The trains were unloading wherever they happened
to be, no attention whatever being paid to the possible position of
the transport on which the soldiers were to go. Colonel Wood and I
jumped off and started on a hunt, which soon convinced us that we had
our work cut out if we were to get a transport at all. From the
highest General down, nobody could tell us where to go to find out
what transport we were to have. At last we were informed that we were
to hunt up the depot quartermaster, Colonel Humphrey. We found his
office, where his assistant informed us that he didn't know where the
Colonel was, but believed him to be asleep upon one of the transports.
This seemed odd at such a time; but so many of the methods in vogue
were odd, that we were quite prepared to accept it as a fact. However,
it proved not to be such; but for an hour Colonel Humphrey might just
as well have been asleep, as nobody knew where he was and nobody could
find him, and the quay was crammed with some ten thousand men, most of
whom were working at cross purposes.

At last, however, after over an hour's industrious and rapid search
through this swarming ant-heap of humanity, Wood and I, who had
separated, found Colonel Humphrey at nearly the same time and were
allotted a transport--the Yucatan. She was out in midstream, so Wood
seized a stray launch and boarded her. At the same time I happened to
find out that she had previously been allotted to two other regiments
--the Second Regular Infantry and the Seventy-first New York
Volunteers, which latter regiment alone contained more men than could
be put aboard her. Accordingly, I ran at full speed to our train; and
leaving a strong guard with the baggage, I double-quicked the rest of
the regiment up to the boat, just in time to board her as she came
into the quay, and then to hold her against the Second Regulars and
the Seventy-first, who had arrived a little too late, being a shade
less ready than we were in the matter of individual initiative. There
was a good deal of expostulation, but we had possession; and as the
ship could not contain half of the men who had been told to go aboard
her, the Seventy-first went away, as did all but four companies of the
Second. These latter we took aboard. Meanwhile a General had caused
our train to be unloaded at the end of the quay farthest from where
the ship was; and the hungry, tired men spent most of the day in the
labor of bringing down their baggage and the