The Sun.
London, England, 1861-07-10 00:00:00

IHE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA.

REVIEWS Ole THE WORE.
"Curtis on Manhood.—This is a truly"— valuable work, and
should be in the hands of young and old." Sunday Times,"
23d March, 1856.
"The author has conferred a great boon by publishing this
little work, in which is described the source o those diseases
which produce decline in youth or more frequently premature
old age."—" Daily Telegraph," March 27, 1856.
" This work, which for twenty years has stood the test of
professional criticism and empirical hostility, treats in aplain
and sympathising manlier on the various disqualifications
and impediments arising from nervous excitement and de-
bility ; and to invalids suffering from youthful errors and
excesses it will be found valuable and useful."—Record.
London : Published by J. Allen, 20, Warwick Lane, Pater-
noster-row; Mann, 319, Cornhin-
tu
Hap 9.1 c ons 10 till
tation-10 to a slid oto 8 i 51114611) - - 2

(From the Special Correspondent of the Times.)
CAIRO, ILLINOIS, JUNE 20.
My last letter was dated from Natchez, but it will
probably accompany this communication, as there
are no mails now between the North and the South,
or vice versa. Tolerably confident in my calcula-
tions that nothing of much importance could take
place in the field till some time after I had reached
my post, it appeared to me desirable to see as much
of the South as I could, and to form an estimate of
the strength of the Confederation, although it could
not be done at this time of the year without consi-
derable inconvenience, arising from the heat, which
renders it almost impossible to write in the day, and
from the mosquitoes, which come out' when the sun
goes down and raise a blister at every stroke of the
pen. On several days lately the thermometer has
risen to 98 deg.—on one day to 105 deg.—in the
shade.

On Friday evening, June 14, I started from Nat•
chez for Vicksburg on board the steamer General
Quitman up the Mississippi. These long yellow
rivers are very fine for patriots to talk about, for
poets to write about, for buffalo fish to live in, and
for steamers to navigate when there are no snags,
but I confess the Father of Waters is very tiresome.
Even the good cheer and the comfort of the General
Quitman could not reconcile me to the eternal beat-
ing of steam drums, blowing of whistles, bumpings
at landings, and the general oppression of levees,
clearings, and plantations, which marked the course
of the river, and I was not sorry next morning
when Vicksburg came in sight on the left bank of
the giant stream—a city on a hill, not very large,
besteepled, becupolaed, large-hoteled. Here lives
a man who has been the pioneer of hotels in the
West and who has now established himself in
a big caravanserai, which he rules in a curious
fashion. M'Makin has, he tell us, been rendered
famous by Sir Charles Lyell. The large dining
room—a stall a manger, as a friend of mine
called it—is filled with small tables covered
with particoloured cloths. At the end is a long deal
table, heavy with dishes of meat and vegetables,
presided over by negresses and gentlemen of uncer-
tain hue. In thd centre of the room stood my host,
shouting out at the top of his voice the names of
the joints, and recommending his guests to parti-
cular dishes, very much as the chronicler tells us was
the wont of the taverners in old London. Many
little negroes ran about in attendance, driven hither
and thither by the commands of their white Sou-
louque—white-teethed , pensive-eyed, but sad as me-
mory. " Are you happy here ?" asked lof one of
them who stood by my chair. He looked uneasy
and frightened. " Why don't you answer ?" 6' I'se
feared to tell dat to massa." " Why, your master
is kind to you ?" " Berry good man, sir, when he not
angry wid me !" And the little fellow's eyes filled
with tears at some recollection which pained him.
I asked no more. Vicksburg is Secessionist. There
were hundreds of soldiers in the streets, many in
the hotel, and my host said some hundreds of Irish
had gone off to the wars, to fight for the good cause.
If Mr. O'Connell were alive, he would surely be
pained to see the course taken by so many of his
countrymen on this question. After dinner I was
invited to attend a meeting of some of the citizens
at the railway station, where the time passed very
agreeably till 4 o'clock, when the train started for
Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, and after a pas-
sage of two hours through a poor clay country, seared
with watercourses and gullies, with scanty crops of
Indian corn andvery backward cotton, we were depo-
sited in that city. It must be called a city. It is the
State capital, but otherwise there is no reason why,
in strict nomenclature, it should be designated by
any such title. It is in the usual style of the "cities"
which spring up in the course of a few years
amid the stumps of half-cleared fields in the
derness—wooden houses, stores kept by Germans,
French, Irish, Italians ; a large hotel swarming
with people, with a noisy billiardroom and a
noisier bar, the arena and the cause of " difficul-
ties ;" wooden houses, with portentous and preten-
tious white porticoes, and pillars of all the Greciai?
orders ; a cupola or two, and two or three steeples,
too large for the feeble bodies beneath—hydro-
cephalic architecture ; a State-house, looking well
at a distance, ragged, dirty, and mean within ;
groups of idlers in front of " Exchange," where the
business transacted consists in a barter between
money or credit, and " drinks" of various stimu-
lants ; a secluded telegraph-office round a corner ;
a forward newspaper-office in the street, and a
population of negroes shuffling through the thick
dust which forms the streets. I called on Mr. Pel-
ters, the Governor of the State of Mississippi, ac-
cording to invitation, and found him in the State-
house in a very poor room, with broken windows
and ragged carpets and dilapidated furniture. He
is a grim, silent man, tobacco-ruminant, abrupt-
speeched, firmly believing that the state of society
in which he exists, wherein there are monthly foul
murders perpetrated at the very seat of Govern-
ment, is the most free and civilised in the world.
He is easy of access to all, and men sauntered in
and out of his office just as they would walk into a
publichouse. Once on a time indeed the Governor
was a deerhunter in the forest, and lived far away
from the haunts of men, and he is proud of the fact.
He
is a
things
strenu oiuns Seceder,his
way—simple
and has
apparently,done
high-
handed
honest probably, fierce
on hisc e r
salaryt a n l
y of 4 —and
000 he
lives,a
while he is Governor,
year in the house provided for
him by the State.
There was not much
to say on either side. I can
answer for one. Next day
being Sunday I remained
at rest in the house of a listening friend
to local
stories—not couleur de rose, but of a deeper tint—
blood-red : how such a man shot
another, and was
afterwards stabbed by a third; how this fellow
and his friends hunted down in broad
day and
murdered one obnoxious t 9 them—tale after tale
such as I have heard through the South and seen
daily narratives of in the papers. Aceldama !
No security for life ! Property is quite safe. Its
proprietor is in imminent danger, were it only
from stray bullets when he turns a corner. The
"bar," the "drink," the savage practice of walking
about with pistol and poinard—ungovernable pas-
sions ungoverned because there is no law to punish
the deeds to which they lead—these are the causes