ame roaring out of the
forest at the road-side, surging furiously across the road, and
disappearing down the tangled wood on the opposite side with the roar
of a cataract. A distance of not more than a hundred feet of its course
was visible. We heard it coming, saw it rush by us, and heard its awful
leap into the depths of the wilderness again. It was the leap of a
tiger from covert to covert across a traveller's path; or like a hyena
at night, disclosed only by the glare of his eyeballs.

We followed the trail cautiously feeling our way along, and not daring
to look to the right or left--our ears filled with the din of the
waters, and half carried off our feet by the impetuous flood. Crossing
a gully--probably the natural bed of the stream--by a foot bridge,
which our engineers had doubtless thrown across, we saw beneath us with
a start and a shudder of horror the head of a drowned horse and the
pole of a wagon sticking up above the torrent. All else was out of
sight. It proved to be a loaded commissary wagon with its team, which
had been swept away! A number of muskets were lost, and a drum or two;
but excepting these casualties we all got across safely with no other
ill fortune than to be wet again to the skin, which, as night was
falling gave us a comfortless prospect. The drum corps of the
Twenty-Third was at this point sent back to Carlisle with the remainder
of the drums, thirteen in number.

In this part of the mountain the road runs level for several miles
along its slope, and being cut down on both sides is for long distances
little better than a ditch. The soil being a stiff clay, the tremendous
rain-fall having insufficient escape converted the road into a
canal--six inches to a foot of water overlying six inches to a foot of
mire. And into this infernal passage we plunged as night closed upon
us. For a couple of hours we floundered along with desperate energy,
losing shoes sucked off by the tenacious slime, and some even throwing
away their blankets. It was pitch dark; it had begun to rain again; we
were hungry--having had nothing but a little wet hard tack and one
small ration of coffee since we left Carlisle--and many, many of us not
so much; we were very jaded, having marched already a dozen miles, much
of it up the mountain, and much of it through mud that would challenge
the admiration of a veteran of the Army of the Potomac; and the floods
of air and earth had soaked us to the skin. Still we kept up