Andersonville | Page 9

loss was trifling.
Comparing notes around the camp-fires in the evening, we found that

our success had been owing to the Major's instinct, his grasp of the
situation, and the soldierly way in which he took advantage of it. When
he reached the summit of the hill he found the Rebel line nearly formed
and ready for action. A moment's hesitation might have been fatal to us.
At his command Company I went into line with the thought-like
celerity of trained cavalry, and instantly dashed through the right of the
Rebel line. Company K followed and plunged through the Rebel center,
and when we of Company L arrived on the ground, and charged the left,
the last vestige of resistance was swept away. The whole affair did not
probably occupy more than fifteen minutes.
This was the way Powell's Valley was opened to our foragers.

CHAPTER III.
LIVING OFF THE ENEMY--REVELING IN THE FATNESS OF
THE COUNTRY--SOLDIERLY PURVEYING AND CAMP
COOKERY--SUSCEPTIBLE TEAMSTERS AND THEIR
TENDENCY TO FLIGHTINESS--MAKING SOLDIER'S BED.
For weeks we rode up and down--hither and thither--along the length of
the narrow, granite-walled Valley; between mountains so lofty that the
sun labored slowly over them in the morning, occupying half the
forenoon in getting to where his rays would reach the stream that ran
through the Valley's center. Perpetual shadow reigned on the northern
and western faces of these towering Nights--not enough warmth and
sunshine reaching them in the cold months to check the growth of the
ever-lengthening icicles hanging from the jutting cliffs, or melt the
arabesque frost-forms with which the many dashing cascades decorated
the adjacent rocks and shrubbery. Occasionally we would see where
some little stream ran down over the face of the bare, black rocks for
many hundred feet, and then its course would be a long band of sheeny
white, like a great rich, spotless scarf of satin, festooning the
war-grimed walls of some old castle.
Our duty now was to break up any nuclei of concentration that the

Rebels might attempt to form, and to guard our foragers--that is, the
teamsters and employee of the Quartermaster's Department--who were
loading grain into wagons and hauling it away.
This last was an arduous task. There is no man in the world that needs
as much protection as an Army teamster. He is worse in this respect
than a New England manufacturer, or an old maid on her travels. He is
given to sudden fears and causeless panics. Very innocent cedars have
a fashion of assuming in his eyes the appearance of desperate Rebels
armed with murderous guns, and there is no telling what moment a
rock may take such a form as to freeze his young blood, and make each
particular hair stand on end like quills upon the fretful porcupine. One
has to be particular about snapping caps in his neighborhood, and give
to him careful warning before discharging a carbine to clean it. His first
impulse, when anything occurs to jar upon his delicate nerves, is to cut
his wheel-mule loose and retire with the precipitation of a man having
an appointment to keep and being behind time. There is no man who
can get as much speed out of a mule as a teamster falling back from the
neighborhood of heavy firing.
This nervous tremor was not peculiar to the engineers of our
transportation department. It was noticeable in the gentry who carted
the scanty provisions of the Rebels. One of Wheeler's cavalrymen told
me that the brigade to which he belonged was one evening ordered to
move at daybreak. The night was rainy, and it was thought best to
discharge the guns and reload before starting. Unfortunately, it was
neglected to inform the teamsters of this, and at the first discharge they
varnished from the scene with such energy that it was over a week
before the brigade succeeded in getting them back again.
Why association with the mule should thus demoralize a man, has
always been a puzzle to me, for while the mule, as Col. Ingersoll has
remarked, is an animal without pride of ancestry or hope of posterity,
he is still not a coward by any means. It is beyond dispute that a
full-grown and active lioness once attacked a mule in the grounds of
the Cincinnati Zoological Garden, and was ignominiously beaten,
receiving injuries from which she died shortly afterward.

The apparition of a badly-scared teamster urging one of his wheel
mules at break-neck speed over the rough ground, yelling for protection
against "them Johnnies," who had appeared on some hilltop in sight of
where he was gathering corn, was an almost hourly occurrence. Of
course the squad dispatched to his assistance found nobody.
Still, there were plenty of Rebels in the country, and they hung around
our front,