but so long as the direction
of the future operations remained uncertain, it was necessary to
keep a firm hold of the communications by the Teche. Accordingly,
the 175th New York took post at Franklin and the 22d Maine at New
Iberia.

On the 22d of April the 162d New York, under Blanchard, with a
section of the 1st Maine battery and one troop of the 2d Rhode
Island cavalry, marched to Barre's Landing, seized the position,
and captured the little steamboat _Ellen_, the last of the Teche
fleet.

On the 23d of April the little _Cornie_ arrived at Barre's Landing
from the depot at Brashear, and the next day the first wagon-train
came into camp laden with the supplies now sadly needed. At sight
of the white-covered wagons winding over the plain, the men gave
way to those demonstrations of delight so familiar to all who have
ever seen soldiers rejoice. For fifteen days they had been subsisting
upon an uncertain issue of hard bread, coffee, and salt, eked out
by levies, more or less irregular, upon the countryside. They were
sick of chickens and cornbread, and fairly loathed the very sight,
to say nothing of the smell, of fresh-killed beef; tough at best,
even in the heart of the tenderloin, the flesh had to be eaten with
the odor and the warmth of the blood still in it, under penalty of
finding it fly-blown before the next meal. Thus it was that, as
Paine relates in his Diary, the men now "howled for salt pork and
hard tack."

Although the army had now a double line of communication with its base,
yet the long haul from New Iberia and the scarcity of light-draught
steamboats adapted to the navigation of the narrow and tortuous bayous
made the task of supplying even the urgent wants of the troops
both tedious and difficult. The herds near Opelousas were fast
disappearing under the ravages of the foragers, authorized and
unauthorized, yet had it not been for the beef obtained from
this source and for the abundant grass of the prairie men and horses
must soon have suffered greatly.

On the 24th of April, Banks reviewed his army in the open plain,
near Opelousas. The troops, not as yet inured to the long and hard
marches, were indeed greatly diminished in numbers by the unaccustomed
toil and exposure, as well as by the casualties of battle and the
enervating effects of the climate, yet they presented a fine
appearance, and were in the best of spirits.

On learning of Cooke's success at Butte-a-la-Rose, Banks detach