Spending the night here we started early this morning and
moved on to Bayou Mason only seven miles further on. Here we remained during
the balance of the day and for the night. There being no bridge, we had to wade
the bayou to enter the town. Our cavalry routed about one hundred and fifty of
the rebels in a camp on the west bank of the bayou. Most of our way today was
shaded by forest trees. The country here is low and heavily timbered with
cypress and the ground is covered with masses of palm leaf. We noticed
driftwood high up in the trees, some forty or fifty feet, and were told by the
natives that it was carried there last winter when the "Yanks" cut
the levee up at Lake Providence, flooding the whole country. So we were
permitted to see some of the results of our attempt at directing the waters of
the Mississippi.
Source: Alexander G. Downing, Edited by Olynthus B.,
Clark, Downing’s Civil War Diary, p. 137
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