At daylight the smoke hanging over the enemy's camp was fully before us.

Sunrise was near at hand when the hostile position was brought to our view.

It lay, as we had anticipated, stretched along the banks of Wilson Creek.
Until our advance drove in the pickets, a thousand yards from their camp, the Rebels had no intimation of our approach.

Many of them were reluctant to believe we were advancing to attack them, and thought the firing upon the pickets was the work of a scouting party.

The opening of our artillery soon undeceived them, a shell being dropped in the middle of their camp.
A Rebel officer afterward told me about our first shell.