We walked over this floating bridge, and soon found ourselves on the Tennessee side of Tennessee river.
In driving a great herd of cattle across the pontoon, the front one got stubborn, and the others, crowding up all in one bulk, broke the line that held the pontoon, and drowned many of the drove.

We had beef for supper that night.
EN ROUTE FOR COLUMBIA "And nightly we pitch our moving tent A day's march nearer home." How every pulse did beat and leap, and how every heart did throb with emotions of joy, which seemed nearly akin to heaven, when we received the glad intelligence of our onward march toward the land of promise, and of our loved ones.

The cold November winds coming off the mountains of the northwest were blowing right in our faces, and nearly cutting us in two.
We were inured to privations and hardships; had been upon every march, in every battle, in every skirmish, in every advance, in every retreat, in every victory, in every defeat.

We had laid under the burning heat of a tropical sun; had made the cold, frozen earth our bed, with no covering save the blue canopy of heaven; had braved dangers, had breasted floods; had seen our comrades slain upon our right and our left hand; had heard guns that carried death in their missiles; had heard the shouts of the charge; had seen the enemy in full retreat and flying in every direction; had heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded and dying; had seen the blood of our countrymen dyeing the earth and enriching the soil; had been hungry when there was nothing to eat; had been in rags and tatters.
We had marked the frozen earth with bloody and unshod feet; had been elated with victory and crushed by defeat; had seen and felt the pleasure of the life of a soldier, and had drank the cup to its dregs.

Yes, we had seen it all, and had shared in its hopes and its fears; its love and its hate; its good and its bad; its virtue and its vice; its glories and its shame.