April 3, 1864.
Sunday. The leak was stopped and the water pumped out, and at 4 A. M. we took our place in the line and went on. An idea of the number of boats is had from the fact that they had been passing all the time this was going on, and the end was not in sight when we started again.
At noon we stopped for wood, and to relieve the neighbors of their surplus chickens. The western men are all right on a chicken raid, for I don't think one escaped them. At 6 P. M. we were under way again, but the Jennie ran onto a sand bar soon after and it took a lot of puffing and blowing to get loose from it, and to catch up and take our proper distance again. This makes thirty out of the last thirty-eight days I have been afloat. One in New Orleans, four at Port Hudson, and three at Alexandria, is all the time I have been ashore. At that rate I will soon be a sailor.