Steamboats were plenty, owing to the interruption of trade, and wagons were wholly lacking; so that my column was accompanied and partly carried by a fleet of stern-wheel steamers.
On Thursday the 11th of July the movement from Point Pleasant began.
An advance-guard was sent out on each side of the river, marching upon the roads which were near its banks.

The few horsemen were divided and sent with them to carry messages, and the boats followed, steaming slowly along in rear of the marching men.

Most of two regiments were carried on the steamers, to save fatigue to the men, who were as yet unused to their work, and many of whom were footsore from their first long march of twenty-five miles to Gallipolis from Hampden station, where they had been obliged to leave the railway.

The arrangement was also a good one in a military point of view, for if an enemy were met on either bank of the stream, the boats could land in a moment and the troops disembark without delay.
Our first day's sail was thirteen miles up the river, and it was the very romance of campaigning.

I took my station on top of the pilot-house of the leading boat, so that I might see over the banks of the stream and across the bottom lands to the high hills which bounded the valley.