The Sun.
London, England, 1862-12-30 00:00:00

CAMP LIFE.

As night fell and the bright bivouac fires of our
encampment sparkled like a string of rubies, it was
interesting to watch the various incidents of camp
life,- and te-b4canae_timiliaK, with
~the sights and
sounds to wilielvandarime pp4ion ,the inhabi-
tant of:The"Confeilerater. Soles_ have;.long become
habituatea, • acpaSiOnarlii: "fiom around some camp
fire a prorlariconrk of the lour would break the
silence or 11184-htighi;'ilina' soilie'such words as the
following would strike upon the ear:—

Ho I all ye sous of Freedom,
Come join the Southern band ;
We're going to fight the Yankees,
And drive them from our land.
Jeff. Davis is our President,
With Stephens by his side,
While Jackson leads our hosts afie'd,
With Lee his steadfast guide.
As the night deepened and sleep settled down
upon the wearied campaigners the tremulous ripple
of the stream became prominently audible, while at
intervals the shrill ory of a,pight bird called the
kildeer, interspersed with the piercing chirp of the
locust, becoming each night fainter and feebler as
the weather became colder and rawer, gave tokens
of the existence of animals belated like ourselves.
Rarely, from the dense neighbouring forest, the
whoop of the large white owl struck like au un-
earthly scream upon the ear, reminding one of the
many stories told of Western life in' the early days
of Kentucky and Tennessee, when wild midnight
onslaughts of Indians burst upon encampments of
adventurous white settlers, the Indians guiding
each other through the darkness by mimicking the
scream of the screech-owl, with whose cry the woods
around, in every direction seemed to be vocal before
I„" wily savage burst upon his unsuspecting foe.
f4ll th° mor
dui
ting approached, and the heavy dews
4111 and thick, the least agreeable part of a
campltwea
persons experrence had to be gleaned. Few
h
rice during the not camped out in North Arne-
tell what ablee't'e'onths of October and November can
of day, shootingnnog the
v" thpresence of the glorious orb
as hringi: g, while eastern hills is regarded
dampness are dissolveTists, and exhalations, and
before his r ;ys. Cold, rheu-
matism, chills, dejection
instantaneously for-
gotten ; the camp is all life. ft: ee
th e wretched break-
fast seems, at least for
gosbe inviting. The
fall value of a bright, sparklin
morning
cast only be estimated beyovercast
contrastingih,:3l:lll with the
It was
misery of a dark and
our fate to try them both during our shoratyt:r
Staunton to Winchester; the contrast it farisilf'aeni
possess ade-
quately any power of language that I
quately to paint.
T.FIN TOWN OF WINCHESTER.!
On the morning of the fourth day we made the
little town of Winchester, in ordinary times, before
the war, a cheerful, prosperous, agricultural town,
now filthy and begrimed by the pesssge through it
of more than 100,000 Confederate soldiers, not to
mention the Federal forces, which have frequently
for mouths together occupied the town. After the
recent battles, which resulted in the headlong over-
throw of General Pope's forces before Washington
at the end of August, Winchester was held by a
Federal Gerte-ral named White. Upon hearing of
the Federal disasters he hastened to evacuate the
town, blowing up a large magazine on its out-
eldrts, by the explosion of which he shook the

little town to ifs foundations and applying the
torch to a large quantity of commissariat stores,
the bare, roofless walls of which give evidence
to this day of the destroyer's presence. The town
itself '_s as bitterly Secessionist as any pot in the
Confederate States. Here once stood he home of
Mr. Mason, for many months past the Southern
Commissioner in England. The house was an un-
pretending country residence just on the outside of
the town of Winchester, but the grounds were
filled with beautiful trees, conspicuous among
which was a picturesque row of sycamores, some
fine locust trees, and a curious mulberry. It is
hardly necessary to say that the house and grounds
have not escaped the ruthless visitings of the in-
vaders of Virginia. The house is roofless, the
doors and windows torn out, the rats running
about over heaps of rubbish, the kitchen and out-
houses, which, according to the ordinary Southern
fashion, were detached from the dwellinghouse,
levelled to the ground. It is said that Mr. Seward,
visiting the grouse and grounds after they had un-
dergone the manipulations of bis soldiers, brutally
exclaimed that he wondered that the rebel senator
did not keep his grounds better. If anything can
console Mr. Mason for the desecration of his favou-
rite home, he will find it in the obvious affection and
respect entertained for him among his neighbours.
If the reader will take a large map of Virginia he
will find a small stream running a little to the east
of Winchester in a northerly direction until it joins
the Potomac River rather to the west of Shephards-
town. It is called Opequan Creek (pronounced
Opeccan), and along this little stream, between
Winchester and Martinsburg, the whole of General
Lee's army was encamped for many weeks after its
retreat across the Potomac from Maryland, which
followed the battle of Sharpsburg, fought on the
17th of September. The extreme left was as usual
held by General Jackson's corps, who was during
most of the time established at a little place called
Bunker.hill, about 13 miles from Winchester. Gen.
J. E. B_ Stuart with his cavalry was in the extreme
advance, rather nearer to Shephardstown, at a Vir-
ginian country house named the Bower, which I
have described in another letter, distant about 20
miles from Winchester. Gen. Longstreet, with his
powerful corps d'armee, made up of most efficient
fighting men, were posted about five miles from
Winchester. About a mile from Gen. Longstreet,
in about as inconvenient and uninviting a spot as
could well be found, were pitched the few unpre-
tending tents which constituted the head-quarters
of the Commander-in-Chief, Gen. Robert E. Lee.
It is difficult for the traveller who, after infinite
difficulty, wins his toilworn way into the presence
of men whom events have made so famous as Gen.
Lee and Gen. Stonewall Jackson to resist the ine-
vitable tendency of human nature which prompts
him to idealise and set upon a pedestal the plain,
unpretending men whom he sees before him. It is
true that he cannot be long in Gen. Lee's presence
without discovering a plain, unaffected simplicity
which would lead him to dread a newspaper pane-
gyric more than a wound, and inspires him with
the most obvious horror of being described. Gen.
Lee must pardon me if, through my agency, the
veil which shrouds him from the European public
is for a moment lifted. It is inevitable that he
should be called on to pay the penalty which in all
ages of the world great and good and modest men
, have never been able to escape.

GENERAL LEE.

General Lee is, I believe, between 50 and 60
years of age, but wears his years well, and strikes
you as the incarnation of health and endurance, as
he rears his erect soldierlike form from his seat by
the fireside to greet courteously the stranger. His
manner is calm and stately, his presence impressive
and imposing, his dark brown eyes remarkably
direct and honest as they meet you fully and firmly,
and inspire plenary confidence. The shape and
type of the head a little resemble Garibaldi's, but
the features are those of a much handsomer man.
On the rare occasions when he smiles, and on the
still rarer occasions when he laughs heartily, dis-
closing a fine unbroken row of white, firm•set teeth,
the confidence and sympathy which he inspires are
irresistible. A child thrown among a knot of stran-
gers would be inevitably drawn to General Lee first
in the company, and would run to claim his pro-
tection. The voice is fine and deep, but slightly mo-
notonous in its tone. Altogether, the most winning
attribute of the General is his unaffected childlike
guilelessness. It is very rare that a man of his age,
conversant with important events, "nd thrown to
the surface of mighty convulsions, retains the im-
press of a simple, ingenuous nature to so eminent a
degree. It is impossible to converse with him for
ten minutes without perceiving how deeply he has
meditated upon all the possible eventualities of
the campaign in Virginia, and how sound and
well-considered are the positions which he ad-
vances. It is obvious that the most entire and trust-
ing confidence is placed in Gen. Lee by his subor-
dinate officers, whose respect and affection he seems
thoroughly to have won. The General is still
crippled in his hands from the effects of a fall which
he sustained so long ago as the 30th of August.
At dawn of that day he rode across the historical
stream of Bull Run, and, observing a patch of
herbage, he dismounted and allowed his horse to
graze, recollecting that the animal had carried him
the whole preceding day almost without food. The
General himself sat down on a stump. There were
only a few cavalry pickets of Confederates between
Gen. Lee and the enemy. Suddenly a charge of a
large body of Yankee cavalry drove in the Confederate
pickets, and came close up to the spot where Gen:
Lee was. The General ran forward to catch his
horse, and, grasping at the rein as his horse sidled
off, he fell heavily forward entangled in his cloak,
upon both hands, and jarred the nerves of the arms
right, up to the shoulders. His horse was caught
by one of his staff, and the Yankee cavalry, not
knowing what a valuable prim was close at hand,
fell back without approaching more nearly. The
General rode throughout the whole of that eventful
day, the 31st of August, but for many days and
nights he suffered agonising pain; and even now, on
the 21st of November, he is far from having wholly
recovered the full use of his hands, though not for
one day or hour has he permitted himself to be at,-
sent from duty.

A similar abnegation of self is visible in every
thought and act of General Lee. "If only I am
permitted to finish the work I have on hand, I
would be content to live on bread and beef for the
rest of my life." " Occasienally we have only beef,
occasionally only bread ; but if we have both to-
gether, and salt is added to them, we think our-
selves Sybarites." " Upon this occasion it was ne-
cessary to stop and procure food for some of the
younger men." These are some of the characte-
ristic utterances which struck me as they came from
General Lee's lips. In reference to the last, it
would seem as though the ordinary demands of
human appetite were in him subordinated and sub-
jected in presence of the imperious exactions re-
quired from his brain. In all the varied attributes
which go to make up the commander-in-chief of a
great army, it is certain that General Lee has no
superior in the Confederacy, and it may fairly be
doubted whether he has an equel.
General Lee has three sons in the army—the one
a General, under General J. E. B. Stuart; the se-
cond a Colonel; the third, a lad of 18, who is a
private attached to one of the batteries of General
Jackson's corps. In reference to the last, Gen. Lee
told me a story which seemed to me, for the first
and only time during many conversations, to have
elicited from the narrator faint traces of emotion.
u Most certainly it was difficult to listen to the story
without one's self experiencing such emotion. It
pears that at the most critical moment of the
Battle
nefvSharpsburg, when General Lee was order-
ing p every
of a b
r t
al artillery
h se
parressing on the centre, he observed a
in the day, andvvhieh had been engaged earlier
beenL:immediately ordered she
roughly handled by the
Federals. General-Lc
dto the front, coming
close to the spot where
postilion
onLee
gun to the front. As
it
was standing,
he recognised in the
leading horses his young son, Themounted on the
boy turned and
smiled brightly on his father, exoalining, `S I
see that you are sending us in n coin?,
it`
iso
I pleasure to add that, although slightly .9„„,,,,a.„1.