In preparation for this, on the evening of the 1st of May, Bean, with the 4th Wisconsin, mounted, was sent forward to join the main body of the cavalry, under Major Robinson, in front of Washington. That night Dwight, with the cavalry, his own brigade, and a section of Nims's battery, marched out some distance to discover the position of the Confederate outposts. These, in the interval that elapsed, had been advanced to the junction of the Cocodrie and the Boeuf. After driving them in Dwight returned the next morning to Washington. The advance of the column from Franklin to Opelousas had been disfigured by the twin evils of straggling and marauding. Before the campaign opened, Banks had taken the precaution to issue stringent orders against pillage, yet no means adequate to the enforcement of these orders were provided, and the marches were so long and rapid, the heat at times so intense, and the dust so intolerable, that comparatively few of the men were able to keep up with the head of the column. This contributed greatly to disorder of the more serious kind. One regiment, neither the best nor the worst, halting at the end of a particularly hard day's march, found itself with scarcely fifty men in the ranks. Then, too, the men were on short rations, in what they considered the enemy's country; the whole region was sparsely populated; and the residents had, for the most part, fled from their homes at the news of the approach of the Union army. With these disorders there sprang up a third, less prevalent indeed, but to the last degree annoying and not without its share of danger, for when the straggler chanced to find himself in easy range of any thing, from a steer to a chicken, that he happened to fancy for his supper, he was not always careful in his aim or accurate in his judgment of distance; thus a number of officers and men were wounded and the lives of many put in peril.