aged and we lost in that short space of time over 300 men
killed, wounded and missing. Colonel Birge had his horse shot from
under him. We had two officers killed and four wounded. It seems almost
a miracle, when I think of it at this time, that so many escaped
without a mark. We started on the march on the morning of April 15,
about nine o'clock pursuing the Rebels very closely through the day. It
was a fine rich country that we passed through; the cane and cotton
fields were looking finely. We went into camp at night near a sugar
mill that had a quantity of sugar in it, to which we helped ourselves.
There was considerable firing through the day.

A more detailed account of the Battle of Irish Bend is here given by
Major Thomas McManus of the Twenty-fifth.

THE BATTLE OF IRISH BEND.

Interesting Reminiscences of Terrible Conflict Between States.

Horrors of War Graphically Told by General Thomas McManus, Who Was
Major of the Twenty-fifth Regiment, Connecticut Volunteers.

By request of Major Thomas McManus I will give a brief account of the
country of lower Louisiana and the battle of Irish Bend, as given by
him in an address at St. Patrick's Church, Collinsville, April 23,
1893, and published in the Hartford Post of the date of April 14, 1913,
being fifty years to a day after that terrible conflict:

Lower Louisiana is a marshy, swampy level stretch of country with an
imperceptible coast line. No one can tell where the solid ground ends
or where the sea begins. Approaching from the Gulf of Mexico, you find
your ship in muddy waters, and by and by you see here and there a speck
of mud itself, emerging above the surface, and barely large enough to
be noticed, and after a while these small islands grow together and you
begin to realize that there are distinctly defined banks each side of
the broad muddy channel through which you are sailing, intersected here
and there by other channels extending in every direction. Twenty miles
perhaps from the place where you first perceived indications of real
mud, the land will be firm enough to sustain a few piles supporting a
fisherman's cabin or pilot's hut. Ten miles further on and you may see
signs of life and cultivation. The river banks have risen to a height
of two or three feet above the level of the water. The whole
southwestern part of the state is a network of bayous or natural
canals, usually narrow and always deep. In summer they are mere
channels of draina