The Citizen-Soldier | Page 9

the opposite
side of the mountain, they halted, and while watering their horses were
fired upon. One man was killed and three wounded. The other seven
fled. Colonel Kimball sent out a detachment to bring in the wounded;
but whether it succeeded or not I have not heard.
A musician belonging to the Fourth Ohio, when six miles out of
Beverly, on his way to Phillippi, was fired upon and instantly killed. So
goes what little there is of war in Western Virginia.

20. The most interesting of all days in the mountains is one on which
the sky is filled with floating clouds, not hiding it entirely, but leaving
here and there patches of blue. Then the shadows shift from place to
place, as the moving clouds either let in the sunshine or exclude it.
Standing at my tent-door at eleven o'clock in the morning, with a stiff
breeze going, and the clouds on the wing, we see a peak, now in the
sunshine, then in the shadow, and the lights and shadows chasing each
other from point to point over the mountains, presenting altogether a
panorama most beautiful to look upon, and such an one as God only
can present.
I can almost believe now that men become, to some extent, like the
country in which they live. In the plain country the inhabitants learn to
traffic, come to regard money-getting as the great object in life, and
have but a dim perception of those higher emotions from which spring
the noblest acts. In a mountain country God has made many things
sublime, and some things very beautiful. The rugged, the smooth, the
sunshine, and the shadow meet one at every turn. Here are peaks
getting the earliest sunlight of the morning, and the latest of the
evening; ravines so deep the light of day can never penetrate them; bold,
rugged, perpendicular rocks, which have breasted the storms for ages;
gentle slopes, swelling away until their summits seem to dip in the blue
sky; streams, cold and clear, leaping from crag to crag, and rushing
down nobody knows whither. Like the country, may we not look to
find the people unpolished, rugged and uneven, capable of the noblest
heroism or the most infernal villainy--their lives full of lights and
shadows, elevations and depressions?
The mountains, rising one above another, suggest, forcibly enough, the
infinite power of the Creator, and when the peaks come in contact with
the clouds it requires but little imagination to make one feel that God,
as at Sinai, has set His foot upon the earth, and that earth and heaven
are really very near each other.
21. This morning, at two o'clock, I was rattled up by a sentinel, who
had come to camp in hot haste to inform me that he had seen and fired
upon a body of twenty-five or more men, probably the advance guard

of the enemy. He desired me to send two companies to strengthen the
outpost. I preferred, however, to go myself to the scene of the trouble;
and, after investigation, concluded that the guard had been alarmed by a
couple of cows.
Another lot of secession prisoners, some sixty in number, passed by
this afternoon. They were highly pleased with the manner in which they
had been treated by their captors.
The sound of a musket is just heard on the picket post, three-quarters of
a mile away, and the shot is being repeated by our line of sentinels. * *
* The whole camp has been in an uproar. Many men, half asleep,
rushed from their tents and fired off their guns in their company
grounds. Others, supposing the enemy near, became excited and
discharged theirs also. The tents were struck, Loomis' First Michigan
Battery manned, and we awaited the attack, but none was made. It was
a false alarm. Some sentinel probably halted a stump and fired, thus
rousing a thousand men from their warm beds. This is the first night
alarm we have had.
22. We hear that General Cox has been beaten on the Kanawha; that
our forces have been repulsed at Manassas Gap, and that our troops
have been unsuccessful in Missouri. I trust the greater part, if not all, of
this is untrue.
We have been expecting orders to march, but they have not come. The
men are very anxious to be moving, and when moving, strange to say,
always very anxious to stop.
23. Officers and men are low-spirited to-night. The news of yesterday
has been confirmed. Our army has been beaten at Manassas with
terrible loss. General McClellan has left Beverly for Washington.
General Rosecrans will assume command in Western Virginia. We are
informed that twenty miles from us, in the direction of Staunton, some
three thousand secessionists are in camp.