Page:History of the Forty-eighth Regiment, M.V.M. during the Civil War (IA historyoffortyei00plumm).pdf/66

 at a moment's notice. At daybreak the next morning we marched to the levee at Baton Rouge where we embarked on board a steamer and sailed slowly up the river. Another regiment accompanied us and two companies of cavalry. We had started on a reconnaissance. We were convoyed by the famous gunboat Essex which kept a half a mile ahead of us and occasionally threw a shell into the woods along the shore. We disembarked a few miles below Port Hudson under cover of the guns of the Essex. The road leading to the bluff a distance of a quarter of a mile from the river, swollen by the spring freshets, was entirely under water, in some places reaching nearly to the waists of the shorter men. Wading through this the order of march was formed upon the bluff. The cavalry went ahead, filling the road and stretching out over the fields on either side. We approached within a few miles of the Confederate works and drove in their pickets who left their posts so rapidly as to leave their cooking utensils lying near the smouldering embers of the fire where they had cooked their morning meal. Presently we came upon a company of guerillas who fled to the woods, all but one young fellow who was captured. At about noon, hot, tired and thirsty, we halted for a brief rest at a plantation some sixteen miles from Baton Rouge and I doubt if at any time or place during the great conflict the confiscation law was more vigorously and thoroughly enforced. Within a few minutes after our arrival the feathered inhabitants of the plantation had nothing further to say. Our march from this place to Baton Rouge was a rapid one. We were within a short distance of a comparatively large and powerful army of the enemy and it was quite within the bounds of pos