Four miles northwest of Van Wirt, Ga.,
May 23, 1864.
Weather is getting very hot. We have made 21 miles today, and the distance, heat and dust have made it by far the hardest march we have had for a year. Excepting about six miles of dense pine woods the country we have passed through has been beautiful, quite rolling, but fertile and well improved. In the midst of the pine woods we stopped to rest at Hollis’ Mill, a sweet looking little 17-year old lady here told me she was and always had been Union, and that nearly all the poor folks here are Union. In answer to some questions about the roads and country, she said, “Well, now, I was born and raised right here, and never was anywhere, and never see anybody, and I just don’t know anything at all.”
I never saw so many stragglers as to-day. For 12 miles no water was to be had; then we came to a spring, a very large one, say 4 or 5 hogsheads a minute. All the officers in the army could not have kept the men in ranks. Saw no cases of sunstroke, but two of my men from heat turned blue with rush of blood to the head, and had to leave the ranks. Some think we are moving on Montgomery, Ala. Our orders say we need not hope for railroad communications for 20 days; I think that Atlanta is our point, although we were 50 miles from there this morning and 60 to-night. The planters in this country own thousands of negroes, and they’ve run them all off down this road. They are about two days ahead of us, and the poor people say as thick on the road as we are. Have passed several to-day who escaped from their masters.