BOMBARDMENT OF THE CITY.

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The object was to get us firemen down in shelling range. There was a spite against us, because we were exempt from military duty."

The fright of the inhabitants, however, was generally frankly admitted. The greatest panic occurred immediately after the occupation of Morris Island by General Gillmore. "The first shells set the whole town in commotion. It looked like everybody was skedaddling. Some loaded up their goods, and left nothing but their empty houses. Others just packed up a few things in trunks and boxes, and abandoned the rest. The poor people and negroes took what they could carry on their backs or heads, or in their arms, and put for dear life. Some women put on all their dresses, to save them. For a while the streets were crowded with runaways, — hurrying, hustling, driving, on horseback, in wagons, and on foot, white folks, dogs, and niggers. But when it was found the shells only fell down town, the people got over their scare; and many who went away came back again. Every once in a while, however, the Yankees would appear to mount a new gun, or get a new gunner; and the shells would fall higher up. That would start the skedaddling once more. One shell would be enough to depopulate a whole neighborhood."

A Northern man, who was in Charleston during the war, told me that he was lying sick in a house which was struck by a shell early during the bombardment. "A darkey that was nursing me took fright and ran away, and left me in about as unpleasant a condition as I was ever in. I could n't stir from my bed, and there was much more danger that I might die from neglect, than from Gillmore's shells. Finally a friend found me out, and removed me to another house a few streets above. It was nine months before the shells reached us there."

The shelling began in July, 1863, and was kept up pretty regularly until the surrender of the city, on the 18th of February, 1865. This last event occurred just four years after the inauguration of Jefferson Davis as President of the Confederate States. How did the people of Charleston keep that last glorious anniversary?

Sherman's northward marching army having flanked the city, its evacuation was not unexpected; but when it came, confusion and dismay came with it. The Rebel troops, departing, adhered to their usual custom of leaving ruin behind. them. They fired the upper part of the city, burning an immense quantity of cotton, with railroad buildings and military stores. While the half-famished poor were rushing early in the morning to secure a little of the Confederate rice in one of the warehouses, two hundred kegs of powder blew up, killing and mutilating a large number of those unfortunate people. Here also it devolved upon the Union troops to save the city from the fires set by its own friends. .

Of the sixty-five thousand inhabitants which the city contained at the beginning of the secession war, only about ten thousand remained at the time of the occupation by our troops. Those belonged mostly to the poorer classes, who could not get away. Many people rushed in from the suburbs, got caught inside the intrenchments, and could not get out again. Others rushed out panic-stricken from the burning city, and when they wished to return, found that they could not. Charleston, from the moment of its occupation, was a sealed city. Families were divided. Husbands shut within the line of fortifications drawn across the neck of the peninsula, could not hear from their families in the country; and wives in the country could not get news from their husbands. "It was two months before I could learn whether my husband was dead or alive," said a lady, who took refuge in the interior. And some who remained in Charleston, told me it was a month before they heard of the burning of Columbia; that they could not even learn which way Sherman's army had gone.

A MASS OF RUINS.

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CHAPTER LXXII.

A VISIT TO FORT SUMTER.

ONE morning I went on board the government supply steamer "Mayflower," plying between the city and the forts below. As we steamed down to the rows of piles, driven across the harbor to compel vessels to pass under the guns of the forts, I noticed that they were so nearly eaten off by worms that, had the war continued a year or two longer, it would have been necessary to replace them. There is in these Southern waters an insect very destructive to the wood it comes in contact with. It cannot live in fresh water, and boats, the bottoms of which are not sheathed, or covered with tar, are taken occasionally up the rivers, to get rid of it. Only the palmetto is able to resist its ravages; of the tough logs of which the wharves of Charleston are constructed.

Fort Sumter loomed before us, an enormous mass of ruins. We approached on the northeast side, which appeared covered with blotches and patches of a most extraordinary description, commemorating the shots of our monitors. The notches in

the half-demolished wall were mended with gabions. On the southeast side not an angle, not a square foot of the original octagonal wall remained, but in its place was an irregular steeply sloping bank of broken bricks, stones, and sand, — a half-pulverized mountain, on which no amount of shelling could have any other effect than to pulverize it still more.

I could now readily understand the Rebel boast, that Fort Sumter, after each attack upon it, was stronger than ever. Stronger for defence, as far as its walls were concerned, it undoubtedly was; but where were the double rows of portholes for heavy ordnance, and the additional loopholes on the south side for musketry? Our guns had faithfully smashed everything of that kind within their range.

On the northwest side, facing the city, the perpendicular lofty wall stands in nearly its original condition, its scientific proportions, of stupendous solid masonry, astonishing us by their contrast with the other sides. Between this wall and the wreck of a Rebel steamer, shot through and sunk whilst bringing supplies to the fort, we landed. By flights of wooden steps we reached the summit, and looked down into the huge crater within. This is a sort of irregular amphitheatre, with sloping, banks of gabions and rubbish on all sides save one. On the southeast side, where the exterior of the fort received the greatest damage from the guns on Morris Island, the inte rior received the least. There are no casemates left, except on that side. In the centre stands the flagstaff, bearing aloft the starry symbol of the national power, once humbled here, and afterwards trailed long through bloody dust, to float again higher and haughtier than ever, on those rebellious shores. Who, that loves his country, can look upon it there without a thrill?

The fort is built upon a mole, which is flooded by highwater. It was half-tide that morning, and climbing down the slope of the southeast embankment, I walked upon the beach below, or rather upon the litter of old iron that strewed it thick as pebble-stones. It was difficult to step without placing the foot upon a rusty cannon-ball or the fragment of a shell. The curling waves broke upon beds of these iron debris, extending far down out of sight into the sea. I suggested to an officer that this would be a valuable mine to work, and was told that the right to collect the old iron around the fort had already been sold to a speculator for thirty thousand dol lars.

The following statement of the cost to the United States of some of the forts seized by the Rebels, and of others they would have been glad to seize, but could not see their way clear to do so, will interest a few readers.

Fort Moultrie, $87,601. (Evacuated by Major Anderson Dec. 26th, 1860.)

Castle Pinckney, $53,809. State troops, Dec. 27th, 1860.)

(Seized by South Carolina