ho was at St. Louis, commanding the department, should take
the field.

On the evening of Friday the pickets on the Corinth road, two miles out
from Shiloh Church, were fired upon. A body of Rebels rushed through the
woods, and captured several officers and men. The Seventieth,
Seventy-second, and Forty-eighth Ohio, of General Sherman's division,
were sent out upon a reconnoissance. They came upon a couple of Rebel
regiments, and, after a sharp action, drove them back to a Rebel
battery, losing three or four prisoners and taking sixteen. General
Lewis Wallace ordered out his division, and moved up from Crump's
Landing a mile or two, and the troops stood under arms in the rain, that
poured in torrents through the night, to be ready for an attack from
that direction; but nothing came of it. There was more skirmishing on
Saturday,--a continual firing along the picket lines. All supposed that
the Rebels were making a reconnoissance. No one thought that one of the
greatest battles of the war was close at hand. General Grant went down
the river to Savannah on Saturday night. The troops dried their clothes
in the sun, cooked their suppers, told their evening stories, and put
out their lights at tattoo, as usual.

To get at the position of General Grant's army, let us start from
Pittsburg Landing. It is a very busy place at the Landing. Forty or
fifty steamboats are there, and hundreds of men are rolling out barrels
of sugar, bacon, pork, beef, boxes of bread, bundles of hay, and
thousands of sacks of corn. There are several hundred wagons waiting to
transport the supplies to the troops. A long train winds up the hill
towards the west.

Ascending the hill, you come to the forks of the roads. The right-hand
road leads to Crump's Landing. You see General Smith's old division,
which took the rifle-pits at Donelson, on the right-hand side of the
road in the woods. It is commanded now by W. H. L. Wallace, who has been
made a Brigadier-General for his heroism at Donelson. There have been
many changes of commanders since that battle. Colonels who commanded
regiments there are now brigade commanders.

Keeping along the Shiloh road a few rods, you come to the road which
leads to Hamburg. Instead of turning up that, you keep on a little
farther to the Ridge road, leading to Corinth. General Prentiss's
division is on that road, two miles out, towards the southwest. Instead
of taking that road, you still keep on the right-hand one, tra