Tuesday, 24th–We remained here at Huntsville all day resting. I went to the camp of the Fifty-ninth Indiana and found my cousin, Hamilton Shepherd, and the sons of some of our old friends from my old home at Bloomfield, Indiana. The order is that we are to start for Chattanooga[1] in the morning, and we again had to turn over our tents and baggage to the quartermaster, who will put them in storage.
Huntsville is a nice little town among the hills, and as in the case of most all of the villages here in the South, its citizens fled on the approach of the “mudsills,” as they call us. There is a large spring here with a strong, steady flow of water, coming off a rocky cliff one hundred feet high, which supplies the town with water. The water runs into a large pool, from which it is pumped into an elevated tank by means of a water-wheel set near the cliff, and distributed over town through pipes.
[1] Rome, Georgia. The order was later countermanded and the army, instead of going to Chattanooga, went to Rome via Decatur. Alabama.—A. G. D.