he other hand, on the afternoon of the second day's
march, I happened to notice by the side of the road an enormous
rattlesnake, which evidently had been killed by some soldier only a
short time before we passed. It seemingly was between five and six feet
long, and the middle of its body appeared to be as thick as a man's
thigh. Its rattles had been removed, presumably as a trophy. It was
certainly a giant among rattlesnakes, and doubtless was an "old-timer."

On the evening of June 7th, about sundown, we arrived at Haines' Bluff
on the Yazoo river, and there went into camp. This point was about
twelve miles north of Vicksburg, and had been strongly fortified by the
Confederates, but Grant's movements had compelled them to abandon their
works without a battle. There had been a large number of the
Confederates camped there, and the ground was littered with the trash
and rubbish that accumulates in quarters. And our friends in gray had
left some things in these old camps which ere long we all fervently
wished they had taken with them, namely, a most plentiful quantity of
the insect known as "Pediculus vestimenti," which forthwith assailed us
as voraciously as if they had been on quarter rations, or less, ever
since the beginning of the war.

On June 16th we left Haines' Bluff, and marched about two miles down
the Yazoo river to Snyder's Bluff, where we went into camp. Our duties
here, as they had been at Haines', were standing picket, and
constructing fortifications. We had the usual dress parade at sunset,
but the drills were abandoned; we had more important work to do.
General Joe Johnston, the Confederate commander outside of Vicksburg,
was at Jackson, Mississippi, or in that immediate vicinity, and was
collecting a force to move on Grant's rear, in order to compel him to
raise the siege. Grant thought that if Johnston attacked, it would be
from the northeast, so he established a line of defense extending
southeast, from Haines' Bluff on the north to Black river on the south,
and placed Gen. Sherman in command of this line. As Grant has said
somewhere in his Memoirs, the country in this part of Mississippi
"stands on edge." That is to say, it consists largely of a succession
of high ridges with sharp, narrow summits. Along this line of defense,
the general course of these ridges was such that they were admirably
adapted for defensive purposes. We went to work on the ridges with
spades and mattocks, and constructed the