March 24th. In the forenoon we worked on our guns and in the afternoon we had inspection and dress-parade.
March 25th. I was detailed to go on picket duty this morning. Lieutenant Gorman was officer of the picket. The night was cool and clear and everything was quiet all along the lines.
March 26th. A beautiful morning with the birds singing merrily. I got into camp about eleven o'clock. We had orders about nine o'clock in the evening to be ready for marching. It was very rainy weather and there was very little done in camp.
March 27th. We had orders to march and all was packing and confusion. I was ordered to help put our tents and baggage aboard the boat, the St. Mary. We had all our things aboard this little craft about five o'clock in the afternoon. At last, after being over a week packing up, waiting for orders, we were on the move. We left Baton Rouge at five o'clock and reached this place at nine, (as luck would have it) in a rain-storm. Lay on the ground under the trees all night.
March 28th. We just received marching orders again. Where we were going to nobody seemed to know. I supposed our destination was Brashear City and Burwick Bay, but beyond that nothing was known. Rumor said, Texas and Red River. We took tents and all our baggage and did not expect again to see Baton Rouge.
Sunday morning, March 29th. Arrived in Donaldsonville about nine o'clock last evening. Slept on the ground all night. In the morning had some hard-tack and coffee. We received a mail. I got several letters, one was from mother. I went to a Catholic meeting. Donaldsonville is an exceedingly pretty place, very old-fashioned, shingled-roofed town. A bayou extends through the center, some three hundred yards wide; it runs to the gulf and is so deep that a frigate lies in it about a mile from where it sets in from the Mississippi. The catalpa and China-bell trees were in full blossom and the pecans were leafing out. There was a Catholic church here that looked like a barn outside but quite pretty inside, as I saw for myself, and thither the people who were mostly French and Spanish, were flocking. We here enjoyed the luxury of seeing ladies, in clean white petticoats, walking the streets. And really we had to laugh, for actually those petticoats were the most home-like things we had seen for some months. "Billy" Wilson's Zouaves, who were in our division, were placed under arrest and had their arms taken from them. They got very drunk coming down on the boat and mutinied.
March 30th. You can't imagine how beautiful the flowers were looking. Cherokee roses, jessamines, jonquils, and a great variety of flowers were in blossom. We lived out under the trees with the rain pattering upon us. We were greatly bothered with vermin, which it is almost impossible to pick off. Campaigning evidently agreed with me, for I had gained several pounds since leaving New York.
April 1st. We were on the march very early. Our brigade went ahead as skirmishers. We went through a very pleasant country. We started about seven o'clock on the morning of April 2nd. Our company was guard of the baggage train. We went through a place called Thibodeaux, a very pretty village. We stopped "a right smart way," from Thibodeaux, as the contrabands used to tell us when we inquired the distance of them. We were there only a short time, when we were crowded on to some freight cars like cattle and transported to Bayou Boeuf, arriving at ten o'clock at night, pretty well fagged out.
We had some awfully hot and fatiguing marches and the boys were very foot-sore. I held out wonderfully; did not so much as raise a sign of a blister, though carrying a rubber blanket, a heavy overcoat, canteen full of water, haversack, with two days' rations in it,—by no means a small load as I found after a few miles' march. My nose and cheeks underwent a skinning operation on our Port Hudson expedition and I felt quite badly when I found that they were again peeling.
April 3rd. We have fixed up our shelter tents, and I helped unload our baggage. The day was pleasant but Bayou Boeuf was a very unpleasant place. A comrade came into our camp from the Twelfth Regiment, C.V. His name was Wells Hubbard of Glastonbury, Conn.