Now the time had come for us to go in the direction of Knoxville. There had been some of Colonel Kirk’s scouts about fifty in number, who had come to help our boys in reaching our lines, so we started. Most all of our men were mounted on good, fleet horses. Lieutenant Housley had a nice little black mare that he let me have to ride. All the men in this company would number about eighty-five men. There were some seventy mounted men and in the neighborhood of fifteen footmen. Some of these footmen were young boys, going to Knoxville to keep out of the rebel army. There was one or two rebel deserters along with us. We had been traveling a part of one night and one day along the line of railroad, when we came to a school house, or church, I don’t just remember which, and camped for the night. Along the way we had captured a rebel spy, who pretended to be a good Union man, and our boys let him go. He had not been gone more than two or three hours before there came a report from the guard lines that we were surrounded by at least four or five hundred rebels. This was about eleven o’clock at night, so the scouts all fell in and made a dash in the direction of the mountains. Our men were successful in breaking through the rebel lines, which let all of us footmen into the mountains. There were sixteen of us besides the pilot, who was left with us. We got high up into the mountains between two large bluffs and here we stayed that night, or the balance of it. The next morning found us very hungry, for we had not had much to eat for about two days. I want to say that our boys had a very sharp and hard time to get through these rebel lines, and some of the rebels must have fell under the fire of the scouts. About noon, or somewhere near that time, the pilot came to the conclusion that he would take one of our crew and go and try and get something for us to eat. So he started off in the direction of the valley. He had not been gone long before I took one of the young men and started off on my own hook, to see what success I would have, and we started down in about the same direction. We came to where the rebels were in pursuit of us and we went near the building where our boys had previously had their troubles with the rebels. We went some two miles farther into the valley, where there was a large house standing on a very large plantation. At this house we got a large hoecake, or a baked kettle cake of corn bread and some bacon and started back.