of Savannah, eight or ten miles below, the Confederate
forces, having moved out of Corinth two days before, fell upon Grant's
advance brigades and destroyed them. Grant was at Savannah, but hastened
to the Landing in time to find his camps in the hands of the enemy and the
remnants of his beaten army cooped up with an impassable river at their
backs for moral support. I have related how the news of this affair came
to us at Savannah. It came on the wind--a messenger that does not bear
copious details.

III

On the side of the Tennessee River, over against Pittsburg Landing, are
some low bare hills, partly inclosed by a forest. In the dusk of the
evening of April 6 this open space, as seen from the other side of the
stream--whence, indeed, it was anxiously watched by thousands of eyes, to
many of which it grew dark long before the sun went down--would have
appeared to have been ruled in long, dark lines, with new lines being
constantly drawn across. These lines were the regiments of Buell's leading
division, which having moved up from Savannah through a country presenting
nothing but interminable swamps and pathless "bottom lands," with rank
overgrowths of jungle, was arriving at the scene of action breathless,
footsore and faint with hunger. It had been a terrible race; some
regiments had lost a third of their number from fatigue, the men dropping
from the ranks as if shot, and left to recover or die at their leisure.
Nor was the scene to which they had been invited likely to inspire the
moral confidence that medicines physical fatigue. True, the air was full
of thunder and the earth was trembling beneath their feet; and if there is
truth in the theory of the conversion of force, these men were storing up
energy from every shock that burst its waves upon their bodies. Perhaps
this theory may better than another explain the tremendous endurance of
men in battle. But the eyes reported only matter for despair.

Before us ran the turbulent river, vexed with plunging shells and obscured
in spots by blue sheets of low-lying smoke. The two little steamers were
doing their duty well. They came over to us empty and went back crowded,
sitting very low in the water, apparently on the point of capsizing. The
farther edge of the water could not be seen; the boats came out of the
obscurity, took on their passengers and vanished in the darkness. But on
the heights above, the battle was burning brightly enough; a thousand
lights kin