Wing of the army; to cross the river and join my corps (which had left Savannah by water) at or near Hickory Hill, S. C. In compliance with these instructions, on the 27th of January I pushed one brigade out in the direction of Sister's Ferry to repair the road, and on the day following broke camp at 7 a. m., and with the remainder of my command moved upon the Sister's Ferry road to Keller's plantation, a distance of twenty miles, uniting my command en route. Taking up my line of mach from this point I moved directly for Sister's Ferry, near which place I arrived on the 30th instant, and reported to Major-General Slocum, from whom I ascertained that it would be utterly impossible to move farther for several days, owing to the swamps on the opposite side of the river being buried by water for several miles out, and in many places not fordable. Here I remained until the 4th of February, furnishing in the meantime heavy details to be sent across the river to corduroy the roads as fast as the water receded sufficiently to enable the men to work.

On the 31st of January I received instructions from corps headquarters to hasten forward with my command as rapidly as possible to Hickory Hill, where corps headquarters would be established on the 1st of February, the army being then in motion from Pocotaligo. On the evening of the 4th instant I moved my command across the Savannah River, following General Geary's division, of the Twentieth Corps, and bivouacked during the night on its opposite bank. At daybreak on the 5th instant I threw forward three regiments to repair the road through Black Swamp, and at 3 p. m., with twenty-two days' rations of hard bread and eighteen to sugar and coffee, and carrying four days' rations on the person, I again took up my line of march, and pushing across the dense swamp just referred to (being three miles wide), moved via Robertsville to the right, crossing the Lawtonville and Lawtonville and Gillisonville roads and Coosawhatchie Swamp, making Hickory Hill at dark on the evening of the 7th of February. At this point I ascertained that the corps had passed but a few days before, and at once dispatched a staff officer to you to report my progress and the roads which I should probably traverse in continuing my march. I would here add that I left the line of march of the Left Wing at the junction of the Sister's Ferry and Lawtonville roads, leaving that column to the left and continuing directly forward on what the citizens designated as the Rock Spring road, bearing well to the left after leaving Johns' Pen Branch. Before leaving Hickory Hill I was joined by the Ninth Illinois Mounted Infantry and its train of forty wagons on their way back from Pocotaligo, where they had been with wounded men of their corps. At daybreak on the 8th I continued my march to the right, upon the Sister's Ferry road, crossing Whippy Swamp and Great Salkehatchie at Rivers' Bridge, thence across the Little Salkehatchie River and to the left upon the Holman's Bridge road to Lee's plantation, near Graham's Turnout, on the South Carolina Railroad, where I arrived on the evening of the 10th of February, having made a rapid march during that instant of twenty-two miles, and placed my command in bivouac, being only four miles from headquarters of the corps, with which I had opened communication during the day. Up to this time my command had been compelled to contend with the most inclement weather and roads, which under other circumstances would have bee looked upon as almost impassable. The entire division was, as I may say, organized into a temporary pioneer corps (my pioneer organization being absent with the Seventeenth Army Corps), the men marching for miles with fence rails upon their

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