aratively inactive, though raiding parties gave us
occasional trouble. Towards spring they began to move, and attacks on
parties of Union cavalry were not infrequent. Unpleasant rumors of the
capture of the Third Rhode Island Cavalry reached us, but proved to be
unfounded, except that several couriers were taken. Some rebel
prisoners were captured by the scouts, who were encamped near us, but
our freedom from attack, was probably largely due to the inundated
condition of the country. Owing to the neglect of the levees, the
river at its high stage in the spring following broke through the
embankment above and overflowed a large tract of country west of us. A
raid contemplated by the rebels, which would have given us sharp work,
and a force which would have been large enough to annihilate us,
unless in the meanwhile reinforced, were prevented by the condition of
the intervening country, from giving us trouble.

As an illustration of the disastrous effect of this overflow, I am
tempted to give a brief description of a trip I made through a
portion of the country that suffered in this way. Before the waters
had subsided, I was ordered by Brigadier-General R.A. Cameron,
commanding the district of La Fourche, in which we were located, to
report at his headquarters in Brashear City, for duty on his staff.
Taking a steamer to New Orleans and then the train at Algiers, which
is opposite New Orleans, I proceeded very comfortably to a place
called Terrebonne, where steam travel came to a sudden stop. A
hand-car for a mile or two furnished transportation and then we found
the railroad completely washed away by the flood above named. The
General's quartermaster and myself secured a boat and with a crew of
colored soldiers, we rowed some twelve miles to a place called
Tigerville, on the Alligator bayou. Our route lay over the bed of the
railroad, the track washed to one side of the cut, and a stream of
water several feet deep on top of the bed. The road had been built
through what seemed, most of the way, a primeval wilderness. The rank
growth which skirted both sides of the stream, with no sound to break
the silence, save the measured stroke of the oars, for even the birds
which occasionally flitted across our path, were songless, though of
brilliant plumage; the sight of an occasional moccasin or copperhead
snake coiled on the stump of a tree, and not infrequently of an
alligator sunning himself on a log, were features of a situati