ion to the Sixth Connecticut, which came
yesterday, appears part of the Eighth Maine. The remainder,
with its colonel, will be here to-morrow, and, report says,
Major-General Hunter. Now my hope is that we may go to some
point higher up the river, which we can hold for ourselves.
There are two other points, [Magnolia and Pilatka,] which,
in themselves, are as favorable as this, and, for getting
recruits, better. So I shall hope to be allowed to go. To
take posts, and then let white troops garrison them,--that
is my programme.

"What makes the thing more puzzling is, that the Eighth
Maine has only brought ten days' rations, so that they
evidently are not to stay here; and yet where they go, or
why they come, is a puzzle. Meanwhile we can sleep sound o'
nights; and if the black and white babies do not quarrel and
pull hair, we shall do very well."

Colonel Rust, on arriving, said frankly that he knew nothing of the
plans prevailing in the Department, but that General Hunter was
certainly coming soon to act for himself; that it had been reported at
the North, and even at Port Royal, that we had all been captured and
shot, (and, indeed, I had afterwards the pleasure of reading my own
obituary in a Northern Democratic journal,) and that we certainly needed
reinforcements; that he himself had been sent with orders to carry out,
so far as possible, the original plans of the expedition; that he
regarded himself as only a visitor, and should remain chiefly on
shipboard,--which he did. He would relieve the black provost-guard by a
white one, if I approved,--which I certainly did. But he said that he
felt bound to give the chief opportunities of action to the colored
troops,--which I also approved, and which he carried out, not quite to
the satisfaction of his own eager and daring officers.

I recall one of these enterprises, out of which we extracted a good deal
of amusement; it was baptized the Battle of the Clothes-Lines. A white
company was out scouting in the woods behind the town, with one of my
best Florida men for a guide; and the captain sent back a message that
he had discovered a Rebel camp with twenty-two tents, beyond a creek,
about four miles away; the officers and men had been distinctly seen,
and it would be quite possible to capture it. Colonel Rust at once sent
me out with two hundred men to do the work, recalling the original
scouts,