Belmont was the lofty name of a settlement of three houses squatted upon the low river-flat opposite Columbus, and under easy range of its guns. A regiment and a battery were encamped in a cleared field of seven hundred acres on the river-bank, and the camp was surrounded on its landward side by an abattis of felled timber. At six o'clock in the morning the fleet moved down, and the troops debarked at half-past eight on the Missouri shore, three miles above Columbus, and protected from view by an intervening wooded point. About the same time General Polk sent General Pillow across the river to Belmont with four regiments, making the force there five regiments and a battery. Pillow estimated the number of men at about twenty-five hundred. General Grant marched his command through the timber and some cleared fields, and formed in two lines facing the river--McClernand in front, Dougherty in rear. A depression parallel to the river, making a connected series of ponds or sloughs, had to be crossed in the advance in line. These depressions were for the most part dry, but the Twenty-seventh Illinois, the right of the front line, in passing around a portion that was yet filled with water, made such distance to the right that Colonel Dougherty's brigade moved forward, filled the interval, and the attack was made in a single line. The opposing skirmishers encountered in the timber. Pillow's line of battle was in the open, facing the timber. The engagement was in the simplest form: two forces equal in number encountered in parallel lines. Most of the men on both sides were for the first time under fire, and had yet had but scanty opportunity to become inured to or acquainted with military discipline. The engagement was hotly contested--the opposing lines, while for some time alternately advancing and receding, were steady and unbroken. At length Pillow gave way. When his line was once really broken it could not rally in the face of pursuit. The national line pressing on, pushed Pillow back through the camp and over the upper or secondary bank to the first or lower bottom in disorder. The Second Tennessee, just arrived across the river, took position under the secondary bank, for a while checked the pursuit, giving time for the routed troops to make their way through the timber up the river, and finally followed them in a more orderly retreat.