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Show TO FORT KEARNEY. 3 which he had placed there when acting in the same capacity in the 5th army corps, during the eventful campaign referred to. A still more remarkable coincidence was that of a driver having in his team a span of mules which he said were, most unquestionably, the identical mules he had driven from the positien our army held in front of Rich mond to Harrison's Landing on the James River at the time of the retreat of Gen. McClellan in 1862. This brings to mind personal associations of my own with an esteemed friend whom I first met about the same eventful period, and who subsequently joined us on the march. In ' 62 we were associated in the army of the Po tomac, in ' 64 in the city of New Orleans, in ' 65 in St. Louis, and in ' 66 we journeyed several hundred miles to gether over the plains ofthe far West, destined to different and remote posts, possibly to meet again in our army career, possibly only in eternity. We parted warmer friends, after so many accidental, but pleasant, associations. The officer I refer to is Surgeon Alexander, long the popular and effi cient Medical Director in the Crescent City. All things being ready for the march, on the 26th of April, while the weather was yet cool and pleasant, and before the fields were green with the grass of spring, our column may have been seen wending its way over the hills of Kansas in the direction of Ft. Kearney. For several days we did not get beyond the enclosed and cultivated farms, which in the absence of a regularly surveyed public road made our course much more tortuous than when trav elling over the unsettled prairie beyond. It seemed at times as if the road passed around three sides of a farm, when there was nothing to interfere with its following the more direct fourth boundary line. But the roads were excel lent, and we in no hurry. What difference did it make to us if our 1 200 miles journey should be extended five miles by indirect roads ? After passing to the West, and within sight of At-chison, we struck the great overland stage route, along which we marched many hundred miles. The sight |