About eight o’clock we started from the point of debarkation, marching by the flank.  After moving in this way for a mile or a mile and a half, I halted where there was marshy ground covered with a heavy growth of timber in our front, and deployed a large part of my force as skirmishers.  By this time the enemy discovered that we were moving upon Belmont and sent out troops to meet us.  Soon after we had started in line, his skirmishers were encountered and fighting commenced.  This continued, growing fiercer and fiercer, for about four hours, the enemy being forced back gradually until he was driven into his camp.  Early in this engagement my horse was shot under me, but I got another from one of my staff and kept well up with the advance until the river was reached.

The officers and men engaged at Belmont were then under fire for the first time.  Veterans could not have behaved better than they did up to the moment of reaching the rebel camp.  At this point they became demoralized from their victory and failed to reap its full reward.  The enemy had been followed so closely that when he reached the clear ground on which his camp was pitched he beat a hasty retreat over the river bank, which protected him from our shots and from view.  This precipitate retreat at the last moment enabled the National forces to pick their way without hinderance through the abatis—­the only artificial defence the enemy had.  The moment the camp was reached our men laid down their arms and commenced rummaging the tents to pick up trophies.  Some of the higher officers were little better than the privates.  They galloped about from one cluster of men to another and at every halt delivered a short eulogy upon the Union cause and the achievements of the command.

All this time the troops we had been engaged with for four hours, lay crouched under cover of the river bank, ready to come up and surrender if summoned to do so; but finding that they were not pursued, they worked their way up the river and came up on the bank between us and our transports.  I saw at the same time two steamers coming from the Columbus side towards the west shore, above us, black—­or gray—­with soldiers from boiler-deck to roof.  Some of my men were engaged in firing from captured guns at empty steamers down the river, out of range, cheering at every shot.  I tried to get them to turn their guns upon the loaded steamers above and not so far away.  My efforts were in vain.  At last I directed my staff officers to set fire to the camps.  This drew the fire of the enemy’s guns located on the heights of Columbus.  They had abstained from firing before, probably because they were afraid of hitting their own men; or they may have supposed, until the camp was on fire, that it was still in the possession of their friends.  About this time, too, the men we had driven over the bank were seen in line up the river between us and our transports.  The alarm “surrounded”