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Updated: July 14, 2025
Many of them had stacked their muskets and were lounging about, some playing cards, others cooking supper, intermingled with the pack-mules and beef cattle. While they were thus utterly unprepared Jackson's gray-clad veterans pushed straight through the forest and rushed fiercely to the attack.
The pack-mules make little or no obstruction in the road, are easily moved to flank or rear in case of manoeuvre of troops, and will be up with the command when the regiment goes into camp.
I selected four good soldiers, with Aaron, Colonel Mason's black servant, and a good outfit of horses and pack-mules, we started by the usually traveled route for Yerba Buena. There Captain Fulsom and two citizens joined our party. The first difficulty was to cross the bay to Saucelito.
A portion of this company employed pack-mules; among the rest were owned twenty-five wheeled vehicles, of which one or two were stout road-wagons, two were carts, and the rest Dearborn carriages, the whole conveying some twenty-five or thirty thousand dollars' worth of merchandise. Colonel Marmaduke, of Missouri, was one of the party.
Only by mounted men, or pack-mules, can the Cordillera be crossed at that point; and of course it did not occur to us that the caravan we were following would attempt it.
The officers and men belonging to the company having the cannon in charge laboured until nine or ten o'clock to bring them down the mountain, but they were finally compelled to leave them. Much of the baggage also remained on the side of the mountain, with the pack-mules and horses conveying them, all efforts to force the animals down being fruitless.
The unfinished condition of the apartments, as well as an abundant expenditure of tact and diplomacy on our part, saved us from other applicants, and we were beginning to flatter ourselves that we should escape this much-dreaded imposition when, late in the afternoon, two young naval officers called, accompanied by orderlies and pack-mules.
Around their camp of tents and pack-mules, peddlers and preachers called together their motley congregations, and the sound of axes clearing the timber was accompanied by fiddling and haranguing, the fighting of dogs, and the coarse tones of religious or business oratory.
Our homes, it is true, are easily destroyed, but they are as easily replaced. March 13. Details from the regiment, with pack-mules, were sent out to the Rappahannock, to carry rations and forage to our pickets. The mule-train looks oddly enough, and yet through these muddy roads it seems to be a necessity. March 14. To-day I am doing regimental guard duty.
The ground is covered with snow, and yet the mud is so deep that it is almost an impossibility to move artillery or supplies. All our forage and rations are brought from Belle Plain on horses and pack-mules, all wheeled vehicles being entirely shipwrecked. The Rebels appear to understand what had been our designs, and know fully the cause of our failure in the expedition.
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