On the 15th of January, 1863, our regiments at New Orleans were sent up the river. We went on board a little steamer, called the Laurel Hill at about eight o'clock in the evening. We arrived in Baton Rouge about one o'clock on the sixteenth of January and had our tents pitched before night. We were brigaded with the Thirteenth Connecticut, the Twenty-sixth Maine and the One Hundred and Fifty-ninth New York, under Colonel H. W. Birge as brigade commander. These regiments formed the Third Brigade of the Fourth Division of the Nineteenth Army Corps, General Grover division commander. January 25th. We were now in the presence of the enemy and the position assigned to the Twenty-fifth was on the extreme left in advance and we were getting our first taste of active service. January 26th. Our camp was about half a mile from the town, just on the edge of a dense forest and cypress swamp. Last night I went out on picket duty for the first time in Baton Rouge. General Payne warned us that we must look out for the enemy. In the afternoon the officer of the day came running his horse out where we were on picket and ordered us to stand by our arms for there was danger of an attack. Toward night we had a man badly wounded and he was sent to the hospital. During the night there was a great deal of firing upon the out-posts. We certainly thought there was going to be an attack and half the camp was up all night. January 27th. I came in from picket in the morning. We were relieved by the Twenty-sixth Maine. We fired off our rifles at a target and started for camp. We thought sometimes that Louisiana was a very "quare country," as the Irish man said when he got lost in the woods, and ran up against an owl in a tree, and thought it was a man calling to him. The woods were plentifully stocked with game and we could hear most every sound from the hooting of the owls, growling of wild hogs, to the snarl of the wild-cat and cry of the opossum. It was also a strange sight to see the limbs festooned from tree to tree. Some of them were gigantic. The trees were covered with moss or vines that encircled them. Strange as it may seem, we gathered this moss for bedding. I wonder it didn't kill the whole lot of us, but I think the country agreed with me, for I could sleep right on the ground under the magnolia trees with nothing but a log for a pillow, while some of our sentry kept watch. [_January 28, 1913. It is with great sorrow that I sit down to resume this narrative of my army life, for since my last writing I have lost a dear son by death. He died on the morning of January 7th, after a long and painful illness of seventeen weeks, and was laid to rest in Grove Hill cemetery on the afternoon of January 9th. Strange that this affliction should come on the fiftieth anniversary of my hardships in the Civil War, but I thought that I couldn't proceed until I had made mention of this sad trial._]