t of April an event
occurred that, slight as was its apparent importance, was destined,
in the train of consequences, vitally to affect the operations of
the Army of the Gulf.

This was the arrival at headquarters of Lieutenant Joseph T. Tenney,
one of Dudley's aides-de-camp, who had been sent by Augur to find
Banks, wherever he might be. With him Tenney brought important
despatches from Grant and Farragut. What the contents were and
what came of them will be related in the next chapter.

From Opelousas Bean, with the 4th Wisconsin, a section of Duryea's
battery, and a squadron of the 2d Rhode Island cavalry, went a
day's march toward the southwest, to the crossing of the Plaquemine
Brule, and discovered that Mouton was retreating beyond the Mermentau.
From Washington, Dwight moved out twenty miles along the Bayou
Boeuf to Satcham's plantation without finding the enemy in force.
After learning these things, on the 25th of April, Banks turned
over the command of the forces to Emory and went to New Orleans to
give his attention to affairs of urgency, chiefly affecting the
civil administration of the department. He returned to headquarters
in the field on the evening of the 1st of May.

Meanwhile Emory sent Paine, who, when crossing the Carencro, had
seen the last of the Confederates disappearing in the distance,
with his brigade and a section of Duryea's battery far out on the
Plaquemine Brule road, in order to find and disperse some cavalry,
vaguely reported to be moving about somewhere in that quarter, a
constant menace to the long trains from New Iberia. In fact Mouton,
with the Texans, was now on the prairie, beyond the Calcasieu eighty
miles away, in good position to retreat to Texas or to hang on the
flank and rear of the Union army, as circumstances might suggest.
On the 26th of April Paine marched sixteen miles to the Plaquemine
Brule, and on the following day sent four companies on horseback
twenty miles farther toward the southwest across Bayou Queue de
Tortue, and another detachment to Bayou Mallet to reconnoitre.
Seeing nothing of the enemy, on the 28th Paine rejoined his division
and resumed the command of it at Opelousas. Some time before this
orders had been given to mount the 4th Wisconsin, and when the army
finally marched from Opelousas this capital regiment made its
appearance in the new role of mounted infantry. To say nothing of
the equipments, a wide divergence in the size, color, and quali