... and a little later the most of them to New Orleans. On April 8, 1863, we crossed the Mississippi River from New Orleans to Algiers, a dirty, dismal city opposite the terminus of the New Orleans, Opelousas , and Great Western Railroad, over which road, through cypress swamp and alligator paradise, we were carried some seventy-five miles to Brashear City on the Atchafalaya River. This place had been ta...