ohn's,--to drop
anchor before the enemy's door some morning at daybreak, without his
having dreamed of our approach.

Since a raid made by Colonel Montgomery up the Combahee, two months
before, the vigilance of the Rebels had increased. But we had
information that upon the South Edisto, or Pon-Pon River, the rice
plantations were still being actively worked by a large number of
negroes, in reliance on obstructions placed at the mouth of that narrow
stream, where it joins the main river, some twenty miles from the coast.
This point was known to be further protected by a battery of unknown
strength, at Wiltown Bluff, a commanding and defensible situation. The
obstructions consisted of a row of strong wooden piles across the river;
but we convinced ourselves that these must now be much decayed, and that
Captain Trowbridge, an excellent engineer officer, could remove them
by the proper apparatus. Our proposition was to man the John Adams, an
armed ferry-boat, which had before done us much service,--and which has
now reverted to the pursuits of peace, it is said, on the East Boston
line,--to ascend in this to Wiltown Bluff, silence the battery, and
clear a passage through the obstructions. Leaving the John Adams to
protect this point, we could then ascend the smaller stream with two
light-draft boats, and perhaps burn the bridge, which was ten miles
higher, before the enemy could bring sufficient force to make our
position at Wiltown Bluff untenable.

The expedition was organized essentially upon this plan. The smaller
boats were the Enoch Dean,--a river steamboat, which carried a ten-pound
Parrott gun, and a small howitzer,--and a little mosquito of a tug, the
Governor Milton, upon which, with the greatest difficulty, we found
room for two twelve-pound Armstrong guns, with their gunners, forming
a section of the First Connecticut Battery, under Lieutenant Clinton,
aided by a squad from my own regiment, under Captain James. The John
Adams carried, I if I remember rightly, two Parrott guns (of twenty and
ten | pounds calibre) and a howitzer or two. The whole force of men did
not exceed two hundred and fifty.

We left Beaufort, S. C., on the afternoon of July 9th, 1863. In former
narrations I have sufficiently described the charm of a moonlight ascent
into a hostile country, upon an unknown stream, the dark and silent
banks, the rippling water, the wail of the reed-birds, the anxious
watch, the breathless listening, the vei