I considered my career upon the high seas closed by the loss of my ship, and had so informed Commodore Barron, who was our Chief of Bureau in Paris. We had a number of gallant Confederate naval officers, both in England and France, eager and anxious to go afloat—more than could be provided with ships—and it would have been ungenerous in me to accept another command. Besides, my health was broken down to that degree, that I required absolute quiet, for some months, before I should again be fit for duty. I, therefore, threw off all care and responsibility, as soon as I had wound up the affairs of the Alabama, and went up to enjoy the hospitality of my friend Tremlett, at Belsize Park, in London. Here we arranged for a visit, of a few weeks, to the continent, and especially to the Swiss mountains, which was carried out in due time. One other gentleman, an amiable and accomplished sister of my friend Tremlett, and two other ladies, connections or friends of the family, accompanied us.

We were absent six weeks; landing at Ostend, passing hurriedly through Belgium—not forgetting, however, to visit the battle-field of Waterloo—stopping a few days at Spa, for the benefit of the waters, and then passing on to the Rhine; up that beautiful and historic river to Mayence, and thence to the Swiss lakes—drawing the first long breath at Geneva, where we rested a few days. There, reader! I have given you my European tour in a single paragraph; and as I am writing of the sea, and of war, and not of the land, or of peace, this is all the space I can appropriate to it. I must be permitted, however, to say of my friend Tremlett, that I found him a veteran traveller, who knew how to smooth all the difficulties of a journey; and of the ladies of our party, that their cheerfulness, good-humor, and kind attention to me, did quite as much as the Swiss mountain air toward the restoration of my health. I must be permitted to make another remark in connection with this journey. I found a number of exceedingly patriotic, young, able-bodied male Confederates, of a suitable age for bearing arms, travelling, with or without their papas and mammas, and boasting of the Confederacy! Most of these carpet-knights had been in Europe during the whole war.

Returning to London, in the latter days of September, a few days in advance of my travelling party, I made my preparations for returning to the Confederate States; and on the 3d of October, 1864, embarked on board the steamer Tasmanian, for Havana via St. Thomas. My intention was to pass into Texas, through the Mexican port of Matamoras. My journey, by this route, would occupy a little longer time, and be attended, perhaps, with some discomfort, but I should avoid the risk of the blockade, which was considerable. The enemy having resorted, literally, to the starving process, as being the only one which was likely to put an end to the war, had begun to burn our towns, lay waste our corn-fields, run off our negroes and cattle, and was now endeavoring to seal, hermetically, our ports. He had purchased all kinds of steamers—captured blockade-runners and others—which he had fitted out as ships of war, and he now had a fleet little short of five hundred sail. Acting, as before stated, on the principle of abandoning his commerce, he had concentrated all these before the blockaded ports, in such swarms, that it was next to impossible for a ship to run in or out, without his permission. I preferred not to fall into the enemy’s hands, without the benefit of a capitulation. The very mention of my name had, as yet, some such effect upon the Yankee Government as the shaking of a red flag has before the blood-shot eyes of an infuriated bull. Mr. Seward gored, and pawed, and threw up the dust; and, above all, bellowed, whenever the vision of the Alabama flitted across his brain; and the “sainted Abe” was, in foreign affairs, but his man “Friday.”

At St. Thomas we changed steamers, going on board the Solent—the transfer of passengers occupying only a few hours. The Solent ran down for the coast of Porto Rico, where she landed some passengers; passed thence to the north side of St. Domingo, thence into the Old Bahama Channel, and landed us at Havana, in the last days of October. Here we were compelled to wait, a few days, for a chance vessel to Matamoras, there being no regular packets. This enforced delay was tedious enough, though much alleviated by the companionship of a couple of agreeable fellow-passengers, who had embarked with me at Southampton, and who, like myself, were bound to Matamoras. One of these was Father Fischer, and the other, Mr. H. N. Caldwell, a Southern merchant. Father Fischer was a German by birth, but had emigrated in early youth to Mexico, where he had become a priest. He was a remarkable man, of commanding personal appearance, and a well-cultivated and vigorous intellect. He spoke half a dozen modern languages,—the English among the rest, with great precision and purity,—and both Caldwell and myself became much attached to him. He afterward played a very important role in the affairs of Mexico, becoming Maximilian’s confessor, and one of his most trusted counsellors. He was imprisoned for a time, after the fall of the Empire, but was finally released, and has since made his way to Europe, with important papers belonging to the late unfortunate monarch, and will no doubt give us a history of the important episode in Mexican affairs in which he took part.

No other vessel offering, we were compelled to embark in a small Yankee schooner, still redolent of codfish, though wearing the English flag, to which she had recently been transferred. This little craft carried us safely across the Gulf of Mexico, after a passage of a week, and landed us at a sea-shore village, at the mouth of the Rio Grande, rejoicing in the dreamy eastern name of Bagdad. So unique was this little village, that I might have fancied it, as its name imported, really under the rule of Caliphs, but for certain signs of the Yankee which met my eye. The ubiquity of this people is marvellous. They scent their prey with the unerring instinct of the carrion-bird. I had encountered them all over the world, chasing the omnipotent dollar, notwithstanding the gigantic war they were carrying on at home; and here was this little village of Bagdad, on the Texan border, as full of them as an ant-hill is of ants; and the human ants were quite as busy as their insect prototypes. Numerous shanties had been constructed on the sands, out of unplaned boards. Some of these shanties were hotels, some billiard-saloons, and others grog-shops. The beach was piled with cotton bales going out, and goods coming in. The stores were numerous, and crowded with wares. Teamsters cracked their whips in the streets, and horsemen, booted and spurred, galloped hither and thither. The whole panorama looked like some magic scene, which might have been improvised in a night. The population was as heterogeneous as the dwellings. Whites, blacks, mulattos, and Indians were all mixed. But prominent above all stood the Yankee. The shanties were his, and the goods were his. He kept the hotels, marked the billiards, and sold the grog.

Pretty soon a coach drove up to the door of the hotel at which we were stopping, to take us to Matamoras, a distance of thirty miles. Here was the Yankee again. The coach had been built in Troy, New York. The horses were all northern horses—tall, strong, and gaunt, none of your Mexican mustangs. The Jehu was Yankee, a tall fellow, with fisherman’s boots, and fancy top-hamper. The dried-up little Mexicans who attended to the horses, harnessing and unharnessing them, on the road, at the different relay stations, evidently stood in great awe of him. He took us into Matamoras “on time,” and at the end of his journey, cracked his whip, and drew up his team at the hotel-door, with a flourish that would have done honor to Mr. Samuel Weller, senior, himself.

As great a revolution had taken place in Matamoras as at Bagdad. The heretofore quaint old Spanish town presented the very picture of a busy commercial mart. House-rent was at an enormous figure; the streets, as well as the stores, were piled with bales and boxes of merchandise, and every one you met seemed to be running somewhere, intent on business. Ox and mule teams from the Texan side of the river, were busy hauling the precious staple of the Southern States, which put all this commerce in motion, to Bagdad, for shipment; and anchored off that mushroom village, I had counted, as I landed, no less than sixty sail of ships—nearly all of them foreign. Fortunately for all this busy throng, Maximilian reigned supreme in Mexico, and his Lieutenant in Matamoras, General Mejia, gave security and protection to person and property, at the same time that he raised considerable revenue by the imposition of moderate taxes.

Colonel Ford, the commandant at Brownsville, on the opposite side of the river, came over to see me, and toward nightfall I returned with him to that place. We crossed the river in a skiff managed by a Mexican, and as my foot touched, for the first time in four years, the soil of my native South, I experienced, in their full force, the lines of the poet:—

“Where shall that land, that spot of earth be found?
Art thou a man?—a patriot?—look around;
Oh! thou shalt find, howe’er thy footsteps roam,
That land thy country, and that spot thy home!”

There were no hotels at Brownsville, but I was comfortably lodged for the night, with Colonel Beldon, the Collector of the port. The next morning I breakfasted with a large party at a neighboring restaurant, who had assembled thither to welcome me back to my native land; and when the breakfast was over, a coach and four, which was to take me on my way to Shreveport, in Louisiana, drew up at the door. An escort of cavalry had been provided, to accompany me as far as King’s Ranch, a point at which the road approaches the coast, and where it was supposed that some of the enemy’s gunboats might attempt to ambuscade me. I found, upon entering the coach, in which I was to be the only traveller, that my friends had provided for my journey in true Texan style; my outfit being a stout pair of gray blankets, which were to form my bed on the prairies for the next hundred miles, as we should have to travel that distance before we reached the shelter of a roof; a box containing a dozen bottles of excellent brandy, and cigars at discretion! As the driver cracked his whip, to put his mustangs in motion, and my escort clattered on ahead of me, the crowd who had gathered in the street to see me depart, launched me upon the prairie, with three hearty cheers, such as only Texan throats can give.

It so happened, that my major-domo for the journey, Sergeant ——, was the same who had conducted my friend, Colonel Freemantle, over this route, some two years before. I found him the same invaluable travelling companion. His lunch-baskets were always well filled, he knew everybody along the road, was unsurpassed at roasting a venison steak before a camp-fire on a forked stick, and made a capital cup of coffee. I missed the Judge, whom Freemantle so humorously describes, but I found a good many judges on the road, who might sit for his portrait. And now, for want of space, I must treat this journey as I did my European tour, give it to the reader in a paragraph. We were fourteen days on the road; passing through San Patricio on the Nueces, Gonzales on the Guadalupe, Houston, Hempstead, Navasota, Huntsville, Rusk, Henderson, and Marshall, arriving on the 27th of November at Shreveport. I was received, everywhere, with enthusiasm by the warm-hearted, brave Texans, the hotels being all thrown open to me, free of expense, and salutes of artillery greeting my entrance into the towns. I was frequently compelled to make short speeches to the people, merely that they might hear, as they said, “how the pirate talked;” and, I fear, I drank a good many more mint-juleps than were good for me. At table I was always seated on the right hand of the “landlady,” and I was frequently importuned by a bevy of blooming lasses, to tell them “how I did the Yankees.” Glorious Texas! what if thou art a little too much given to the Bowie-knife and revolver, and what if grass-widows are somewhat frequent in some of thy localities, thou art all right at heart! Liberty burns with a pure flame on thy prairies, and the day will yet come when thou wilt be free. Thy fate, thus far, has been a hard one. In a single generation thou hast changed thy political condition four times. When I first knew thee, thou wast a Mexican province. You then became an independent State. In an evil hour you were beguiled into accepting the fatal embrace of the Yankee. Learning your mistake, ere long, you united your fortunes with those of the Confederate States, in the hope again to be free. You did what it was in the power of mortals to do, but the Fates were adverse, and you have again been dragged down into worse than Mexican bondage. Bide thy time! Thou art rapidly filling up with population. Thou wilt soon become an empire in thyself, and the day is not far distant, when thou mayest again strike for freedom!

At Shreveport, I was hospitably entertained at the mansion of Colonel Williamson, serving on the staff of the commanding general of the Trans-Mississippi Department, Kirby Smith. The Mayor and a deputation of the Councils waited on me, and tendered me a public dinner, but I declined. I remained with Colonel Williamson a couple of days, and the reader may imagine how agreeable this relaxation, in comfortable quarters, was to me, after a journey of fourteen consecutive days and nights, in a stage-coach, through a rough, and comparatively wild country. Governor Allen was making Shreveport the temporary seat of government of Louisiana, and I had the pleasure of making his acquaintance, and dining with him, in company with General Smith and his staff. The Governor was not only a genial, delightful companion, but a gallant soldier, who had rendered good service to the Confederacy at the head of his regiment. He had been terribly wounded, and was still hobbling about on crutches. He seemed to be the idol of the people of his State. He was as charitable and kind-hearted as brave, and the needy soldier, or soldier’s wife, never left his presence without the aid they came to seek.

My object in taking Shreveport in my route, instead of striking for the Red River, some distance below, was to meet my son, Major O. J. Semmes, who, I had been informed at Brownsville, was serving in this part of Louisiana. In the beginning of the war he withdrew from West Point, where he was within a year of graduating, and offered his sword to his State—Alabama. I had not seen him since. He was now a major of artillery, commanding a battalion in General Buckner’s army, stationed at Alexandria. Thither I now directed my course. The river being too low for boating, I was forced to make another land journey. The General kindly put an ambulance at my disposal, and my host, with the forethought of a soldier, packed me a basket of provisions. My friend and travelling companion, viz., the Jehu, who was to drive me, was an original. He was from Ohio, and had served throughout the war as a private soldier in the Confederate army. He had been in a good many fights and skirmishes, and was full of anecdote. If he had an antipathy in the world, it was against the Yankee, and nothing gave him half so much pleasure, as to “fight his battles o’er again.” As I had a journey of four or five days before me—the distance being 140 miles over execrable roads—the fellow was invaluable to me. We passed through several of the localities where General Banks had been so shamefully beaten by General Dick Taylor,—at Mansfield, Pleasant Hill, and Monett’s Ferry. The fields were still strewn with the carcasses of animals; a few, unmarked hillocks, here and there, showed where soldiers had been buried; and the rent and torn timber marked the course of the cannon-balls that had carried death to either side. The Vandals, in their retreat, had revenged themselves on the peaceful inhabitants, and every few miles the charred remains of a dwelling told where some family had been unhoused, and turned into the fields by the torch.

At Alexandria, I was kindly invited by General Buckner to become his guest during my stay, and he sent a courier at once to inform my son, who was encamped a few miles below the town, of my arrival. The latter came to see me the same afternoon. I remained in the hospitable quarters of the General a week before the necessary arrangements could be made for my crossing the Mississippi. The enemy being in full possession of this river by means of his gunboats, it was a matter of some little management to cross in safety. The trans-Mississippi mails to Richmond had been sent over, however, quite regularly, under the personal superintendence of a young officer, detailed for the purpose, and the General was kind enough to arrange for my crossing with this gentleman. The news of my passing through Texas had reached the enemy at New Orleans, as we learned by his newspapers, and great vigilance had been enjoined on his gunboats to intercept me, if possible. Our arrangements being completed, I left Alexandria on the 10th of December, accompanied by my son, who had obtained a short leave of absence for the purpose of visiting his home, and reached the little village of Evergreen the next day. Arrived at this point, we were joined by our companions of the mail service, and on the 13th we crossed both the Red and Mississippi Rivers in safety.

The journey through the swamps, leading to these rivers, was unique. We performed it on horseback, pursuing mere bridle-paths and cattle-tracks, in single file, like so many Indians. Our way sometimes led us through a forest of gigantic trees, almost entirely devoid of under-growth, and resembling very much, though after a wild fashion, the park scenery of England. At other times we would plunge into a dense, tangled brake, where the interlaced grape and other vines threatened every moment, to drag us from our saddles. The whole was a drowned country, and impassable during the season of rains. It was now low water, and as we rode along, the high-water marks on the trees were visible, many feet above our heads. From this description of the country, the reader will see how impossible it was for artillery or cavalry, or even infantry, to operate on the banks of these rivers, during a greater part of the year. Except at a few points, the enemy’s gunboats were almost as secure from attack as they would have been, on the high seas. Occasionally, we had to swim a deep bayou, whose waters looked as black as those of the Stygian Lake; but if the bayou was wide, as well as deep, we more frequently dismounted, stripped our horses, and surrounding them, and shouting at them, made them take the water in a drove, and swim over by themselves. We then crossed in skiffs, which the mail-men had provided for the purpose, and caught and resaddled our horses for a fresh mount.

We reached the bank of the Mississippi just before dark. There were two of the enemy’s gunboats anchored in the river, at a distance of about three miles apart. As remarked in another place, the enemy had converted every sort of a water craft, into a ship of war, and now had them in such number, that he was enabled to police the river in its entire length, without the necessity of his boats being out of sight of each other’s smoke. The officers of these river craft were mostly volunteers from the merchant service, whose commissions would expire with the war, and a greater set of predatory rascals was, perhaps, never before collected in the history of any government. They robbed the plantations, and demoralized them by trade, at the same time. Our people were hard pressed for the necessaries of life, and a constant traffic was being carried on with them, by these armed river steamers, miscalled ships of war.

It would not do, of course, for us to attempt the passage of the river, until after dark; and so we held ourselves under cover of the forest, until the proper moment, and then embarked in a small skiff, sending back the greater part of our escort. Our boat was scarcely able to float the numbers that were packed into her. Her gunwales were no more than six inches above the water’s edge. Fortunately for us, however, the night was still, and the river smooth, and we pulled over without accident. As we shot within the shadows of the opposite bank, our conductor, before landing, gave a shrill whistle to ascertain whether all was right. The proper response came directly, from those who were to meet us, and in a moment more, we leaped on shore among friends. We found spare horses awaiting us, and my son and myself slept that night under the hospitable roof of Colonel Rose. The next morning the colonel sent us to Woodville, in his carriage, and in four or five days more, we were in Mobile, and I was at home again, after an absence of four years!