by Capt. T. T. Brand, "for three years, unless sooner discharged." On the afternoon of the same day, company C, Capt. John Green, was also mustered in by the same officer, followed on the 12th of the same month by company D, Capt. Alvah Nash, on the 16th by company A, Capt. S. Stevens, on the 18th by company E, Capt. Frank A. Cole, on the 19th by company F, Capt. E. Burnett, on the 3d of May by company G, Capt. W. W. Heller, and company H, Capt. Frank T. Hobbs, on the 5th of May by company K, Capt. A. A. Burnett, and on the 6th of the same month by company I, Capt. Geo. A. Beck.
On the 28th of April, companies A, B, C, D, E, and F left Camp Randall, under command of Major Kershaw, and proceeded to Washington, where they arrived on the 1st of May, and were encamped on Arlington Heights, in the neighborhood of the Long Bridge. Colonel Harriman accompanied the regiment as far as Chicago, from which place he returned to Madison, to superintend the organization of the four remaining companies. The journey was accomplished in safety and without the occurrence of any noteworthy incident. On the 17th, the detachment was joined by companies H and I, and arms and accoutrements being at once issued to the men, the instruction of the regiment in the manual and battalion drill was at once proceeded with, with vigor. Lieut. Col. Doolittle, having joined the regiment at Chicago, assumed the command then and there, taking charge of the disciplining and instructing of the eight companies, of which it was then composed.
On the 28th of May, orders were received for the regiment to prepare for the field, and to be ready to march by the next morning. The comfortable "wedge" and "wall" tents in which men and officers had been luxuriating and gaining their first experience of camp life were, accordingly, turned in to the Regimental Quartermaster, and the fragmentary and disjointed dwellings, known to the polite world as shelter tents, or tentes d'abri, but known amongst soldiers as pup tents, were issued in their stead. All extra baggage was disposed of, and the comforts of civilized life bid adieu to, "for three years unless sooner discharged."
At daylight, on the morning of the 29th, we took up our line of march for Alexandria, thus entering on our first campaign. The morning was sunny and clear, and as the sun gained power, became unpleasantly warm, and a source of no little distress to men unused to marching and the encumbrance of gun, knapsack and accoutrements, as ours were. About ten o'clock, we arrived in the suburbs of Alexandria, where we rested for an hour or two, awaiting orders as to our further disposition.
The transports on which we were to embark for White House Landing, on the Pamunkey River, the then base of supplies of the Army of Virginia, had arrived the night previous and were then engaged in taking on board a large herd of cattle, which was to form part of their live freight, and we were accordingly ordered into camp on the banks of the river where we remained till 5 o'clock on the afternoon of the 30th. The work of embarking the troops was then commenced, and our Regiment was divided into three divisions, which were distributed as follows: Companies B and E were assigned to the propeller S. Cloud, under command of Capt. Eden, of company B; the propeller Andrew Harder carried companies A, C, D and F, under command of Lieut. Col. Doolittle, while Capt. Hobbs took command of the remainder of the detachment on board of the Charles Osgood.
With the exception of the Harder's grounding on a sand bank just above Mt. Vernon, and nearly involving the Cloud, which came to her assistance, in a like catastrophe, no incident, unpleasant or otherwise, occurred to mar the tranquility of our passage down the Potomac.
We made a pleasant run down Chesapeake Bay, and the morning of the second of June found us, after a close escape from grounding on York Spit—a long narrow point of sand off the mouth of York River—preparing to anchor off Yorktown to wait for a pilot to conduct us up the intricate navigation of the York and Pamunkey Rivers. The original intention had been for us to follow up the Harder, the only vessel in the squadron that carried a government pilot, but owing to her neglecting to display a proper signal, during the night, we had lost sight of her and were consequently left to our own resources.
Our preparations for anchoring were yet in course of completion when the pilot was seen, coming out of Yorktown, and the squadron was again headed up the York River. About noon we passed West Point, an insignificant collection of small dwellings, situated on a long point of land between the York and Pamunkey rivers, and just at their junction. From this point to White House Landing the Pamunkey is, perhaps, as crooked a river as can be found in the United States. The channel, however, is straight and deep, running between low, flat marshes occasionally relieved with high, steep banks and well wooded bluffs, capital points for guerrilla operations.
Rumors were rife as to the exploits of these gentry, in this neighborhood, and the several divisions of the detachment received orders to load, many of them then performing that operation for the first time. The size of our squadron, however, and the presence of several "tin-clads" and "double enders," those "restless wanderers of the deeps" and shallows, tended no doubt to awe the bushwhackers and keep them on their best behavior.
At any rate the Thirty-Seventh passed along, unmolested and unmolesting, except when an insubordinate recruit would insist on trying the range of Springfield or (contraband) Colt on sundry and divers vagabond members of the porcine tribe, that seemed to lead an aimless and unsatisfactory life, on the banks of the Pamunkey. And so the long summer's day passed away, with the hot perpendicular rays of the sun shining down on our bare decks, unchecked by awning or shelter of any kind, frying the pitch out of the deck seams and reducing the tar in the rigging to the consistency of molasses and leaving about as pleasant an impression on the incautious hands of those who ventured to touch strand or stay. But "all things come to an end," says the wise man, and so even will a long hot summer day, if it is passed on board a crowded transport, with a scarcity of standing, sitting or lying room, a still greater scarcity of drinkable water, and an utter absence of anything at all approaching to comfort.
About 5 P. M., a sudden turn in the river brings us in sight of the chimneys of what once was the White House, from which the landing, which is for the present to be our destination, takes its name. A few more throbbing, restless pulsations of our propeller's wheel, and its action grows fainter and slower as, amidst a crowd of steamers, propellers, tug-boats, schooners, barges, scows, skiffs, and all the crowd of craft incident to a base of supplies, we work our way up to the landing. Again a few more revolutions of the wheel, a jar and a crash accompanied by a few nautical expletives, and we grind alongside of a sutler's barge, blundering down stream, without any apparent directing power or any definite object in view; till at length one of the never-resting, spiteful looking, ever-watchful tug-boats darts out from some labyrinth of hulls, pounces on it and drags it away, awkward and clumsy and apparently remonstrating and resisting to the last, into its proper and designated mooring place. Then a sudden cessation of the, to all appearance, endless jar and throb of the screw, a tangled web of heaving-lines flying through the air, a deafening roar as the pent up steam raises the valve and comes tumbling out at the escape pipe and eddies and whirls about as if for pure joy at its liberation from restraint; a few more double-shotted nautical expletives, a vast amount of veering and hauling on heavy hawsers and the transports are made fast and our voyage ended.
But, if the confusion on the river was great, that on the shore was certainly, to all appearances, much greater. Mule drivers, addressing their jaded teams by every soothing and endearing epithet in the well stocked vocabulary of their class, and the mules replying in their scarcely less intelligible, and much less profane, dialect; long wagon trains, coming and going in every direction; colored laborers, rolling barrels on to every bodies' toes, their own included, and becoming the patient recipients of remarks objurgatory of their eyes and limbs, therefor. Long lines of stretchers loaded with wounded being carried on board two large hospital steamers, loading for Washington; ambulances arriving from the front, with fresh cases; orderlies, hot and dusty, riding, walking, or running in every direction; clouds of dust and smoke, from camp fires and steamboats; shouting, braying, swearing, yelling, (from the mules) whistling from the steamboats, combined altogether to form a scene of noise and confusion, to which the grand finale at the tower of Babel was, by comparison, nothing but a quiet assemblage of sober and well behaved mechanics. Threading our way, with no little difficulty, through this motley assemblage, we at length gained a quiet and comparatively secluded spot where we were, much to our relief, ordered to camp; and this we, nothing loth, proceeded at once to do.
Here