We steamed towards that port, and arrived safely, having made the in-and-out voyage, including the time in unloading and loading at Wilmington, in sixteen days.
To attempt to describe at length the state of things at this usually tranquil and unfrequented little spot is beyond my powers.

I will only mention some of its most striking features.

Nassau differed much from Wilmington, inasmuch as at the latter place there was a considerable amount of poverty and distress, and men's minds were weighted with many troubles and anxieties; whereas, at Nassau, everything at the time I speak of was _couleur de rose_.

Every one seemed prosperous and happy.
You met with calculating, far-seeing men who were steadily employed in feathering their nests, let the war in America end as it might; others who, in the height of their enthusiasm for the Southern cause, put their last farthing into Confederate securities, anticipating enormous profits; some men, careless and thoughtless, living for the hour, were spending their dollars as fast as they made them, forgetting that they would 'never see the like again.' There were rollicking captains and officers of blockade-runners, and drunken swaggering crews; sharpers looking out for victims; Yankee spies; and insolent worthless _free niggers_--all these combined made a most heterogeneous, though interesting, crowd.
The inhabitants of Nassau, who, until the period of blockade-running, had, with some exceptions, subsisted on a precarious and somewhat questionable livelihood gained by wrecking, had their heads as much turned as the rest of the world.

Living was exorbitantly dear, as can be well imagined, when the captain of a blockade-runner could realise in a month a sum as large as the Governor's salary.