The Daughter Of The Lieutenant-Colonel Was On Board, The
Beautiful And Graceful Caroline Wilkins, The Belle Of The
Regiment; And Major Worth, To Whose Company My Husband Belonged.
I Took A Special Interest In The Latter, As I Knew We Must Face
Life Together In The Wilds Of Arizona.
I had time to learn
something about the regiment and its history; and that Major
Worth's father, whose monument I had so often seen in New York,
was the first colonel of the Eighth Infantry, when it was
organized in the State of New York in 1838.
The party on board was merry enough, and even gay. There was
Captain Ogilby, a great, genial Scotchman, and Captain Porter, a
graduate of Dublin, and so charmingly witty. He seemed very
devoted to Miss Wilkins, but Miss Wilkins was accustomed to the
devotion of all the officers of the Eighth Infantry. In fact, it
was said that every young lieutenant who joined the regiment had
proposed to her. She was most attractive, and as she had too kind
a heart to be a coquette, she was a universal favorite with the
women as well as with the men.
There was Ella Bailey, too, Miss Wilkins' sister, with her young
and handsome husband and their young baby.
Then, dear Mrs. Wilkins, who had been so many years in the army
that she remembered crossing the plains in a real ox-team. She
represented the best type of the older army woman - and it was so
lovely to see her with her two daughters, all in the same
regiment. A mother of grown-up daughters was not often met with
in the army.
And Lieutenant-Colonel Wilkins, a gentleman in the truest sense
of the word - a man of rather quiet tastes, never happier than
when he had leisure for indulging his musical taste in strumming
all sorts of Spanish fandangos on the guitar, or his somewhat
marked talent with the pencil and brush.
The heat of the staterooms compelled us all to sleep on deck, so
our mattresses were brought up by the soldiers at night, and
spread about. The situation, however, was so novel and altogether
ludicrous, and our fear of rats which ran about on deck so great,
that sleep was well-nigh out of the question.
Before dawn, we fled to our staterooms, but by sunrise we were
glad to dress and escape from their suffocating heat and go on
deck again. Black coffee and hard-tack were sent up, and this
sustained us until the nine-o'clock breakfast, which was
elaborate, but not good. There was no milk, of course, except the
heavily sweetened sort, which I could not use: it was the
old-time condensed and canned milk; the meats were beyond
everything, except the poor, tough, fresh beef we had seen
hoisted over the side, at Cape St. Lucas. The butter, poor at the
best, began to pour like oil. Black coffee and bread, and a baked
sweet potato, seemed the only things that I could swallow.
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