Our first occupation next day was to establish my own headquarters, for a military man does not feel at home until his little camp is set in some decent nook with the regularity and order which shows good system, and with the sentinel pacing before the entrance. I have always found it most comfortable and most healthful to live under canvas, even in winter, in the sparsely settled parts of the country. It might be different in Europe or in the more densely peopled States at the East, but in the West and South a house cannot always be found in proper proximity to the line, and changing from house to tent and back again is much more dangerous to health than adherence to what seems the more exposed kind of life. There is also a question of discipline and _morale_ involved, and the effect of example at headquarters is felt through the whole command. With no little difficulty we found four old tents without flies, but these were carefully pitched in a clean place accessible to all parts of the corps, and when we were installed in them we had a real satisfaction in being at home and ready for business. Our difficulty in procuring four poor tents was simply an index of the scarcity of all supplies and equipments. The depots at Cincinnati and Nashville were packed with everything we wanted, but there had been no time to get them forward when the siege began, and now the impassable mountain roads cut us off as completely as a circle of hostile camps. We especially felt the lack of the flies for the tents in roughing it. This extra roof makes as great a difference in keeping a tent habitable in wet weather, as an extra cape or a poncho does in keeping the rain off one's person, or in civil life the omnipresent umbrella. Our overcoats and ponchos kept out the wet in the longest march, but without a fly the tent roof and walls would drip with moisture. In Captain Day, however, I had a quartermaster whose indomitable energy would not be long baffled, and in his journeys to and fro in charge of the supply trains of the corps he kept a sharp eye out for whatever would make our headquarters outfit more efficient. The warehouses at Knoxville were searched, and a better tent found in one place and a fly in another gradually brought our little camp into what soldiers regard as a home-like condition. The clerical work and the official correspondence of the command could then go on; for the headquarters of an army corps in the field is as busy a place as a bank or counting-house in a city. It is the business centre for a military population of 12,000 or 15,000 men, where local government is carried on, and where their feeding, clothing, arming, and equipping are organized and directed, to say nothing of the military conduct in regard to the enemy, or of the administration of affairs relating to the neighboring inhabitants.