Downing’s Civil War Diary.–Alexander G. Downing.

Tuesday, 14th–Another rainy day. I went to town two miles up the river this morning in a canoe, with the cook of Company K (I am taking cooking lessons from him) to buy provisions. I bought ten pounds of ham and other things for $3.95. I wrote a letter home to Albert Downing and enclosed $10.00 in it. General Quimby’s Division landed at Lake Providence this afternoon. It is reported that the expedition that was trying to find a way to get the army past Haines’s Bluff on the Yazoo river has been forced to give it up on account of the floods. The river is flooded for a hundred miles up from the mouth, and four miles on either side. It is thought that they will have to run the fleet past the batteries at Vicksburg and march the army down the Louisiana side and then across the river on high ground below Vicksburg.