H.Q. 169 Regt N.Y.S.Vols

Camp on Foley island in sight

of Charleston City S.C Aug. 9^th 1863

 

Dear Mother & Sister

I now sit down to devote a few leisure moments in writing you a few lines to let you know our locality the state of my health and our duties here I am well at pressent and I hope those few lines will find you and all the friends enjoying the same blessing we left our old camp outside of portsmouth the last part of last month came in to portsmouth and laid there five days in that time we got our pay then on the first of / this month the transport came and we all got aboard and started down the river we did not know where we were going at the time untill we arrived at Fortress Monroe we then recd orders to report to charleston we were in sight of land the first day untill about 4 Oclock in the afternoon when we lost sight of land and did not get sight of it again for two days the first day after we lost sight of land the wind came up and our rolled around a good deal which caused the men to be sick and when they all got to casting up their accounts there was some sport on board as for myself I was one of the lucky ones and was not sick in the least we arrived in charleston harbor on the third day in sight of the celabrated forts Sumpter moultrie & waggoner we laid in the harbor untill / about two that night we then steamed up and run out of the harbor and in to a river that ran up between morris and foley islands and landed we then marched about two miles and piched our camp and such a camp you could not amigine such beauty it surpasses anything I ever saw or thought of it is on the sea beach there is a bank of sand about twenty foot high and when you get to the top of the bank and look over you are struck with astonishment and you at once think of the fairy pallaces that we were in the habit of reading it is formed of trees of medium size their trunks are small but the tops spread right out so that they all run right in togather and form a regular roof that the sun cannot penetrate the / day before yesterday we started out to go on picket where we did not know as it was the first time for us we crossed the river on a boat that is there for the purpose of a ferry boat and marched ten miles to do picket duty within three hundred yards of battery Waggoner we had to wait untill ten Oclock that night before we could relieve the guard as it was then the shells flew around in all directions and we had to sit there in the trenches untill the same time last night without a mouthfull to eat but hardtack for if a man would only put his cap on a stick and hold it up above the trench they would put a bullet hole in it in a minute but I will have to wind up

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