thankfulness: "This is the most cheerful day we have had for some time; weather clearer, and fine, pleasant breezes. Not so much worried by sand-flies and mosquitoes. God's providence, it would seem, ought to operate feelingly on the heart of each. Clouds drifting from northwest."
The five—all that were left able to cut down trees—procured five palmettoes; but the yield was very small. "It is now evident," says the journal, "that so exhausted are the members of the party that provisions can not be obtained except with much delay. At 5 p.m. heard a sound strikingly like a report of a carbine; but we may have been deceived, as we frequently have been before, by the sound of falling timber. Supped on palmetto and a few roasted nuts. Mosquitoes as usual very troublesome at night, and relieved at daylight by myriads of sand-flies."
This was Sunday, and the next day they started at a little past six; the weather clearer than usual, and more breeze stirring. Mr. Boggs was still very weak; Harwood also nearly gone, and both suffering very much for want of animal food; but Miller continued to bear up wonderfully against disease and debility. At ten they halted to breakfast, and rested until half past one, when the march was resumed. A very deep dry ravine and two smaller ones crossed their path this afternoon, down and up the banks of which they were compelled to struggle. "Still," says the journal, "much general complaint and debility; and it is no easy matter to muster strength and energy enough to provide the amount of subsistence absolutely necessary to enable the men to march." The weather—which was now narrowly watched—grew more unsettled and threatening. At 5 p.m. the party reached an Indian fishing-station, where abundance of wood was found; but the water was difficult of access, owing to the steepness of the river banks.
The morning of the 21st of March broke beautiful beyond conception after the dull, heavy, and depressing weather of the day before. The breeze, strong and refreshing, proved most grateful to the weary party; the more so, from the fact that the forest was generally close and stifling, owing to the density of the undergrowth. During the night all were aroused by a sound like the report of a heavy gun from the northward and eastward, and anxious looks and inquiries were exchanged; for they supposed it to be the nine o'clock gun of the Cyane. "This may be," says the journal; "but we now distrust our ears, having been so often deceived by the falling timber."
There is something inexpressibly mournful in these detached sentences, entered by a weak and half-starved man in his journal. The absence of all attempt at description; the resigned, almost humble, way of recording their sufferings and their steadily-increasing prostration, are more touching than the most elaborate narrative. It is like quietly counting our own failing pulses as they beat slower and slower to the end. No mention is made of the cries and moans that made the whole atmosphere melancholy; no description of the long sleepless night under the stars, even the refreshment of sleep denied to the famished sufferers. Every day was a picture of woe and sadness indescribable. The piteous aspect of the wan face as it leaned against a tree for temporary support; the beseeching call to halt for a moment as the stronger disappeared in the forest; the hopeless prayer for food, and sometimes for death itself, made each day's journey more sad than a funeral procession. Unmanned by debility and protracted suffering and destitution, these strong men would, one after another, fling themselves on the ground and burst into a paroxysm of tears. But these sudden exhibitions of feeling did not seem to be the result of failing hope or despair, but the mere relief demanded by overtasked nature. Wound up to the last pitch of endurance it dissolved in tears. Truxton and Maury seemed to view them in this light; for when the paroxysm came on the men they would halt, and, leaning on their carbines, let it pass, and then order the march to be resumed. It was not death they feared; it was the desolate fate of being left alone in the woods that made those more suffering and feeble attempt to march. Again and again a poor wretch would sit down, declaring he could go no further; but as the forms of his comrades vanished in the forest, he would struggle up and stagger on after them. The weaker they grew, of course the less able they were to get food, and thus hunger and weakness acted on each other. Some of them wished they might get an Indian to eat him; and though the horrible thought may have occurred to some of devouring each other, it had as yet found no outward expression; nor could it, for still true to their high obligations, those officers retained their lofty character, and through it their supreme authority. Maury and Truxton especially, though but the wrecks of men, still cheered up the sufferers by words of hope; still hewed away at the undergrowth to clear a passage; still gathered nuts, wherever they could be found, to revive their sinking natures; and still kindled fires for them by night to enliven the gloom. Nothing more vividly displays the terrible straits to which they were reduced than the following incident. Truxton, one day, in casting his eye on the ground, saw a toad. Instantly snatching it up he bit off the head and spit it away, and then devoured the body. Maury looked at him a moment, and then picked up the rejected head, saying, "Well, Truxton, you are getting quite particular; something of an epicure, eh? to throw away the head;" and quietly devoured that himself. After his return, one, in questioning him about it, remarked, "Why, Maury, I thought that the head of a toad was poisonous?" "Oh," he replied, "that is a popular fallacy; but it is dsh bitter! It doubtless strikes every one as strange that
