A LUCKY FIND.
While ferrying the army train across the Tennessee river, the flat in charge of Sergeant S. C. Foreman of the Oglethorpes, brought in a box or case containing three hundred pounds of nice dry salted bacon. It was reported to me that they had found it floating down the river and supposed it had been thrown in by the Federal garrison at Florence to prevent its capture by Hood's army. I swallowed the story and some of the meat and had no occasion to question the correctness of the information until Sam Woods told me in '98 that he found it lying in shallow water near the river bank, and George McLaughlin afterwards intimated that it was stolen from the wagon train. Whatever may have been the method by which it came into our possession I remember that it was divided among the members of the company as extra rations. I recall the further fact that my mess secured that afternoon a large wash pot and a supply of corn and boiled up a peck or two of "lye hominy." On the next day we began our march to rejoin the army and for 17 miles, in addition to my gun, bayonet, cartridge box and forty rounds of cartridges, heavy blanket, tent fly and haversack with two day's rations, I carried 6 or 8 pounds of this bacon and a bucket of the hominy. The aggregate weight must have been 50 or 60 pounds, a pretty fair load for a "light weight."