April 7.
The rebels made a dash within the National picket-lines at Port Hudson, La., and a brisk skirmish ensued, without important results to either side. A detachment of the One Hundred and Eighteenth Illinois mounted infantry, and a section of Barnes's battery, Twenty-first New York, with one gun, had been out mending the line of telegraph to Baton Rouge, and on their return were attacked by a superior force of rebel cavalry and driven in. Simultaneously an attack was made on the pickets by an equally large force, and the detachment on the telegraph road was cut off and flanked. The cavalry came in by wood roads, but the piece of artillery was spiked and left, and afterward carried off by the enemy. In the several skirmishes the Nationals lost one killed, four wounded, and six prisoners. They took two prisoners, one of them an officer. General [60] Ullman's division marched several miles outside, but on the approach of the infantry the rebels left without hazarding a tight. The rebel force was the Wirt Adams's cavalry from up the river, numbering nearly a thousand. They were well mounted and equipped.--the rebel schooner Spunky was captured by the National schooner Beauregard, off Cape Canaveral.
