at Laurel Forge on that strange Sabbath
morning a constant stream of stragglers and fragmentary companies of
different regiments were coming in. One of them reported meeting a
party on the road whose situation very fairly represented the degree of
wretchedness which all--officers and men alike--underwent on that
eventful day and night of the Fourth of July. It was just at daybreak.
The men were wading along through the mire as a staff officer rode by
and drew rein at the road-side a little ahead of them, in front of a
party of some three or four officers who were evidently having their
bivouac there in miserable isolation. The officer whom the messenger
saluted as his superior was bare-headed, having evidently just risen
from the ground where his rubber cloth and blanket still lay. His dress
was wet and begrimed with mud; his hair was frowsy, lying in ropy
tangles upon his head and hanging over his brows; and his face was
haggard with anxiety and suffering. It was Brigadier-General ----; and
here in this solitary wilderness had actually been his bivouac, in
company with a few of his staff. Taking what was overheard as a clue,
something like the following colloquy passed between the messenger and
the General:

"General, a complete company, or anything like it cannot be found on
the road--much less a regiment of the brigade. They are scattered
everywhere--sick, exhausted, famished; and if they were together, they
could not be fed." "Where are the wagons?" "Stuck in the mud, sir,
miles back. The teams are broken down and others cannot be procured. I
don't see how we can possibly get the wagons up." "Ah, *** h'm, *** Did
you see no farmers' houses around anywhere?" "The country here, sir, is
a perfect wilderness. The only habitations are a few cabins of poor
people, scattered along the road at long intervals; and even of these
there is but one for the whole seven or eight miles between the paper
mill and Laurel Forge."

It was palpable enough that the situation was alarming. The column
broken up into a vast stream of stragglers--regiments and brigades
mixed promiscuously together--men and officers half-famished, jaded
out, buried in the depths of a mountain wilderness--the subsistence
trains mired far in the rear and no prospect of their getting up; all
this rushing at once upon the mind of a conscientious commander wholly
unused to the hardships of real campaigning, and before he had had time
to throw off the incubus of