mountains. Accordingly, Longstreet and Hill were directed to
proceed from Chambersburg to Gettysburg, to which point Gen.
Ewell was also instructed to march from Carlisle."--_Extract from
Gen. R. E. Lee's Report of the Battle of Gettysburg._

_Monday, 29th._--It was bruited about camp that the Twenty-Third would
be called on to furnish a detail of men to go out as scouts, and many a
breast fluttered with anxious debate upon the subject. Without, was
danger and honor; within, security and shame. Who had the courage to go
out to the very advance, taking his life in his hand, with no more than
musket range between himself and the enemy? We had already been drawn
up in line of battle, solemnly awaiting the enemy who was expected to
open fire on us at any moment, and there had been no flinching. But
then we had the moral support of numbers to keep up our courage. The
whole regiment stood shoulder to shoulder and each man felt the safer
for having his comrades all about him. But to go out from the presence
of these comrades, to march out of the carefully guarded fort, where
all were friends and defenders together, into the open country which
the imagination filled with enemies; to take position alone in some
distant covert perhaps, warily lying in wait like a wild Indian for the
equally wary foe, when the pushing aside of a twig or the crumpling of
leaves beneath the feet might betray you to your instant death; and so
to watch for hours together whether by day or by night, in storm or in
shine--this was something to try of what stuff we were made.

We were ordered up in line early in the day, and a call made for
volunteers. Instantly five times the number needed stepped forward
eager competitors for the post of danger. The squad was at once formed,
and in company with similar detachments from the Eighth and Fifty-Sixth
N.Y.S.N.G., marched out of the fort amid a tempest of cheers. When we
saw that our brave comrades were really gone we turned back with heavy
hearts, for it seemed to our imaginations that as their object was to
spy out the enemy, they would not fail to find him, and that then there
would be unavoidably an action, which meant death to some. We
conjectured sadly which one of these brave fellows it might be upon
whose living face we had looked for the last time; who, the first of us
all, should have bound about his brows the laurel wreath of glory. At
night-fall the Seventy-First returned to