“The fleet collected at Friar’s Point for final orders, and there the order of sailing was laid down with great minuteness, and private instructions issued to commanders of divisions, all of whom had personal interviews with the commanding general, and received personal explanations on pretty much every point involved.  Our headquarters boat, the Forest Queen, was not very comfortable, nor well provided, but General Sherman submitted cheerfully, on the grounds of duty, and thought Conway a fine fellow.  I was only able to concede that he was a good steamboat captain....

“Our camp appointments were Spartan in the extreme, and in their simplicity would have met the demands of any demagogue in the land.  The nights were cold and damp, and General Sherman uncomfortably active in his preparations, so that the assistant adjutant-general had no very luxurious post just then.  We were surrounded with sloughs.  The ground was wet, and the water, although in winter, was very unwholesome.  Many of our men, to this day, have reminders of the Yazoo in ague, fevers, and diseases of the bowels.  Cavalry was useless.  One battalion of Illinois cavalry was strongly suspected of camping in the timber, until time passed enough to justify the suspicion of having been somewhere.  Really the strength of Vicksburg was in being out of reach of attack....

“My orders were to learn and report what was going on on the right, particularly to try and form an idea of the enemy’s force in front of M. L. Smith’s division, and at the sand-bar.  Leaving my horse close in the rear of the Sixth Missouri, when the fire became too heavy for riding, I succeeded, by taking frequent cover, in reaching unhurt the verge of the bayou among the drift-logs.  There, by concert of action with Lieutenant-Colonel Blood, of the Sixth Missouri, his regiment, and the Thirteenth Regular Infantry, kept up a heavy fire on everything that showed along the levee and earthworks in front.  The enemy were behind the embankment, not over one hundred and fifty yards across the bayou.  Several officers, including Colonel Blood, Colonel Kilby Smith, and myself, managed, by getting on the piles of drift, to see over the levee through the cleared fields beyond, even to the foot of the bluff.  The chips and twigs flew around lively enough, but we staid up long enough to make sure that the enemy had as many men behind the levee as could get cover.  We saw, also, a line of rifle-pits in the rear, commanding the rear of the levee, and still beyond, winding along the foot of the bluff, a road worn by long use deep into the side-hill, and with the side next us strengthened with a good earthwork, affording a covered line of communication in the rear.  The fire of our men was so well maintained that we were able to see all these things, say a minute or more.  Some of those who ventured were wounded, but those mentioned and myself escaped unhurt.  I advised that men enough to hold the position, once across—­say three