rious determination, but the great
mass were gay and reckless, as soldiers proverbially are, of the risks
the future might hold in reserve.

After a succession of short marches and halts, the forward movement
appeared to cease about four o'clock in the afternoon, and the men
quietly rested on their arms, as well as the damp, and in many places
muddy ground would allow. Towards evening countless fires, fed by the
dry bushes found in abundance upon the old fields of Virginia, showed
that amidst war's alarms the men were not unmindful of coffee.

Throughout the day, with but brief cessation, artillery firing had
continued. The booming of the siege guns, mingled with the sharp rattle
of the light, and the louder roar of the heavy batteries, all causing
countless echoes among the neighboring hills, completed the carnival of
sound.

Night crept gradually on, the fires were extinguished, the cannonading
slackened gradually, then ceased, and the vast army, save those whom
duty kept awake, silently slept under frosted blankets.

Cannonading was resumed at early dawn of the next day, and the slow
progress of the troops towards the river continued. Before night our
advance had crossed upon the pontoon bridges, notwithstanding a galling
fire of the Rebel sharpshooters under cover of the buildings along the
river, and was firmly established in the town. Late in the day our
Division turned into a grove of young pines, a short distance in the
rear of the Phillips House. Upon beds of the dead foliage, soft as
carpets of velvet, after the fatigues of the day, slumber was sound.

The reveille sounded at early morn of the next day,--Saturday, the
memorable thirteenth of December,--by over three hundred pieces of
artillery, again aroused the sleeping camps to arms, and in the grey
fog, the groves and valleys for some miles along the river appeared
alive with moving masses. As soon as the fog lifted sufficiently, a
large balloon between us and the river arose, upon a tour of
observation. It was a fine mark for a rifled battery of the Rebels, and
some shells passed close to it, and exploded in dangerous proximity to
our camp.

Under an incessant artillery fire the main movement of the troops across
the river commenced. Leaving our camp and passing to the right of the
Phillips mansion, we found our Division, one of a number of columns
moving in almost parallel lines to the river. On the western slope of
the hill or ridge upon which the