We made our first considerable halt early in May, at Batesville, on the White River,--a lovely, rose-grown village, carrying, in the neatly kept home of its New England secessionists, evidence that they remembered their native land, where, in their day, before the age of railroads, the "village" flourished in all its freshness and simplicity. It had now acquired the picturesque dilapidation, in the manner of fences and gates and defective window-panes, that marked the Southern domicile during the war. Ruby had strained himself quite seriously during the march, and had been left to come on slowly with the quartermaster's train. This left me quite free for the social life, such as it was, to which we--the only available men that had been seen there since Price gathered his forces at Springfield--were welcomed with a reserved cordiality. Our facilities for forming a correct opinion of society were not especially good, but I fancied I should have passed my time to as good advantage in the saddle. We soon left for an active expedition in the direction of Little Rock, of which it is only necessary to say, here, that it lasted about a month, and brought the writer acquainted with some very unsatisfactory horses,--a fact which heightened his pleasure, on striking the White River bottom again, at finding that Ruby had been brought over the ferry to meet him. Tired as I was, I took a glorious brisk trot through the Canebrake Road, with a couple of leaps over fallen trees, that revived the old emotions and made a man of me again. While we lay at Batesville we were unusually active in the matter of drill and reorganization; and this, with our engagements in the town, kept us too busy for much recreation; but Ludlow and I managed to work in a daily swim in the White River, with old saddles on our horses, and scant clothing on our persons. Talk of aquatic sports! there is no royal bath without a plucky horse to assist; and a swim across the swift current at Batesville, with a horse like Ruby snorting and straining at every stroke, belittled even the leaping at Lebanon. From Batesville we commenced our memorable march to join the fleet that had just passed Memphis, following down the left bank of the river to Augusta, and then striking across the cotton country to Helena,--a march on which we enjoyed the rarest picturesqueness of plantation life, and suffered enough from heat and hunger and thirst, and stifling, golden dust to more than pay for it.