Hampton Roads, Oct. 27th.
We still loiter here in a seeming imbecile way, waiting now for weather and now for nobody knows what. Meanwhile patience and strength are ebbing in twelve thousand men. The condition of some of the regiments on shipboard is said to be very bad. Ours is fortunate in its ship, and they say is in better order than any other. A villain of a division-commissary, supplied fifteen days’ rations of pork and no beef, for the entire expedition! Finding this out just as we were leaving Annapolis, I felt that we could never stand it, and we have behaved so cantankerously about it, that we have secured beef enough, fresh and salt, to greatly mitigate the Sahara of pork, for this regiment. God help the others! Oh to have a Division-commissary’s head in a lemon-squeezer!