st occasion was sent to Fortress
Monroe, where he, with fifty other prisoners from my command, was
embarked on the transport Maple Leaf for Fort Delaware. Reaching the
capes of Chesapeake at nightfall, the prisoners suddenly attacked and
overpowered the guard, ran the transport near to the beach in Princess
Anne County, Virginia, landed, and made their way to Richmond, whence
they rejoined me in Louisiana. Again taken, Fusilier escaped, while
descending the Teche on a steamer, by springing from the deck to seize
the overhanging branch of a live oak. The guard fired on him, but
darkness and the rapid movement of the steamer were in his favor, and he
got off unhurt.

I have dwelt somewhat on the characters of Mouton and Fusilier, not only
because of their great devotion to the Confederacy, but because there
exists a wide-spread belief that the creole race has become effete and
nerveless. In the annals of time no breed has produced nobler specimens
of manhood than these two; and while descendants of the French colonists
remain on the soil of Louisiana, their names and characters should be
reverenced as are those of Hampden and Sidney in England.

To Berwick's Bay, a hundred and seventy-five miles from Alexandria.
Here, on the eastern shore, was the terminus of the New Orleans and
Opelousas railroad. A deep, navigable arm of the bay, called Bayou
Boeuf, flows east of the station, which is on the island fronting the
bay proper. Some engines and plant had been saved from the general wreck
at New Orleans, and the line was operated from the bay to Lafourche
crossing, thirty miles. The intervening territory constitutes the parish
of Terrebonne, with fertile, cultivated lands along the many bayous, and
low swamps between. From Lafourche crossing to Algiers, opposite New
Orleans, is fifty miles; and, after leaving the higher ground adjacent
to the Lafourche, the line plunges into swamps and marshes, impassable
except on the embankment of the line itself. Midway of the above points,
the Bayou des Allemands, outlet of the large lake of the same name, is
crossed; and here was a Federal post of some two hundred men with two
field guns. On the west bank of the Lafourche, a mile or two above the
railway crossing, and thirty-two miles below Donaldsonville, where the
bayou leaves the Mississippi, lies the town of Thibodeaux, the most
considerable place of this region. Navigable for steamers, whenever the
waters of its parent river are hi