XIV.
STUART'S WINTER QUARTERS.
COON HOLLOW!--
What gay memories are evoked by that familiar name! How we laughed and
sang in that hollow in the hills near Orange, in the cold winter of
1863!
Stuart called his head-quarters "Wigwam Independence," but the officers
of his staff gave them the sobriquet of "Coon Hollow;" and I adopt in
my memoirs the old familiar designation.
Never were soldiers more comfortable than the inhabitants of Coon
Hollow!--and Stuart's tent was the most comfortable of all. He had
stretched a large canvas beneath some sheltering trees; and filling up
the opening at each end with a picturesque wicker-work of evergreens,
ensconced himself there in his sylvan lodge, like some Robin Hood, or
ranger of the greenwood in old times. The woodland haunt and open air
life seemed, at first, to charm the bold cavalier; nothing seemed
wanting to his happiness, lost here in the forest: but soon the
freezing airs "demoralized" even the stout cavalryman, and he exchanged
his canvas for a regular tent of the largest description, with a plank
floor, a camp-couch, and a mighty chimney, wherein sparkled, ere long,
a cheerful fire of hickory, driving away the blasts of the cold winter
nights, which were sent on their way with song.
Such was Stuart's own domicile.
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