On the eighteenth a scouting party of our cavalry was captured at Grand River and others in our nearer vicinity. We had two companies of the Thirty-first Massachusetts mounted infantry, who were used for vidette duty. Being more exposed than our own pickets they suffered occasionally from guerilla raids. One party of them, were surprised, probably in consequence of a little carelessness, and were taken prisoners with the exception of one man who was killed. He had been a prisoner once before and fought to the last, rather than again be captured. On some of these occasions the attacking parties were dressed in our own uniform. All through the country back of us, a constant and merciless conscription was going on, sweeping in all able-bodied men between fifteen and sixty years of age. Of course many refugees and occasional deserters came within our lines. During the fall of 1864 we received from time to time re-inforcements of several companies of colored engineer troops, who continued the work on the fort which we had begun. Though not comparing with the arduousness of field service, our duties were by no means slight. It must be remembered that we were in a semi-tropical country, where to an unacclimated person the climate was itself almost a deadly foe. The extreme heat produced a lethargy that was depressing in the extreme. In a few days of dry weather, the surface of the ground would be baked like a brick. Then would come most violent storms, converting the soil into a quagmire and covering it with water like a lake. At this time, there was no small danger of falling into the deep ditches with which the fields were intersected, for drainage. In this way I lost one man of my company. Of course it will be understood how productive of disease would be the malaria from the soil and the adjacent swamps. Our men with all their buoyancy of disposition, had not the resolute will of white men, when attacked by sickness, and would succumb with fatal rapidity. As captain of a company, my most arduous duty, when not on special duty or detached service, was as field officer of the day. This necessitated the visiting occasionally during the day and night, our videttes and picket posts which were stationed on the roads into the country, and at intersecting points in the fields; and also crossing in a skiff the Mississippi river, to visit the troops stationed to guard a telegraph station on the other side. This station was in the vicinity of a famous duelling ground,--a path not far from the river bank,--to which in former days the young bloods of the town and vicinity would resort to repair their wounded honor, according to the rules of the code. As we were too short of horses always to furnish a mounted orderly, the officer of the day would at night, have to make his rounds alone. There was a picturesqueness in those rides in the solemn hours of the night, a portion of the way over deserted plantations where the weeds would be as high as one's head on