Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/480

 days well. The army was in superb condition and animated by the highest spirits. Officers and men seemed to feel instinctively that they were engaged in an offensive movement promising great results. There was no end to the singing and merry laughter relieving the fatigue of the march. A pontoon bridge was thrown across the river, and our corps crossed before midnight. The Seventeenth Pennsylvania cavalry regiment was sent ahead to clear the country immediately opposite. Something singular happened to me that night. While it was still light, one of General Howard's staff officers pointed out to me a strip of timber at some distance on the other side of the river, at the outer edge of which I was to stay until morning. Between that timber and the river there was a large tract of level, open ground,—meadow or heath, perhaps three-quarters of a mile across,—which I was to traverse. When I set out at the head of my division to pass the pontoon bridge, General Howard gave me a cavalryman as a guide who “knew the country perfectly.” Meanwhile a dense fog had arisen over the open ground in which we could distinguish nothing a few paces ahead. With the guide who “knew the country perfectly” at my side, I marched on and on for a full hour without reaching my belt of timber, which I ought to have reached in much less than half that time. I asked my guide whether he knew where we were. He stammered that he did not. Almost at the same moment I heard a well-known voice say something emphatic a short distance ahead of me. It was Colonel Hecker, whose regiment, the Eighty-second Illinois, was, as I knew, at the tail of my column. A short investigation revealed the fact that my whole division was standing on the open ground in a large circle, and that we had been marching round and round in the fog for a considerable time. We struck matches, examined our compasses, and then easily found our way to my belt of timber,