Once safely across the Cypremort, Taylor's army began to melt away and his men, as they passed their homes, to fall out without hindrance. Many were of the simple class called Acadians, with scant sympathy for either side of the great war into which they found themselves drawn, and in all the regiments there were many conscripts.
On the 15th of April, Taylor marched ten miles to New Iberia. While there, he had the unfinished ironclad gunboat _Stevens_, previously known as the _Hart_, floated two miles down the Teche, destroyed by fire, and the wreck sunk in the channel.
On the 16th he marched twenty miles, crossed the Vermilion River, went into camp on high ground on the north bank, and burned the bridges behind him.
Early in the morning of the 15th of April, Banks took up the pursuit with his united force, now outnumbering Taylor's as three to one. Weitzel led the advance of the main column on the direct road. Emory followed him, and Grover marching at first on the bayou road fell in the rear after passing the fork. The army halted for the night at Jeannerette.
On the following afternoon Banks entered New Iberia. Here the ways parted, the right-hand road by Saint Martinville following for many miles the windings of the Teche, while the left-hand road leads almost directly to Opelousas, by way of Vermilionville, now called Lafayette.
Beyond Indian Bend the lowlands, in many places below and nowhere much above the level of the adjacent waters, may be said to end and the plains to begin; and soon after leaving New Iberia and Saint Martinville the troops found themselves on the broad prairies of Western Louisiana, where the rich grasses that flourish in the light soil sustain almost in a wild state vast herds of small yet fat beeves and of small yet strong horses; where in favored spots the cotton plant is cultivated to advantage; where the ground, gently undulating, gradually rises as one travels northward; where the streams become small rivers that drain the land upon their borders, instead of merely bayous taking the back waters of the Mississippi and the Red. Near the right bank of the Teche runs even a narrow ribbon of bluffs that may be said to form the western margin of the great swamps of the Atchafalaya. Along the streams live-oaks, magnolias, pecans, and other trees grow luxuriantly; but, for the most part, the prairies are open to the horizon, and at this time, though the gin-houses were full of cotton, the fields were mainly given over to the raising of corn for the armies and the people of the Confederacy.