Punjaub. I lost no time in suggesting to my compagnon de voyage, Lieutenant Dana, as a return for his kindness in supplying me with a "Bayonet Exercise," and other papers, our old campaigning habit of hanging wet canvas before every adit, and received the well-merited thanks of Madam. The hardest part of these hardships is that they are wholly purposeless. Every adobe brick in the place has been estimated to have cost a cent, as at Aden each cut stone was counted a rupee; and the purchase of lumber has enriched the enemy. In 1858 the Peace Commissioners sent by the supreme government conceded to the Mormons a point which saved the Saints. The army was not to be "located" within forty miles of Great Salt Lake City; thus the pretty sites about Utah Lake were banned to them, and the Mormons, it is said, "jockeyed" them out of the rich and fertile Cache Valley, eighty miles north of the head-quarters.
A broken wall surrounds this horrid hole. Julia and Sally carried us in with unflagging vigor. We passed through Fairfield, less euphoniously termed Frogtown, the bazar of the cantonment on the other side of the creek. During the days when Camp Floyd contained its full complement of camp followers—5000 souls—now reduced to 100 or 200 men, it must have been a delectable spot, teeming with gamblers and blacklegs, groghouse-keepers and prostitutes: the revolver and the bowie-knife had nightly work to do there, and the moral Saints were fond of likening Frogtown to certain Cities of the Plains. Of late years it has become more respectable, and now it contains some good stores.
We removed from the wagon the mail-bags containing letters for the camp, and made ourselves at home with the hospitable Gilbert. On the next day, after "morning glory" and breakfast, we called upon the officer commanding the department, Colonel P. St. G. Cooke, of the 2d Dragoons, and upon the commandant of the cantonment, Lieutenant Colonel C. F. Smith. They introduced us to the greater part of the officers, and, though living in camp fashion, did not fail to take in the strangers after the ancient, not the modern, acceptation of the term. It is a sensible pleasure, which every military man has remarked, to exchange the common run of civilian for soldier society in the United States. The reveillé in the morning speaks of discipline; the guard-mounting has a wholesome military sound; there is a habit of 'tention and of saluting which suggests some subordination; the orderlies say "Sir," not Sirree nor Sirree-bob. The stiffness and ungeniality of professionals, who are all running a race for wealth or fame, give way in a service of seniority, and where men become brothers, to the frankness which belongs to the trade of arms. The Kshatriya, or fighting caste, in the States is distinctly marked. The officers, both of the navy and the army, are, for the most part, Southerners, and are separated by their position
