his brigade, his left on the road, and extending as far into the swamp as the ground would permit, and then to sweep forward until he uncovered the gunboats.  The movement was rapid and well executed, and we soon came to some large cotton-fields and could see our gunboats in Deer Creek, occasionally firing a heavy eight-inch gun across the cotton field into the swamp behind.  About that time Major Kirby, of the Eighth Missouri, galloped down the road on a horse he had picked up the night before, and met me.  He explained the situation of affairs, and offered me his horse.  I got on bareback, and rode up the levee, the sailors coming out of their iron-clads and cheering most vociferously as I rode by, and as our men swept forward across the cotton-field in full view.  I soon found Admiral Porter, who was on the deck of one of his iron-clads, with a shield made of the section of a smoke-stack, and I doubt if he was ever more glad to meet a friend than he was to see me.  He explained that he had almost reached the Rolling Fork, when the woods became full of sharp-shooters, who, taking advantage of trees, stumps, and the levee, would shoot down every man that poked his nose outside the protection of their armor; so that he could not handle his clumsy boats in the narrow channel.  The rebels had evidently dispatched a force from Haines’s Bluff up the Sunflower to the Rolling Fork, had anticipated the movement of Admiral Porter’s fleet, and had completely obstructed the channel of the upper part of Deer Creek by felling trees into it, so that further progress in that direction was simply impossible.  It also happened that, at the instant of my arrival, a party of about four hundred rebels, armed and supplied with axes, had passed around the fleet and had got below it, intending in like manner to block up the channel by the felling of trees, so as to cut off retreat.  This was the force we had struck so opportunely at the time before described.  I inquired of Admiral Porter what he proposed to do, and he said he wanted to get out of that scrape as quickly as possible.  He was actually working back when I met him, and, as we then had a sufficient force to cover his movement completely, he continued to back down Deer Creek.  He informed me at one time things looked so critical that he had made up his mind to blow up the gunboats, and to escape with his men through the swamp to the Mississippi River.  There being no longer any sharp-shooters to bother the sailors, they made good progress; still, it took three full days for the fleet to back out of Deer Creek into Black Bayou, at Hill’s plantation, whence Admiral Porter proceeded to his post at the month of the Yazoo, leaving Captain Owen in command of the fleet.  I reported the facts to General Grant, who was sadly disappointed at the failure of the fleet to get through to the Yazoo above Haines’s Bluff, and ordered us all to resume our camps at Young’s Point.  We accordingly steamed down, and regained our camps on the 27th.  As this expedition up Deer Creek was but one of many efforts to secure a footing from which to operate against Vicksburg, I add the report of Brigadier-General Giles A. Smith, who was the first to reach the fleet: