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adjutant general of the brigade, took it into their heads to go shooting.
There were several boats at Port Royal which I had directed to be hauled up on the bank with orders to the pickets to keep watch over them and not permit them to be launched.
On the day the Major and the Captain took for their sport, the picket at Port Royal happened to be from their brigade, and they easily induced the sentinel on duty to let them have the use of one of the boats, to row into the mouth of a creek above, on our side, where the ducks were most numerous.
The day was a very windy one with the wind blowing across towards the enemy.
By keeping near the bank they avoided the effect of the wind until they got opposite the mouth of the creek, when it struck their boat and forced it out into the stream.
Not being expert boatmen, and moreover being excited by the danger, they lost control of the boat and were driven helplessly to the northern bank into the hands of the enemy's pickets, and of course were made prisoners.
The Major having an old newspaper with him, pulled it out when he reached the shore and proposed an exchange, a practice sometimes prevailing with the pickets in spite of all orders, but the Federal on post was rather too shrewd to have that game played on him, insisting that it was not exactly a case for exchange of such civilities.
This was a caution to all persons disposed to sporting and to interfere with the orders to the pickets; and we had no more duck shooting in boats.
Burnside made an abortive effort in January to advance again by flanking us on the left, but he stuck in the mud, and we were not put to any inconvenience by the movement.
About the last of the month he was relieved of his command, and a new commander for the Federal Army was selected, in the person of Major General Joseph Hooker, called “Fighting Joe.”
Though we passed the winter without the excitement attending an advance of the enemy, still we were not
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