The Fort as a Village

Looking along the inside of the fort: shed roofs running down the left, a whitewashed board structure at the center of the parade, figures loitering in the open, a row of shot along the parapet at the right, and palmettos over the far wall.

A fort under sod is mostly housekeeping. What this plate records is the village a garrison builds inside its walls — quarters, storehouses, walkways, the paths worn between them — photographed in the weeks after the garrison that built it had marched away and a new one had moved in.