w charged upon our lines, making a desperate effort to turn
our right flank, but without avail. Again and again the rebels in
columns rushed with the greatest fury upon the two brigades in front,
without being able to move them from their position. At half-past three
o'clock our sufferings had been so great that General Sedgwick sent a
messenger to General Burnside, who had now crossed his corps at Germania
Ford, with a request that he would send a division to our assistance.

The assistance was promised, but an order from General Grant made other
disposition of the division, and what remained of the noble old Sixth
corps was left to hold its position alone. At four, or a little later,
the rebels retired, leaving many of their dead upon the ground, whom
they were unable to remove. In these encounters the Seventh Maine and
Sixty-first Pennsylvania regiments of Neill's brigade, who were on the
right flank, received the heaviest onsets, and suffered most severely.
At one time the Maine regiment found itself flanked by a brigade of
rebels. Changing front the gallant regiment charged to the rear and
scattered its opponents in confusion. The opposing lines were upon the
two slopes of a ravine, through which ran a strip of level marshy
ground, densely wooded like the rest of the wilderness. The confederates
now commenced to strengthen the position on their side of the ravine,
felling timber and covering it with earth. The woods resounded with the
strokes of their axes, as the busy workmen plied their labor within
three hundred yards, and in some places less than one hundred yards of
our line, yet so dense was the thicket that they were entirely concealed
from our view.

Meanwhile the battle had raged furiously along the whole line. The
rattle of musketry would swell into a full continuous roar as the
simultaneous discharge of ten thousand guns mingled in one grand
concert, and then after a few minutes, become more interrupted,
resembling the crash of some huge king of the forest when felled by the
stroke of the woodman's axe. Then would be heard the wild yells which
always told of a rebel charge, and again the volleys would become more
terrible and the broken, crashing tones would swell into one continuous
roll of sound, which presently would be interrupted by the vigorous
manly cheers of the northern soldiers, so different from the shrill yell
of the rebels, and which indicated a repulse of their enemies. Now and
then the mo