107 HISTORY OF THE SEVENTY-EIGHTH REGIMENT O.V.V.I.
halting a few hours only during the night. As far as we can learn, our destination is Memphis, for which place we will start in the morning. It becomes necessary to pursue a new line of operations, making the Mississippi river the basis.
To-day, while remaining at this place, I made a visit to the Mississippi University, the most extensive and distinguished institution of learning in the South. There are eight large brick buildings, and four dwellings for the professors, in all twelve, situated in a pentagonal grove of about twenty-five acres. I made the acquaintance of Professor Quinche, a graduate of Marietta (Ohio) College, and formerly a resident of Galena, Ill. And strange as it may seem, he is an ardent and devoted secessionist. I spent nearly all the forenoon with him in passing through the different departments. The library is small, containing 5,000 volumes; some choice ancient works from England. The cabinet is the most extensive, and said to be unsurpassed in the United States. It consists of a rich collection of marine, terrestial, fluvatile shells, and is the result of twenty-five years labor and experience, purchased by Dr. D. W. Budd, of New York city. It contains over four hundred genera, and upward of five thousand species, and more than twenty thousand individual shells, many of which have never been described in works on conchology. The mineral collection, purchased by Mr. Francis Markoe, of Washington City, is inferior to none in the world. It contains a large number of rocks, minerals and fossils from different parts of the world. The chemical department is equally extensive, containing many of the largest apparatus in the world, purchased in Germany at a cost of over $100,000. The astronomical department is a large building, containing a large tower, with a moveable turret and telescope, costing ten thousand dollars in the city of Boston.
Frederick A. P. Barnard, L.L.D., is President of the institution. Being from Massachusetts, he left as soon as the State seceded. Three other professors broke for the North; two went into the Confederate service, and left the institution without students, and but one professor. Out of a class of twenty-eight seniors, in 1861, all save one are in the Confederate army.
The University is established upon a grant of land consisting of thirty-six sections, made by Congress to the State of Mississippi, in 1819. The land was leased for many years, and afterward sold to the highest bidder for a million of dollars, which forms the endowment of the institution. For one year it has been a general hospital for the rebel army, containing at one time eighteen hundred patients. In a new made grave-yard there are seven hundred rebel soldiers buried. All grave-yards we passed on our marches seemed to be filled with fresh graves. What a startling record of mortality will the years 1861 and 1862 mark in this country! How it admonishes the student of prophecy that the time is near; a time of the most startling developments and astounding events that have ever occurred in the Christian Era.
Preceding the fulfillment of remarkable prophecies, a short period of the most fearful mortality is set forth vividly by both Jewish and Christian writers. The impress of God's doings in the world, and his dealings with nations, seem to be resting upon the minds of great men, and shaking the political pillars of Government. "Watchman, what of
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