g-house facing the
Gauley River, and I occupied an unfurnished room in the house for
office purposes. A week was spent, without molestation, exploring
the country in all directions and studying its topography. A ferry
guided by a cable stretching along the piers of the burnt bridge
communicated with the outposts up the New River, and a smaller ferry
below the Kanawha Falls connected with the Fayette road. Systematic
discipline and instruction in outpost duty were enforced, and the
regiments rapidly became expert mountaineers and scouts. The
population was nearly all loyal below Gauley Bridge, but above they
were mostly Secessionists, a small minority of the wealthier
slaveholders being the nucleus of all aggressive secession
movements. These, by their wealth and social leadership, overawed or
controlled a great many who did not at heart sympathize with them,
and between parties thus formed a guerilla warfare became chronic.
In our scouting expeditions we found little farms in secluded nooks
among the mountains, where grown men assured us that they had never
before seen the American flag, and whole families had never been
further from home than a church and country store a few miles away.
From these mountain people several regiments of Union troops were
recruited in West Virginia, two of them being organized in rear of
my own lines, and becoming part of the garrison of the district in
the following season.

I had been joined before reaching Gauley Bridge by Chaplain Brown of
the Seventh Ohio, who had obtained permission to make an adventurous
journey across the country from Sutton to bring me information as to
the position and character of the outposts that were stretching from
the railway southward toward our line of operations. Disguised as a
mountaineer in homespun clothing, his fine features shaded by a
slouched felt hat, he reported himself to me in anything but a
clerical garb. Full of enterprise as a partisan leader of scouts
could be, he was yet a man of high attainments in his profession, of
noble character and real learning. When he reached me, I had as my
guest another chaplain who had accepted a commission at my
suggestion, the Rev. Mr. Dubois, son-in-law of Bishop McIlvaine of
Ohio, who had been leader of the good people at Chillicothe in
providing a supper for the Eleventh Ohio as we were on our way from
Camp Dennison to Gallipolis. He had burned to have some part in the
country's struggle, and became a m