CHAPTER XI.
ANOTHER CAMPAIGN IN MISSOURI.
From St.Louis to Rolla .-- A Limited Outfit .-- Missouri Roads in Winter.--"Two Solitary Horsemen."-- Restricted Accommodations in a Slaveholder's House .-- An Energetic Quartermaster .-- General Sheridan before he became Famous.--"Bagging Price."-- A Defect in the Bag .-- Examining the Correspondence of a Rebel General .-- What the Rebels left at their Departure.
On the 9th of February I left St.Louis to join General Curtis's army.
Arriving at Rolla, I found the mud very deep, but was told the roads were in better condition a few miles to the west.

With an _attache_ of the Missouri _Democrat_, I started, on the morning of the 10th, to overtake the army, then reported at Lebanon, sixty-five miles distant.
All my outfit for a two or three months' campaign, was strapped behind my saddle, or crowded into my saddle-bags.

Traveling with a trunk is one of the delights unknown to army correspondents, especially to those in the Southwest.

My companion carried an outfit similar to mine, with the exception of the saddle-bags and contents.

I returned to Rolla eight weeks afterward, but he did not reach civilization till the following July.
From Rolla to Lebanon the roads were bad--muddy in the valleys of the streams, and on the higher ground frozen into inequalities like a gigantic rasp.
Over this route our army of sixteen thousand men had slowly made its way, accomplishing what was then thought next to impossible.