date. I now submit that report, and address it to you, for the reason that the officers in command of the brigade on that day are not now on duty with it.

The brigade was encamped on a prairie, having in its rear a narrow belt of timber, through which the Bayou Bourbeau ran. Our camp faced the west, and about 4 miles in rear of it was the Carrion Crow Bayou, on which the main body of the United States forces were stationed. The land between the belt of timber on the Bourbeau and the Carrion Crow prairie.

The approaches to our position were as follows:

First. By the road leading from Opelousas, which, in its southerly course, struck the right end of our camp. This road ran near the edge of the timber, and on the west side of it, and almost cornering with the front of our camp on the right there was a field stretching to the west, and inclosed with the ordinary ditch and wood fence. Through this field cavalry could not be moved with much rapidity.

Second. By the open prairie in our front. The enemy, approaching us from the direction of Opelousas, could go to the west of the field I have named, and come in on our front.

The Sixtieth Indiana, the Ninety- sixth Ohio, the Eighty- third Ohio, the Sixty- seventh Indiana, and the Twenty- third Wisconsin constituted the infantry force of the brigade, and they were encamped from right to left in the order named. The Seventeenth Ohio Battery formed a part of the brigade, and was in camp with it. Each of the infantry regiments numbered about 200 men.

We had an infantry picket in our front and a cavalry force watching the road from Opelousas and the country adjoining it. What the numbers of the latter may have been I cannot state.

We know that the enemy was in our front, for he had followed us from Opelousas and Barre's Landing, when our forces had returned from those places on the 1st of November, and had commenced skirmishing with our pickets early the next morning. We knew that his cavalry force was about 4,000, for he had displayed it on the prairie in front of the Carrion Crow Bayou on the 15th of October, in an attack on the Nineteenth Army Corps, on which day Brigadier- General Burbridge marched General Cameron's and our brigade from Vermillionville to Carrion Crow as the advance of the Thirteenth Army Corps. But it was not supposed that the enemy had any infantry near our camp.

We were thus situated, with regard to the main body of our force, and thus advised of the strength of the rebel cavalry hovering around our brigade, when the morning of the 3rd of November opened with alarms and skirmishing along the picket lines. The regiments were soon in line of battle, and the battery was ready for work. The enemy, however, retired from our picket lines, and, after the brigade had been under arms some hours, the men were permitted to stack arms and return to their quarters, but were directed to keep on their equipments and be ready to fall in at a moment's notice. After the alarm had subsided, the Eighty- third Ohio Volunteers, with the wagons of the brigade, were sent out on a foraging expedition.

Two paymaster were in camp paying off the troops, and my regiment was engaged in voting for State officers, yet, when the order was again given to "fall in," the line of battle was formed in a few moments. This was about noon.

The four regiments of infantry in the camp and the battery were disposed as follows: The Sixtieth Indiana and four pieces of artillery were