self and his thirty-five men in a hard gallop to- | provided for the rebel army, were committed to ward Pearl River; and the three thousand scared rebels in the town of Enterprise were not called upon for a more definite reply to the demand for surrender.

In the mean time the Sixth Illinois and the remainder of the Seventh had made, during the day of the 22d and the following night, the most extraordinary and difficult march of the whole raid. Having been delayed in the morning by detailing a battalion to destroy a large,rebel shoe manufactory a little distance out from Starkville, where a large quantity of leather and several thousand pairs of shoes and hats, which had been

the flames, and having captured a rebel quartermaster, who was out from Port Hudson on a foraging expedition, they found themselves at sundown hemmed in by the treacherous swamps and creeks of the Okanoxubee River, about seven miles south of the village of Louisville.

The spring rains had swollen and overflowed every stream. The marshes were swamps, and swamps were ponds. The roads, of which they were utterly ignorant, were like rivers, the water being in many places three or four feet in depth. They had already marched this day fifty miles, and now jaded men and jaded beasts were

SAVING THE BRIDGE OVER PEARL RIVER.

confronted by miles of these raging floods, unlit by a beam of day and unmarked by a beacon post or guide. Twenty horses were drowned, but not a man was lost. Steadily through the darkness they pressed on, until, at one o'clock in the morning of the 23d, they were absolutely forced to halt for a few hours of rest. At seven o'clock, however, each man was again in his saddle, hurrying forward for his life toward the Pearl River bridge. The river was too high to be forded. The bridge was their only means of crossing. Rebel scouts were known to have gone before them, and if they had succeeded in giving warning in time to secure the destruction of the bridge, the expedition was hopelessly cut off. It was a fearful moment as they neared the stream late in the afternoon. Colonel Prime, with the Illinois Seventh, was in the advance. Every horse was urged to the top of his speed. They rode as if in a deadly charge on a battle front. The roar of swollen waters reached their cars, and with it other sounds of crashing timbers but too significant. They redoubled their speed, and dashed down the river bank. A small party of rebel pickets were working with superhuman energy, stripping up the planks of the bridge floor, and hurling them into the wa-his inquiry if they wished to cross, the Colonel ters below.

the Pearl River again, now a more formidable barrier than when sixty miles nearer its source they had crossed it on a slender bridge. It was Colonel Grierson's plan to cross at the Georgetown ferry. Here again the river held in its silent grasp the fate of the entire command. Colonel Prime, as before, pressed forward in the advance, but this time with only two hundred. picked men. He left camp, as we have above mentioned, at two o'clock in the morning, and riding thirteen miles before the early summer daylight, reached the river shore only to find the ferry-boat moored on the other side. Here was a dilemma of dangers. The river must be crossed. But to call upon a rebel ferry-man for the service was too hazardous. A powerful trooper spurred his horse into the rushing current and endeavored to swim over to the boat. But man and beast were swept quickly down the stream and barely escaped with life.

Ten minutes later and all would have been lost. But for hours and days back minutes of grace had been, by God's care, accumulating for their rescue. It is a solemn thought, and one which those brave troops did not forget to hold in devout recognition, that at any time in the whole course of their six days' marchings, haltings, encampings, and startings, a few minutes' tardiness on the part of a commander, a few moments' delay with a restive horse, a few minutes' lingering on a tedious ascent, would have brought them too late to the Pearl River bridge, and have made to all of them the difference between life and death.

A short skirmish disposed of the rebel pickets, and the raiders rode on-on into the night, and through the night, and through the next day, without halting, except at the town of Decatur, where they captured and paroled seventyfive prisoners, destroyed two warehouses full of commissary stores, four car-loads of ammunition, burned the railroad bridges and trestlework, and captured two trains of cars and two locomotives. Eighty miles they had marched on the 23d and 24th, and this, too, after the tremendous exertions of the passage through the swamps on the 22d. On the 25th three men were found to be too much prostrated to go farther. With sad partings their comrades left them to an uncertain fate on the plantation of Mr. Dore, near Raleigh. Indeed the whole command were so utterly exhausted that, in spite of the imminence of their danger, they accomplished but twenty miles on the 25th. The next day, Sunday the 26th, they pushed on fortyone miles in a drenching rain. At one o'clock on the morning of Monday, through darkness ⚫ and mud, they resumed their march, and reached

While the whole band were sitting silently upon their horses, dismayed and baffled, the lazy owner of the boat came strolling down to the shore, and in merciful ignorance of uniforms, supposed that he was addressing the First Regiment of Alabama Cavalry, just from Mobile. To

replied, with admirably feigned nonchalance, in the genuine twang of Southern poor whites:

"Wa'al yes, some of us do want to cross. But it seems harder to wake up your nigger ferry-man than to catch the cursed conscripts."

The gulled proprietor was instantly alive with zeal to serve his friends. He roused the sleeping ferry-man, placed his boat at the disposal of the regiment, and hospitably breakfasted the Colone. Half an hour after, as the troops were hurrying toward Hazlehurst, they met and captured the rebel courier riding post-haste to the ferry, to give the warning which would have prevented their escape. At Hazlehurst they cut the telegraph wires, and captured and destroyed a large number of cars loaded with ammunition, shells, and army stores of all kinds. Here Captain Forbes, who, it will be remembered, had, with thirty-five men, undertaken the mission to Macon, from near Starkville, rejoined his regiment just after they had crossed Pearl River. They had successfully followed the trail of the raiders, and were all safe.

On the night of the 27th our heroes encamped at Gallatin. Here they captured a 32-pounder rifled Parrott gun and fourteen hundred pounds of powder, which were en route to Grand Gulf. They had traveled this day thirty-seven miles The next day, Tuesday the 28th, they were again early on the march. Four companies were detailed, under Captain Trafton, to make a circuit through Bahala to destroy the railroad dépôt and the transportation there. This little band left the camp at sunrise, and having successfully performed their mission, rejoined their comrades at night, having performed during the day a journey of thirty miles more than the rest of the command. During the day they had sev eral skirmishes, and, without any loss to them