106 WHIP AND SPUR. 



Nineteenth Pennsylvania, and Frank Moore's Bat- 

 talion of the Second Illinois ; in all about twenty- 

 five hundred well-mounted men present for duty. 

 The roads were deep with mud and slush, and 

 every creek was " out of its banks " with the 

 thaw. We reached the ferry only at nightfall of 

 the 23d, over roads that had hourly grow r n deeper 

 and more difficult. Two regiments had crossed, 

 through floating ice (eight horses at a trip), by 

 a rope-ferry, and at nine o'clock in the evening, 

 under a full moon and a summer temperature, 

 I crossed with staff and escort. The river was 

 already so swollen that we landed in two feet of 

 water, and still it was rising. 



Our camp was fixed five miles away on the 

 upland. The first mile was only wet and nasty, 

 and the trail not hard to follow. Then we came 

 to the " back slough," thirty feet wide, four feet 

 deep, and still covered with four inches of ice. 

 Those who had gone before had broken a track 

 through this, and swept the fragments of ice for- 

 ward until near the shore they were packed in 

 for a width of ten feet or more, and to the full 



