It was October 16 when they started, and they reached the Federal lines at Corinth, Mississippi, November 18, being thus two days over a month on the way. They endured the greatest hardships. When in wooded country they travelled both night and day, subsisting on wild grapes, chestnuts, hickory-nuts, walnuts, and some few sweet potatoes. In a few instances they got a little morsel of corn-bread from some negroes. This was not always a gift. Several times they slipped into the fields where the negroes were at work and stole their scanty dinners. Necessity knew no law. For one whole week they had no bread, nor any other food, except the nuts gathered in the woods. Their sufferings with cold were also very great, as their clothes were light and almost worn out, and the nights very chill. Twice only they slept in houses. One night they travelled till they were chilled and weary, and almost perishing with cold, when they fortunately discovered a nest of hogs. It was no time to be choice; so routing out the inmates, they took possession of the warm bed, and slept soundly till morning! They found many streams on the way, which they were obliged to wade, or float across on logs. Porter was a man of clear religious faith and great constancy, while Wollam was full of resources, though somewhat reckless. He longed for the Tennessee River, down which he had floated alone once before, and somewhere on which he knew Federal troops were to be found. It was twenty-two days, however, before this stream was reached, at a point forty miles west of Chattanooga. The worst of their trials were now over. They pressed a canoe into the service, and used it as Wollam had done before, paddling and floating down stream at night, and hiding it and themselves, in the most secret place they could find, during the day. Two persons under such circumstances have great advantages over a solitary traveller. Not only does companionship assist in keeping hope alive in each breast, but one can watch while the other rests, and thus their resources are husbanded. The voyagers met with no remarkable adventures until they reached the head of Muscle Shoals, which they could not pass on account of low water. Abandoning their canoe here, they made a circuit of forty miles by land, and came back to the river below the Shoals. Here they "borrowed" a skiff, and continued their journey until within twelve miles of Pittsburg Landing, where they finally left the river. Twelve miles of travel brought them to Corinth,--a post occupied by Union troops,--where they were received with all the welcome that could be given to comrades long considered dead. They had passed over three hundred miles in a straight line,--probably double that distance by reason of the circuits they made, and this without assistance, and while shunning all about them as foes.