e orders General Jackson gave him
as he came to the place were, "to fire on the enemy's artillery till it
became too hot for him, and then to turn his guns on their infantry,"
and that he, Poague, had stated this in his official report, and the
chief of artillery of the corps, before forwarding the report, had asked
him if he was sure that these were General Jackson's orders. He told him
he was. The report was then endorsed and so forwarded.

The scene, as described at the close of this battle near nightfall, was
a melancholy one. As the two sections of the battery, which had
separated and gone to different portions of the field in the
morning--the one to the heights, the other to the plain--met again, on
the caissons of each were borne the dead bodies of those of their
number who had fallen, the wounded, and the harness stripped from the
dead horses. The few horses that had survived, though scarcely able to
drag the now empty ammunition-chests, were thus again burdened.

After going into bivouac and the dead had been buried, to clear the
ground for a renewal of the battle on the following day, the
wagon-horses had to be brought into requisition. These were driven in
pairs to the position on the bluff and, as lights would attract the fire
of the enemy, the dead horses had to be found in the darkness, and with
chains dragged to the rear. The approach of the first instalment to a
line of infantry, through which it had to pass and who were roused from
sleep by the rattling of chains and the dragging of the ponderous bodies
through brush and fallen timber, created no little excitement, and a
wide berth was given the gruesome procession. By midnight the work had
been accomplished.

At dawn of the following day a fresh detachment of men and horses having
been furnished by another battery for the fourth piece, our battery
again went into position. There it remained inactive throughout the day,
while the enemy's dead within our lines were being buried by their own
men under flag of truce. On the night which followed, as the two armies
lay under arms, confronting each other, a display of the aurora
borealis, of surpassing splendor and beauty, was witnessed. At such
times, from time immemorial, "shooting-stars", comets, and the
movements of the heavenly bodies have been observed with profoundest
interest as presaging good or evil. On this occasion, with the deep
impress of what had just been experienced and the apprehension of