[Correspondence of the Richmond Dispatch.]
from Floyd's brigade.
Camp Near Bowling Green, Ky., January 23, 1862.
In my last, I left you on the night of the 21st, while cooking our rations for the march on the morning of the 22d.
We are now eating cold beef and tough cold hoccakes and biscuit — the result of our cooking up three days provisions.
We have had several orders since that time, and are now under orders to be ready at sunrise on the morrow, tents struck, and packed for the journey.
I think our destination will be a different one from what I informed you in my last.
I have no doubt but that we will certainly be off early in the morning; but we are often subjected to orders, and countermanded from good cause.
We have at times had all our tents struck and packed, ready to load up, and, at this point, have had our orders countermanded.
It so happens sometimes that when it is raining we have ample time to get pretty well drenched, and everything well saturated with rain, before we receive orders to pitch again, but all this is part and parcel of a soldier's life — hard, but a happy one.
I have but little chance to give you anything like the exact number of our forces in and around Bowling Green, which we could concentrate together at any one given point in twenty-four hours-time.
If I actually knew of any important movement or facts of course I would not be at liberty to let it be known; but he assured that when the day comes our army will immortalize themselves and act the part of men worthy to be called Southern soldiers.
At this time it looks rather like a battle as I can now hear the cannon from one of our batteries testing the range of their guns about three-quarters of a mile from camp.
The boys all over camp are calling out, ‘"load up your muskets, boys for the Yankees are coming,"’ and many other such remarks of the kind.
We have a very fine prospect, for the first time since our arrival in Kentucky, for good weather.
To-day is a fine, healthy day — not cold, but cool and bracing — and would be most suitable for a battle, after all the disagreeable, wet, and cloudy weather we have been favored with for several weeks past.
J. H. M****. 