The army was now reduced almost to starvation, their only food being a little corn, which they parched and ate as they could. An alarm having been given by a party of men who were sent up the river in pursuit of fugitives, however, Claiborne marched in that direction during the night of December 24th, and pitched his tent on Weatherford's plantation, where he ate his Christmas breakfast of parched corn. Having destroyed all the buildings in the neighborhood, Claiborne's work in this region was done, and he hastened back to Fort Deposit, where he fed his troops before beginning his return march to Fort Claiborne. The army had been nine days without meat. The term of service for which Carson's volunteers had enlisted had now expired, and as soon as the column arrived at Fort Claiborne the men were mustered out. In a letter to the Secretary of War, Claiborne reported that these men went home nearly naked, without shoes, and with their pay eight months in arrears. Their devotion to the cause, as it was shown in their cheerfulness and good conduct during their toilsome march, was, in view of all the circumstances, highly honorable to them. Leaving Colonel Russell in command of Fort Claiborne, General Claiborne returned to Mount Vernon, partly because he had fully accomplished all that his orders from Flournoy permitted him to do, and partly because the discharge of his Mississippi volunteers had reduced his army to sixty men, and even these had but a month longer to serve! Colonel Russell was no sooner left in command at Fort Claiborne than he instituted proceedings designed to fix the responsibility for the sufferings of the men during the campaign and for the blunder at the Holy Ground where it belonged. He ordered a court of inquiry in each case, but Major Cassels was permitted to escape censure on the ground that his guide had misled him. For the failure of the food supply the contractor was held responsible, as it was shown that General Claiborne had given him strict orders to provide abundant supplies for the expedition. In order that the story of the Fort Claiborne army may be finished here before returning to the Ten Islands and following Jackson through his more important part of the campaign, we may depart for the moment from the chronological order of events to tell the story of an unsuccessful attempt which Colonel Russell made to invade the Creek Nation from Fort Claiborne, in the February following the events already described.