his brigade forming the rear-guard, he had arrived at Batavia two hours
before the main body, that had been "cavorting round the country" all
day, "misled by two citizen guides"--possibly Morgan's own men.

Not stopping to draw the rations sent out to him from Cincinnati, Hobson
urged his jaded horses through Brown, Adams, and Pike counties, now
under the lead of Kautz, and reached Jasper, on the Scioto, at midnight
of the 16th, Morgan having passed there at sundown. The next day they
raced through Jackson. On the 18th, Hobson, at Rutland, learned that
Morgan had been turned off by the militia at Pomeroy, and had taken the
Chester road for Portland and the fords of the Ohio. The chase became
animated. Our troopers made a march of fifty miles that day and still
had twenty-five miles to reach Chester. They arrived there without a
halt at eleven at night, and had still fifteen miles to reach the ford.
They kept on, and at dawn of the 19th struck the enemy's pickets. Two
miles out from Portland, Morgan was brought to bay--and not by Hobson
alone. First came the militia, then came Judah. His division had pushed
up the river in steamers parallel with Morgan's course. Lieutenant John
O'Neil, afterward of Fenian fame, with a troop of Indiana cavalry, kept
up the touch on Morgan's right flank by a running fight, stinging it at
every vulnerable point, and reporting Morgan's course to Judah in the
neck-and-neck race. Aided by the local militia, O'Neil now dashed ahead
and fearlessly skirmished with the enemy's flankers from every coign of
vantage. He reached the last descent to the river-bottom near Buffington
Bar, and near the historical Blennerhasset's Island, early on the
morning of the 19th.

The Ohio River was up. It had risen unexpectedly. But here Morgan must
cross, if at all. It could not be forded by night, when he got here. He
tried the ford at Blennerhasset. Failing in this, his men collected