is further advantage, that there
are few points from which their position and numbers can be easily
made out.

After a short but spirited engagement Mouton's force was compelled
to retreat. Weitzel pursued for about four miles.

Mouton then called in his outlying detachments, including the La
Fourche regiment, 500 strong, 300 men of the 33d Louisiana, and
the regiments of Saint Charles and St. John Baptist, burned the
railway station of Terre Bonne and the bridges at Thibodeaux, La
Fourche Crossing, Terre Bonne, Des Allemands, and Bayou Boeuf, and
evacuated the district. By the 30th, every thing was safely across
Berwick Bay. For this escape, he was indebted to an opportune gale
that compelled Buchanan's gunboats to lie to in Caillou Bay on
their way to Berwick Bay, to cut off the retreat. Mouton's report
accounts for 5 killed, 8 wounded, and 186 missing; in all 199.
Among the killed was Colonel G. P. McPheeters of the Crescent
regiment.

Weitzel followed to Thibodeaux, and went into camp beyond the town.
He claims to have taken 208 prisoners and one gun, and states his
own losses as 18 killed, and 74 wounded, agreeing with the nominal
lists, which also contain the names of 5 missing, thus bringing
the total casualties to 97.

Arriving off Brashear a day too late, Buchanan was partly consoled
by capturing the Confederate gunboat _Seger_. On the 4th and 5th
of November he made a reconnoissance fourteen miles up the Teche
with his own boat, the _Calhoun_, and the _Estrella, Kinsman, Saint
Mary's_, and _Diana_, and meeting a portion of Mouton's forces and
the Confederate gunboat _J. A. Cotton_, received and inflicted some
damage and slight losses, yet with no material result.

Simultaneously with Weitzel's movement on La Fourche, Butler pushed
the 8th Vermont and the newly organized 1st Louisiana Native Guards
forward from Algiers along the Opelousas Railway, to act in
conjunction with Weitzel and to open the railway as they advanced.
Weitzel had already turned the enemy out of his position, but the
task committed to Thomas was slow and hard, for all the bridges
and many culverts had to be rebuilt, and from long disuse of the
line the rank grass, that in Louisiana springs up so freely in
every untrodden spot above water, had grown so tall and thick and
strongly matted that the troops had to pull it up by the roots
before the locomotive could pass.

So ended operations in Louisiana for the year. Until the fol