dispatch has just come from the top of Cheat, written, I doubt not, after the Indianians had returned to camp and drawn their whisky ration. It sounds bigger than the first. I copy it:
"Found the rebels drawn up in line of battle one mile outside of their fortifications, drove them back to their intrenchments, and continued the fight four hours. Ten of our men wounded and ten killed. Two or three hundred of the enemy killed."
If it be true that so many of the rebels were killed, it is probable that two thousand at least were wounded; and when three hundred are killed and two thousand wounded, out of an army of twelve or fifteen hundred men, the business is done up very thoroughly. The dispatch which went to Richmond to-night, I have no doubt, stated that "the Federals attacked in great force, outnumbering us two or three to one, and after a terrific engagement, lasting five hours, they were repulsed at all points with great slaughter. Our loss one killed and five wounded. Federal loss, five hundred killed and twenty-five hundred wounded." Thus are victories won and histories made. Verily the pen is mightier than the sword.
4. The Indianians have been returning from the summit all day, straggling along in squads of from three to a full company.
The men are tired, and the camp is quiet as a house. Six thousand are sleeping away a small portion of their three weary years of military service. This time stretches out before them, a broad, unknown, and extra-hazardous sea, with promise of some smooth sailing, but many days and nights of heavy winds and waves, in which some—how many!—will be carried down.
Their thoughts have now forced the sentinel lines, leaped the mountains, jumped the rivers, hastened home, and are lingering about the old fireside, looking in at the cupboard, and hovering over faces and places that have been growing dearer to them every day for the last five months. Old-fashioned places, tame and uninteresting then, but now how loved! And as for the faces, they are those of mothers, wives, and sweethearts, around which are entwined the tenderest of memories. But at daybreak, when reveille is sounded, these wanderers must come trooping back again in time for "hard-tack" and double quick.
5. Some of the Indiana regiments are utterly beyond discipline. The men are good, stout, hearty, intelligent fellows, and will make excellent soldiers; but they have now no regard for their officers, and, as a rule, do as they please. They came straggling back yesterday from the top of Cheat unofficered, and in the most unsoldierly manner. As one of these stray Indianians was coming into camp, he saw a snake in the river and cocked his gun. He was near the quarters of the Sixth Ohio, and many men were on the opposite side of the stream, among them a lieutenant, who called to the Indianian and begged him for God's sake not to fire; but the latter, unmindful of what was said, blazed away. The ball, striking the water, glanced and hit the lieutenant in the breast, killing him almost instantly.
6. The Third and Sixth Ohio, with Loomis' battery, left camp at half-past three in the afternoon, and took the Huntersville turnpike for Big Springs, where Lee's army has been encamped for some months. At nine o'clock we reached Logan's Mill, where the column halted for the night. It had rained heavily for some hours, and was still raining. The boys went into camp thoroughly wet, and very hungry and tired; but they soon had a hundred fires kindled, and, gathering around these, prepared and ate supper.
I never looked upon a wilder or more interesting scene. The valley is blazing with camp-fires; the men flit around them like shadows. Now some indomitable spirit, determined that neither rain nor weather shall get him down, strikes up:
"Oh! say, can you see by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?"
A hundred voices join in, and the very mountains, which loom up in the fire-light like great walls, whose tops are lost in the darkness, resound with a rude melody befitting so wild a night and so wild a scene. But the songs are not all patriotic. Love and fun make contribution also, and a voice, which may be that of the invincible Irishman, Corporal Casey, sings:
"'T was a windy night, about two o'clock in the morning,
An Irish lad, so tight, all the wind and weather scorning,
At Judy Callaghan's door, sitting upon the paling,
His love tale he did pour, and this is part of his wailing:
Only say you'll be mistress Brallaghan;
Don't say nay, charming Judy Callaghan."
A score of voices pick up the chorus, and the hills and mountains seem to join in the Corporal's appeal to the charming Judy:
"Only say you'll be mistress Brallaghan;
Don't say nay, charming Judy Callaghan."
Lieutenant Root is in command of Loomis' battery. Just before reaching Logan's one of his provision wagons tumbled down a precipice, severely injuring three men and breaking the wagon in pieces.
7. Left Logan's mill before the sun was up. The rain continues, and the mud is deep. At eleven o'clock we reached what is known as Marshall's store, near which, until recently, the enemy had a pretty large camp. Halted at the place half an hour, and then moved four miles further on, where we found the roads impassable for our artillery and transportation.
Learning that the enemy had abandoned Big Springs and fallen back to Huntersville, the soldiers were permitted to break ranks, while Colonel Marrow and Major Keifer, with a company of cavalry, rode forward to the Springs. Colonel Nick Anderson, Adjutant Mitchell and I followed. We found on the road evidence of the recent presence of a very large force. Quite a number of wagons had been left behind. Many tents had been ripped, cut to pieces, or burned, so as to render them worthless. A large number of beef hides were strung along the road. One wagon, loaded with muskets, had been destroyed. All of which showed, simply, that before the rebels abandoned the place the roads had become so bad that they could not carry off their baggage.
The object of the expedition being now accomplished, we started back at three o'clock in the afternoon, and encamped for the night at Marshall's store.
8. Resumed the march early, found the river waist high, and current swift; but the men all got over safely, and we reached camp at one o'clock.
The Third has been assigned to a new brigade, to be commanded by Brigadier-General Dumont, of Indiana.
The paymaster has come at last.
Willis, my new servant, is a colored gentleman of much experience and varied accomplishments. He has been a barber on a Mississippi river steamboat, and a daguerreian artist. He knows much of the South, and manipulates a fiddle with wonderful skill. He is enlivening the hours now with his violin.
Oblivious to rain, mud, and the monotony of the camp, my thoughts are carried by the music to other and pleasanter scenes; to the cottage home, to wife and children, to a time still further away when we had no children, when we were making the preliminary arrangements for starting in the world together, when her cheeks were ruddier than now, when wealth and fame and happiness seemed lying just before me, ready to be gathered in, and farther away still, to a gentle, blue-eyed mother—now long gone—teaching her child to lisp his first simple prayer.
9. The day has been clear. The mountains, decorated by the artistic fingers of Jack Frost, loom up in the sunshine like magnificent, highly-colored, and beautiful pictures.
The night is grand.
