One bivouac is much like another.  When one is weary, a blanket on the ground is just as comfortable as a bed of down under a slated roof.  If accustomed to lie under lace curtains, a tree or a bush will make an excellent substitute.  “Tired nature’s sweet restorer” comes quickly to an exhausted frame.  Realities of the past, expectations of the future, hopes, sorrows, wishes, regrets—­all are banished as we sink into sweet repose.

At dawn we were in motion.  At daylight the smoke hanging over the enemy’s camp was fully before us.  Sunrise was near at hand when the hostile position was brought to our view.  It lay, as we had anticipated, stretched along the banks of Wilson Creek.

Until our advance drove in the pickets, a thousand yards from their camp, the Rebels had no intimation of our approach.  Many of them were reluctant to believe we were advancing to attack them, and thought the firing upon the pickets was the work of a scouting party.  The opening of our artillery soon undeceived them, a shell being dropped in the middle of their camp.

A Rebel officer afterward told me about our first shell.  When the pickets gave the alarm of our approach, the Rebel commander ordered his forces to “turn out.”  An Arkansas colonel was in bed when the order reached him, and lazily asked, “Is that official?” Before the bearer of the order could answer, our shell tore through the colonel’s tent, and exploded a few yards beyond it.  The officer waited for no explanation, but ejaculated, “That’s official, anyhow,” as he sprang out of his blankets, and arrayed himself in fighting costume.

Before the Rebels could respond to our morning salutation, we heard the booming of Sigel’s cannon on the left.  Colonel Sigel reached the spot assigned him some minutes before we were able to open fire from our position.  It had been stipulated that he should wait for the sound of our guns before making his attack.  His officers said they waited nearly fifteen minutes for our opening shot.  They could look into the Rebel camp in the valley of the stream, a few hundred yards distant.  The cooks were beginning their preparations for breakfast, and gave our men a fine opportunity to learn the process of making Confederate corn-bread and coffee.  Some of the Rebels saw our men, and supposed they were their own forces, who had taken up a new position.  Several walked into our lines, and found themselves prisoners of war.

Previous to that day I had witnessed several skirmishes, but this was my first battle of importance.  Distances seemed much greater than they really were.  I stood by the side of Captain Totten’s battery as it opened the conflict.

“How far are you firing?” I asked.

“About eight hundred yards; not over that,” was the captain’s response.

I should have called it sixteen hundred, had I been called on for an estimate.

Down the valley rose the smoke of Sigel’s guns, about a mile distant, though, apparently, two or three miles away.