e
it.

In a well-ordered and well-disciplined army, these things might be
deemed irregular, but I am convinced that the ingenuity of these
younger officers accomplished many things far better than I could
have ordered, and the marches were thus made, and the distances
were accomplished, in the most admirable way. Habitually we
started from camp at the earliest break of dawn, and usually
reached camp soon after noon. The marches varied from ten to
fifteen miles a day, though sometimes on extreme flanks it was
necessary to make as much as twenty, but the rate of travel was
regulated by the wagons; and, considering the nature of the roads,
fifteen miles per day was deemed the limit.

The pontoon-trains were in like manner distributed in about equal
proportions to the four corps, giving each a section of about nine
hundred feet. The pontoons were of the skeleton pattern, with
cotton-canvas covers, each boat, with its proportion of balks and
cheeses, constituting a load for one wagon. By uniting two such
sections together, we could make a bridge of eighteen hundred feet,
enough for any river we had to traverse; but habitually the leading
brigade would, out of the abundant timber, improvise a bridge
before the pontoon-train could come up, unless in the cases of
rivers of considerable magnitude, such as the Ocmulgee, Oconee,
Ogeechee, Savannah, etc.

On the 20th of November I was still with the Fourteenth Corps, near
Eatonton Factory, waiting to hear of the Twentieth Corps; and on
the 21st we camped near the house of a man named Mann; the next
day, about 4 p.m., General Davis had halted his head of column on a
wooded ridge, overlooking an extensive slope of cultivated country,
about ten miles short of Milledgeville, and was deploying his
troops for camp when I got up. There was a high, raw wind blowing,
and I asked him why he had chosen so cold and bleak a position. He
explained that he had accomplished his full distance for the day,
and had there an abundance of wood and water. He explained further
that his advance-guard was a mile or so ahead; so I rode on, asking
him to let his rear division, as it came up, move some distance
ahead into the depression or valley beyond. Riding on some
distance to the border of a plantation, I turned out of the main
road into a cluster of wild-plum bushes, that broke the force of
the cold November wind, dismounted, and instructed the staff to
pick out the place for our camp.