Wednesday Dec the 9th

 

Good morning Abbie I hope you are well this morning and contented surrounded with all the pleasures of life My health is pretty good this morning and improveing. The troops here are mostly camped in the sand and hardly any of them have any tents the Boys shelter themselves by digging a place in the sand and then putting down some stakes and a pole and then stretch their rubber blankets over them for a roof then they bank around it and pull some grass to put under them and it makes a very comfortable tent. Some of them use cow hides insted / of blankets for shelters which answers every purpose untill the weather so warm that they smell so bad as to expell the ocupant. I brought 30 tents with me belonging to the Regt so I have a tent to stop in we are liveing firstrate considering the circumstances we have all the fresh meet that we want the Island abounds in cattle sheep & dears and when we get out of meet all we have to do is to get onto some horses and drive up a heard of cattle or a flock of sheep and slaughter them.

 

We have some very severe weather here in Texas. this weather consists of what the Texans' call a norther they are squalls or what we would call a cold snap. the weather will be / warm and pleasant and perhaps in a half an hour the wind will change completely round from south to north and blow a hericane and perhaps raine and be cold enough to freeze ice 2 inches thick in one night. these last from 30 to 72 hours but vary considerably in severity this is pretty severe sometimes for men who have no shelter from them. Some of the men say that they never suffered so much from cold in Maine as they have in Texas.

 

We have marched over about two hundred miles of the coast of Texas but have not found the Enemy in much fource yet and have not done any fighting except a little skermishing / none of our Regt have been hurt and all are well and stand it firstrate.

 

at this place we took Fort Esperansa which mounts eleven guns and is a fine fortification the guns were all spiked and the garrison skedadled after a smart skermish which lasted one day the Enemy lost several in killed and a number wounded there was several of our western men wounded but none killed Our next move will be to Huston about a hundred miles from this place

 

George Marsh is at Brasher in the 2^d Sea Engineers Corps [?] he was all right the last I heard we have good news from Chatanuga

 

I must close for this time but will write again the first oportunity do not think of me as recreant I remember all my friends at home

 

Give my love to all

                        Yours as ever

A S Wheeler               T. H. Wentworth

 

            Ever of Thee I'm fondly dreaming

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