The KING'S OWN were commended in the public despatches for their excellent conduct and discipline; and their commanding officer. Major Faunce, was included among the officers who distinguished themselves.
The armament remained a short time on the American coast, and information having been received of the formation of an American camp a few miles from the Potomac river, the KING'S OWN, with the remainder of the second and third brigades, landed on the night of the 4th of October, and pushed forward to attack the enemy, who, however, had notice of the movement and fled. The regiment returned on the 5th, and the season having arrived when active operations could no longer be continued in the Chesapeake, the fleet sailed for the West Indies, and anchored in Port Royal harbour, Jamaica, on the 31st of October, the troops remaining on board, while the vessels took in a supply of provisions, &c.
While in the West Indies, reinforcements arrived; Major-General John Keane joined and took the command of the expedition; and Lieut.-Colonel Brooke of the KING'S OWN arrived from England, where he had been absent on account of ill health.
The next enterprise undertaken was of a most difficult character, namely, an attempt on _New Orleans_, a town of some note, standing on the eastern bank of the great river Mississippi, one hundred and ten miles from the gulph of Mexico, and so situated that the approach of an hostile force was almost impossible. The fleet having put to sea, anchored on the 10th of December off the coast of Louisiana, opposite the Chandeleur Islands, where the troops were removed into light vessels, and entering Lake Borgne on the 13th, five of the enemy's large cutters, mounting eleven guns each, were captured by a flotilla of launches and ships' barges. Having proceeded a short distance along the lake, all the vessels ran aground; the soldiers were then conveyed twenty miles in open boats, during a heavy rain, to a barren spot called Pine Island, which consisted of a swamp with a piece of firm ground at one end. Here the regiments remained without tents or huts, exposed to heavy rains by day, and to frost by night, until the 22d of December, when the KING'S OWN, eighty-fifth, and five companies of the ninety-fifth, embarked in open boats, and proceeding up the lake a distance of more than fifty miles, were so cramped up in the boats, drenched with a heavy rain during the day, and exposed to a sharp frost in the night, that the men were almost deprived of the use of their limbs. On the following morning they landed, unobserved by the enemy, on a desert spot on the verge of a large morass about eight miles from New Orleans, and when the men had regained the use of their benumbed limbs, they advanced along an indistinct path on the bank of a ditch or canal, their movements being concealed by the tall reeds of the morass. After passing several streams by bridges constructed at the moment, the troops entered a cultivated region where the fields were found covered with the stubble of the sugar-cane, and groves of orange trees were numerous. About noon the regiments entered a green field on the banks of the Mississippi, where they halted to await the arrival of the remainder of the army.