did not stay dry as we
passed along that road. We talked of this scene many a time long
afterwards. And I expect some of the old "Howitzers" still remember that
quiet Spottsylvania country road, winding through the woods, on that
early Sunday morning, when the birds sang to us, as we hurried on to
battle.

Well! the morning wore on, and so did we. By and by, the sun came out
through the fog and clouds, and began to make it hot for us. The
dampness of the earth made this an easy job. The sun got higher and
hotter every minute. The way that close, sultry heat did _roast_ us was
pitiful. We would have "larded the lean earth as we walked along,"
except that hard bones and muscles of gaunt men didn't _yield_ any
"lard" to speak of. The _breakfast_ hour was not observed, _i. e._, not
with any ceremony. "Cracker nibbling on the fly" was all the visible
reminder of that time-honored custom. We were not there to eat, but, to
get to Spottsylvania Court House; and _steps_ were more to that purpose
than _steaks_, so we omitted the steaks, and put in the steps; and we
put them in very fast, and were putting in a great many of them, it
appeared to us. At last, just about twelve o'clock our road wound down
to a stream, which I think was the _Po_, one of the head waters of the
Mattaponi River, and then, we went up a very long hill, a bank,
surmounted by a rail fence on the left side of the road, and the woods
on the other.

=Stuart's Four Thousand Cavalry=

Just as we got to the top (our Battery happened just then to be ahead of
all the troops, and was the first of the columns to reach the spot), the
road came up to the level of the land on the left, which enabled us to
see, what, though close by us, had been concealed by the high roadside
bank. A farm gate opened into a field, around a farmhouse and
outbuildings, and there, covering that field was the whole of Fitz Lee's
Division of Stuart's cavalry. These heroic fellows had for two days been
fighting Warren's corps of Federal infantry, which General Grant had
sent to seize this very line on which _we_ had now arrived. They had
fought, mostly dismounted, from hill to hill, from fence to fence, from
tree to tree; and so obstinate was their resistance, and so skillful the
dispositions of the matchless Stuart, that some thirty thousand men had
been forced to take about twenty-six hours to get seven or eight miles,
by about forty-five hundred cavalry. But, it was incomparable cavalry,