious syrup made from sorghum, which is cultivated on all the plantations, and stored away in large troughs and hogsheads. The mills here and there furnish fresh supplies of flour and meal, and we hear little or nothing of 'hard tack'--that terror to weak mastication. Over the sections of country lately traversed I find very little cultivation of cotton. The commands of Davis appear to have been obeyed; and our large droves of cattle are turned nightly into the immense fields of ungathered corn to eat their fill, while the granaries are crowded to overflowing with both oats and corn.
"We have also reached the sand regions, so that the fall of rain has no terrors, the roads are excellent, and would become firmer from a liberal wetting. The rise of the rivers will not bother us much, for every army corps has its pontoon, and the launching of its boats is a matter of an hour.
"Just before his entrance into Milledgeville, General Sherman camped on one of the plantations of Howell Cobb. It was a coincidence that a Macon paper, containing Cobb's address to the Georgians as general commanding, was received the same day. This plantation was the property of Cobb's wife, who was a Demar.
"We found his granaries well filled with corn and wheat, part of which was distributed and eaten by our animals and men. A large supply of syrup made from sorghum (which we have found at nearly every plantation on our march), was stored in an out-house. This was also disposed of to the soldiers and to the poor, decrepit negroes, which this humane, liberty-loving Major-General left to die in this place a few days ago. Becoming alarmed, Cobb sent to that place and removed all the able-bodied mules, horses, cows, and slaves. He left here some fifty old men--cripples, and women and children--with clothing scarce covering their nakedness, with little or no food, and without means of procuring any. We found them cowering over the fireplaces of their miserable huts, where the wind whirled through the crevices between the logs, frightened at the approach of the Yankees, who they had been told would kill them. A more forlorn, neglected set of human beings I never saw.