Leaving the John Adams to protect this point, we could then ascend the smaller stream with two light-draft boats, and perhaps burn the bridge, which was ten miles higher, before the enemy could bring sufficient force to make our position at Wiltown Bluff untenable.
The expedition was organized essentially upon this plan.

The smaller boats were the Enoch Dean,--a river steamboat, which carried a ten-pound Parrott gun, and a small howitzer,--and a little mosquito of a tug, the Governor Milton, upon which, with the greatest difficulty, we found room for two twelve-pound Armstrong guns, with their gunners, forming a section of the First Connecticut Battery, under Lieutenant Clinton, aided by a squad from my own regiment, under Captain James.

The John Adams carried, I if I remember rightly, two Parrott guns (of twenty and ten | pounds calibre) and a howitzer or two.

The whole force of men did not exceed two hundred and fifty.
We left Beaufort, S.C., on the afternoon of July 9th, 1863.

In former narrations I have sufficiently described the charm of a moonlight ascent into a hostile country, upon an unknown stream, the dark and silent banks, the rippling water, the wail of the reed-birds, the anxious watch, the breathless listening, the veiled lights, the whispered orders.