table. Vain thought! Scarcely had
the fires begun to throw a more cheerful light on the scene, when
"Brigade, forward!" was heard from the front, and turning our backs on the
comforts we had hoped for, we squattered up the road. "Squattered" is
rather a singular word, but it is the only one available to describe the
mode of progression up that road. And such a road! Considered a bad road
in fine weather, in a region where there are _no_ good roads, the most
vivid imagination fails to depict its present condition. It wound along
halfway up the side of a mountain; and between the steady pour of the
rain, filling up every gully and making a mud lake of every hole, and the
torrents which, rushing down from above, cut it into all sorts of hollows
and trenches, as they swept across to precipitate themselves off the other
side into the valley beneath, it presented every combination of evils
which could appal a weary traveler. Along this road, mill-race, slough,
stone bed--for it was all of these by turns--we pushed forward; but the
pen fails in the endeavor to describe that march. Many things have we
suffered and been jolly over, but it is unanimously voted that "for good,
square misery," the night of the 4th of July, 1863, is equaled by few and
excelled by none in the annals of the Twenty-second regiment.

As a pitchy blackness rendered everything invisible, a lantern was carried
at the head of the column, to prevent those behind from being lost. Every
few minutes we would be plunged into a mountain stream running across the
road, and which could be heard falling an indefinite distance down the
other side; wading across this, in an instant, more we would find
ourselves struggling knee-deep in mud of an unequaled tenacity; and the
efforts made to extricate ourselves generally resulted in getting tripped
up by projecting roots and stumps. As those in front reached an obstacle,
they passed the word down the line, "Stump!" "Ford!" "Stones!" "Mud-hole!"
Frequently this latter cry became altered to "Man in a mud-hole!" "_Two_
men in a mud-hole--look out sharp!!!"

The only way in which it was possible to move was by following exactly
behind your file-leader, if you lost sight of him you were helpless; yet,
amid all these difficulties, we continued our march, with a calm despair
that was prepared for anything.

At eleven o'clock at night the head of the regiment halted per
force--stuck in the mud--even the officers' horses too tire