A short distance beyond the place where I had obtained my water supply I found a squadron of jaded cavalry drawn up, and engaged in the interesting work of stopping stragglers. In the crowd of fear-stricken and dejected soldiers I found there, I saw a man who belonged to my father’s regiment; I recognized him by the letters and number on his hat. Inquiring the fate of the regiment, he told me that it had been entirely cut to pieces, and that he had personally witnessed the death of my father—he had seen him shot from his horse. This intelligence filled me with dismay, and I then determined, non-combatant that I was, that I would retire from that battlefield. Watching my opportunity, I joined an ambulance which was passing, loaded with wounded, and by some means escaped the vigilance of the cavalrymen, who seemed to be almost too badly scared to be on any sort of duty. When through this line, I pushed my way on down past the point where stragglers were being impressed and forced to carry sand bags up from the river, to aid in the construction of batteries for some heavy guns which had been brought up from the transports. I passed these temporary works, by the old warehouse, turned into a temporary field hospital, where hundreds of wounded men, brought down in wagons and ambulances, were being unloaded, and where their arms and legs were being cut off and thrown out to form gory, ghastly heaps. I made my way down the plateau overlooking the river. Below lay thirty transports at least, all being loaded with the wounded. All around me were baggage wagons, mule teams, disabled artillery teams, and thousands of panic-stricken men. I saw, here and there, officers gathering these men together into volunteer companies, and marching them away to the scene of battle. It took a vast amount of pleading to organize a company of even fifteen or twenty, and I was particularly struck by the number of officers who were engaged in this interesting occupation. It seemed to me that they were out of all proportion to the number of fugitives in the vicinity. While sitting on the bank, overlooking the road below, between the beach and the river, I saw General Grant. I had seen him the day before review his troops on the Purdy road, while a company of Confederate cavalrymen, a detachment of Johnston’s army, watched the performance from a skirt of woods some two miles away. When I saw him at this moment he was doing his utmost to rally his troops for another effort. It must have been about half past four in the afternoon. The General rode to the landing, accompanied by his staff and a bodyguard of twenty-five or thirty cavalrymen. I heard him begging the stragglers to go back and make one more effort to redeem themselves, accompanying his pleadings with the announcement that reinforcements would soon be on the field, and that he did not want to see his men disgraced. Again I heard him proclaim that if the stragglers before him did not return to their