THE BATTLE OF CORINTH.

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PROVOST-MARSHAL’ S OFFICE, CORINTII. FROM A WAR-TIME PHOTOGRAPH.

and notice: (1) That the Memphis and Charleston railway runs not far fromthe dividing lines between the States, with a southerly bend from Memphis eastward toward Corinth, whence it extends eastwardly through Iuka, crossesBear River and follows the Tuscumbia Valley on the south side of that eastand west reach of the Tennessee to Decatur. Thence the road crosses to thenorth side of this river and unites with the Nashville and Chattanooga roadat Stevenson en route for Chattanooga. (2) That the Mobile and Ohio rail-way, fro.m Columbus on the Mississippi , runs considerably east of south,passes through Jackson, Tennessee, Bethel, Corinth, Tupelo , and Baldwyn,Mississippi, and thence to Mobile, Alabama . (3) That the Mississippi Cen-tral, leaving the Mobile and Ohio at Jackson, Tennessee , runs nearly south,passing by Bolivar and Grand Junction, Tennessee , and Holly Springs,Grenada, etc., to Jackson, Mississippi. All this region of west Tennes-see and the adjoining counties of Mississippi , although here and theredotted with clearings, farms, settlements, and little villages, is heavilywooded. Its surface consists of low, rolling, oak ridges of diluvial clays, withintervening crooked drainages traversing narrow, bushy, and sometimesswampy, bottoms. The streams are sluggish and not easily fordable, onaccount of their miry beds and steep, muddy, clay banks. Water in dryseasons is never abundant, and in many places is only reached by bore-wellsof 100 to 300 feet in depth, whence it is hoisted by rope and pulley carryingwater-buckets of galvanized iron pipes from 4 to 6 inches in diameter, and4 to 5 feet long, with valves at the lower end. These matters are of con-trolling importance in moving and handling troops in that region. Men andanimals need hard ground to move on, and must have drinking-water.

The strategic importance of Corinth, where the Mobile and Ohio crossesthe Memphis and Charleston, ninety-three miles east of Memphis , results fromits control of movements either way over these railways, and the fact that it