me by the order of the commanding general, was completed and the guns placed in position before 2 a. m. Battery Kimball was completed about midnight. Two 20-pounder Parrott guns, under Captain Morris, Ninth Regiment New York Volunteers, and one 3-inch gun of the Fourth Wisconsin Battery, also under his charge, were placed in position. Both batteries were screened by trees and underwood.

At daylight the next morning Captain Beger, cutting away the trees which intercepted his fire, opened on the enemy's battery, firing percussion-shell from one gun, fuse-shell from a second, and case-shot from the third. In a few moments the enemy replied, firing briskly. Several of the 20-pounder shells passed through and through the frail parapet of Battery Morris. As soon as his whole attention was engaged with Battery Morris and the position of his guns ascertained from their fire, the screen was thrown aside from Battery Kimball and Captain Morris opened fire from all his guns, directing his whole fire on one piece of the enemy, and successively on two others, silencing all three in turn, Captain Beger meanwhile keeping up a hot and well-directed fire from his three guns in Battery Morris. At the end of two hours the enemy's fire slackened and became very feeble. In another hour he was entirely silenced.

During the action our sharpshooters, who had been placed on the point and on an island in the marsh to the right, kept up a fire which must have proved very annoying to the enemy's gunners, since it provoked one or two discharges of canister. The following night he withdrew his guns.

The only casualties were 3 drivers of Battery A, Fifth United States Artillery, wounded, 1 mortally. One of the 20-pounder Parrotts threw off its muzzle after firing twelve rounds and was replaced by a 3-inch gun from the Fourth Wisconsin Battery, a section of which had been sent to me and was kept in reserve.

The three days following every nerve was strained to put the river in a thorough state of defense. The military road already completed to Fort Connecticut was extended to Fort Stevens. Batteries and rifle-pits were thrown up on all the exposed points. The troops, as fast as they arrived, were sent into the trenches, and on the 18th the following was the disposition of the troops along the line of the river:

Lieutenant G. B. Easterly, Fourth Wisconsin Battery, at Battery Kimball, with one 20-pounder Parrott and two 3-inch guns; Thirteenth New Hampshire Volunteers, with one company of sharpshooters, holding position next below the mouth of Jericho Creek; Captain Beger, Second Wisconsin Battery, with two guns, in Battery Morris, supported by one company of the Twenty-fifth New Jersey Volunteers; Lieutenant Crabb, with one section of light 12-pounders; Lieutenant Schulz, with one section of 10-pounder Parrotts; the Tenth New Hampshire Volunteers, Ninth Vermont Volunteers, one company of the Twenty-fifth New Jersey Volunteers, and four companies of the Nineteenth Wisconsin Volunteers, under the command of Colonel Donohoe, Tenth New Hampshire Volunteers, holding position of Fort Connecticut, from Broer's Creek to Dr. Council's; Captain Morris, with two 20-pounder Parrotts in Battery Stevens, supported by Colonel Pease, One hundred and seventeenth New York Volunteers; Major Wheelan on the right of Colonel Pease, with four companies of Mounted Rifles, and five gunboats between the mouth of Broer's Creek and a point half a mile below Dr. Council's landing. Gunboats below West Branch; number not known. Two regiments of infantry, the Eighth Connecticut and Nineteenth Wisconsin Volunteers, six companies, and one section of artillery in reserve.