hree miles from us, diagonally
in rear of our right flank. It now seemed that it must be true that
some detachment had been delayed in joining the retreating column,
and had found itself thus partly cut off by our advance. I therefore
ordered McCook to start at earliest peep of day, upon the
Chestnutburg road (on which the wagon-master had been foraging), and
passing beyond the hostile detachment, attack from the other side,
it being agreed by all the scouting parties that this would drive
the enemy toward our camp. My own brigade would be disposed of to
intercept the enemy and prevent escape. McCook moved out as ordered,
and following his guides came by many devious turns to a fork in the
road, following which, they told him, a few minutes would bring him
upon the enemy. He halted the column, and with a small skirmishing
party went carefully forward. The guides pointed to a thicket from
which the Confederates could be seen. His instinct for topography
had made him suspect the truth, as he had noted the courses in
advancing, and crawling through the thicket, he looked out from the
other side upon what he at once recognized as the rear of his own
camp, and the tents of the very regiment from which he had sent an
officer to test the wagon-master's report. All the scouts had been
so deceived by the tangle of wooded hills and circling roads that
they fully believed they were still miles from our position; and,
bewildered in the labyrinth, they were sure the tents they saw were
the enemy's and not ours. The march had been through rain and mist,
through dripping thickets and on muddy roads, and the first impulse
was wrath at the erring scouts; but the ludicrous side soon
prevailed, and officers and men joined in hearty laughter over their
wild-goose chase. They dubbed the expedition the "Battle of
Bontecou," and it was long before the lieutenant heard the last of
the chaffing at his talents as a scout. [Footnote: Official Records,
vol. li. pt. i. pp. 484, 485.]

Major Hines's reports of the strength of the position on Sewell
Mountain which the enemy had occupied, and my own reconnoissance of
the intervening country, satisfied me that if we meant to advance on
this line, we ought not to give the enemy time to reconsider and to
reoccupy the mountain top from which he had retreated. On
representing this to General Rosecrans, he authorized me to advance
twelve miles to the Confederate camp on Big Sewell, directing me,
however,