When Steele's retreat to Little Rock had put an end to all hopes of a successful pursuit, Kirby Smith faced about and set Walker in rapid motion toward Alexandria with Churchill closely following. A day or two after Banks had left the place Walker arrived at Alexandria, too late to do anything more in Louisiana. Taylor quarrelled bitterly with Kirby Smith, who ended by ordering him to turn over his command to Walker. Leaving a small force to hold the country and to observe and annoy the Union army of occupation in Louisiana, Kirby Smith then gathered his forces, and passing by Steele's right flank, invaded Missouri. After arriving at Morganza, Emory, by Canby's orders, put his command in good condition for defence or for a movement in any direction by sending to other stations all the troops except the Nineteenth Corps and the First division, Lawler's, of the Thirteenth Corps, as well as all the extra animals, wagons, and baggage of the army. For the sedentary defensive, the position at Morganza had many advantages, but except that good water for all purposes was to be had in plenty for the trouble of crossing the levee, the situation was perhaps the most unfortunate in which the corps was ever encamped. The heat was oppressive and daily growing more unbearable. The rude shelters of bushes and leaves, cut fresh from the neighboring thicket and often renewed, gave little protection; the levee and the dense undergrowth kept off the breeze; and such was the state of the soil that when it was not a cloud of light and suffocating dust, it was a sea of fat black mud. The sickly season was close at hand, the field and general hospitals were filled, and the deaths were many. The mosquitoes were at their worst; but worse than all were the six weeks of absolute idleness, broken only by an occasional alarm or two, such as led to the brief expedition of Grover's division to Tunica and Natchez. At first Canby intended to use the Nineteenth Corps as a sort of marine patrol or coast-guard, with its trains and artillery and cavalry reduced to the lowest point, and the main body of the infantry kept always ready to embark on a fleet of transports specially assigned for the service and to go quickly to any point up or down the Mississippi or the adjacent waters that might be menaced or attacked by the enemy. The orders for the organization and equipment of the corps in this manner form a model of forethought and of minute attention to detail, yet as events turned out, they were never put in practice.