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Far behind now lay civilian Pompey, and Marbache shared by soldiers and civilians. B was distinctly a village of the soldiery. The little hamlet, now the junction where the wagon-trains supplying the soldiery meet the great artery of the railroad, was built on the banks of a canal above the river.

Singly and in companies they went, ever toward the promised land. Wagon-trains of merchandise from the eastern markets toiled patiently along the way.

The wagon-trains were divided equally between the four corps, so that each had about eight hundred wagons, and these usually on the march occupied five miles or more of road.

In our travels we have captured and paroled over three hundred prisoners, burned five or six railroad bridges, destroyed all the ferries on our route, captured and demolished two wagon-trains, burned five or six dépôts of stores, destroyed one railroad train, besides stations and telegraph offices, and have torn several miles of track.

The railroad was in fair condition as far as Corinth, ninety-six miles, but the road was badly stocked with locomotives and cars, so that it took until the 9th to get off the Second Division, when I gave orders for the Fourth Division and wagon-trains to march by the common road.

Our frontier crawled west from the first seaport settlements, afoot, on horseback, in barges, or with slow wagon-trains. It crawled across the Alleghanies, down the great river valleys and up them yet again; and at last, in days of new transportation, it leaped across divides, from one river valley to another.

The roads are all choked with the wagon-trains. Nobody has got any orders, nobody knows what is going to be done, no one knows where Ducrot or Trochu are. It is enough to make one tear one's hair to see such confusion and mismanagement." The night passed off quietly. The next day, to the surprise of everyone, things remained unchanged. No effort was made to pass the baggage-train over the bridges.

He was bound, as he informed me, for Laramie; always provided that the Sioux, now grown exceedingly restless over the many wagon-trains pushing up the Platte to all the swiftly-opening West, had not by this time swooped down and closed all the trails entirely. I wished nothing then so much as that occasion might permit me to join him in a journey across the Plains.

He showed thoughtfulness and irritation by turns, and it was the subject of gold that drew his intensest interest. "Reckon you figgered right, Jack," said Red Pearce, and paused as if before a long talk, while he refilled his pipe. "Sooner or later there'll be the biggest gold strike ever made in the West. Wagon-trains are met every day comin' across from Salt Lake.

Recounting all these horrors, he pleaded with the Emperor to desist. But Napoleon remembered that his transport barges had been wrecked on the river bars, and that his wagon-trains were without horses or oxen to draw them.