cavalry entered at the moment these officers pushed off from the mole head.
Although the junior captain present. Captain Spencer was selected to reconnoitre, in company with Major Peddie, Lac Borgne, for the purpose of discovering where a landing could be best effected. Owing to the influence which he had obtained over the emigrated Spaniards and Frenchmen settled as fishermen, &c. he prevailed on one of them to take Major Peddie, himself, and his coxswain, in a canoe up the creek, and this party actually penetrated to the suburbs of New Orleans. The object for which they proceeded thither was fully effected, these officers having landed and walked across to the Mississippi river, over the very ground afterwards taken up as the position for his formidable line of defence by General Jackson. In consequence of the report made by Captain Spencer of the practicability of landing up the Bayou Catalan, the army embarked and arrived at its mouth; when, from information obtained by him, it was ascertained that the enemy had occupied some houses at the entrance of the creek with a strong piquet, which Captain Spencer immediately volunteered, with the assistance of some troops, to surprise. Colonel Thornton and about 30 of the 85th and 95th regiments were accordingly despatched in two barges, directed by Captain Spencer, and the service was effected most efficiently, without a shot being fired or an alarm given; had it been otherwise, the army would have experienced considerable difficulty, and probably sustained a heavy loss in landing.
From this time to the disastrous 8th of January, when the army failed in its last attack on the American lines, Captain Spencer was engaged in all the arduous duties which fell to the lot of the officers who remained on shore. The services of all thus employed were so various and so constant that the limits of this work do not allow of our entering into particulars, although it may truly be said that it was from bad fortune, and no want of exertion on the part of the navy, that the expedition proved abortive. Soon after the evacuation of Louisiana, a division of the army was disem-
