in ninety days; but
with this skeleton of an army, we rest in doubt and idleness. There is a
screw loose somewhere.

10. Fortifications are being constructed. My men are working on them.

Just now I heard the whistle of a locomotive, on the opposite side of
the river. This is the first intimation we have had of the completion
of the road to this point. The bridge will be finished in a day or two,
and then the trains will arrive and depart from Murfreesboro regularly.

11. Called at Colonel Wilder's quarters, and while there met General J.
J. Reynolds. He made a brief allusion to the Stalnaker times. On my
return to camp, I stopped for a few minutes at Department head-quarters
to see Garfield. General Rosecrans came into the room; but, as I was
dressed in citizens' clothes, did not at first recognize me. Garfield
said: "General Rosecrans, Colonel Beatty." The General took me by the
hand, turned my face to the light, and said he did not have a fair view
of me before. "Well," he continued, "you are a general now, are you?" I
told him I was not sure yet, and he said: "Is it uncertainty or modesty
that makes you doubt?" "Uncertainty." "Well," he replied, "you and Sam
Beatty have both been recommended. I guess it will be all right." He
invited me to remain for supper, but I declined.

16. To-day I rode over the battle-field, starting at the river and
following the enemy's line off to their left, then crossing over on to
the right of our line, and following it to the left. For miles through
the woods evidences of the terrible conflict meet one at every step.
Trees peppered with bullet and buckshot, and now and then one cut down
by cannon ball; unexploded shell, solid shot, dead horses, broken
caissons, haversacks, old shoes, hats, fragments of muskets, and unused
cartridges, are to be seen every-where. In an open space in the oak
woods is a long strip of fresh earth, in which forty-one sticks are
standing, with intervals between them of perhaps a foot. Here forty-one
poor fellows lie under the fresh earth, with nothing but the forty-one
little sticks above to mark the spot. Just beyond this are twenty-five
sticks, to indicate the last resting-place of twenty-five brave men; and
so we found these graves in the woods, meadows, corn-fields,
cotton-fields, every-where. We stumbled on one grave in a solitary spot
in the thick cedars, where the sunshine never penetrates. At the head of
the little mound of fresh earth a round sti