From Savannah to the Tennessee, directly opposite Pittsburg Landing, is, by the course we took, perhaps ten miles. The route was only a narrow wagon-path through the woods and bottoms bordering the river, and the wisdom was soon apparent which had beforehand secured the services of a native as guide. Most of the latter half of the distance was through a low, slimy swamp land, giving rank growth to an almost continuous forest of sycamore, cottonwood, and other trees which love a damp, alluvial soil, whose massive trunks were yet foul and unsightly with filth and scum deposited by the receding waters at the subsidence of the river's great spring freshet a month before. Stagnant ponds and mimic lagoons lay all about us and in our very pathway, some of the deeper ones, however, rudely bridged. Very rapid progress was impossible. It had already been found necessary to send our artillery back to Savannah, whence it would have to be brought up on the transports. The afternoon wore on, warm and sultry, and the atmosphere in those dank woods felt close, aguish, and unwholesome. Not a breath of air stirred to refresh the heated forms winding in long, continuous line along the dark boles of the trees, through whose branches and leafless twigs the sunlight streamed in little broken gleams of yellow brightness, and made a curious checkerwork of sheen and shadow on all beneath. Burdened as we were with knapsacks and twenty extra rounds of ammunition, the march grew more and more laborious. But the noise of battle was sharpening more significantly every few minutes now, and the men pushed forward. It was no child's game going on ahead of us. We _might_ be needed.