Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 2.djvu/24

 Such was the situation in South Carolina when I stepped for the first time upon the sacred soil of the Palmetto State on Hilton Head Island, bordering the harbor on the south side and washed by the ocean on the east, on which the Union troops had made their first landing, and on which the department headquarters were situated. "The Head," as the natives called it for short, presented a very uninviting, dreary aspect. It was, indeed, but a dead waste of deep sand, "as flat as a pancake," varied only by a line of low sand-hills or dunes. Not a tree, not a shrub, not a green plant of any kind, was in sight; the only green spots being a few small grassplots produced by irrigation. Before the landing of the Federal forces, no buildings existed, and but a few scattering ones had been erected since. The principal were two long one-story frame structures of the plainest outer and interior finish, erected as quickly and cheaply as possible for use as headquarters. They extended along the shore, with a fine beach between them and the water. A few hundred feet from their rear stood a small but more substantial-looking two-story building, in which the United States Custom-house was established. There was also a group of board shanties and wall-tents, some with and some without wooden floors, which served as mess-houses and sleeping quarters for the customs officials and the officers and employees of the quartermaster's and commissary department. The habitations stood directly on the virgin sand, without artificial walks or streets. The truth was, indeed, that I had dropped into a very desolate place, of which the only redeeming feature was the bay and the ocean. I was comforted by the expectation that my stay would be a short one—in which hope I was, however, to be greatly disappointed.

Major Halpine promptly redeemed his voluntary promise to provide me with quarters by assigning to me an empty front room in one of the headquarters buildings, to which I moved from the Arago. It was small, but with a good-sized window overlooking the beach and bay. It being