ect their owners), the soldiers would very often
burn these houses down, in order that, when the family had fled, they
might use the fireplace and chimney for cooking; and so our men,
forbidden to enter the country houses to buy or beg food, stole it.

I can recall one very remarkable incident. We had six guns, heavy old
brass Napoleons. One afternoon we had to go uphill--in many cases it was
_terribly_ steep--by a road like those in Devonshire, resembling a ditch.
It rained in torrents and the water was knee-deep. The poor mules had to
be urged and aided in every way, and half the pulling and pushing was
done by us. All of us worked like navvies. So we went onwards and
upwards for sixteen miles! When we got to the top of the hill, out of
one hundred privates, Henry, I, and four others alone remained. R. W.
Gilder was one of these, besides Landis and Lieutenant Perkins--that is
to say, we alone had not given out from fatigue; but the rest soon
followed. This exploit was long after cited as one of the most
extraordinary of the war--and so it was. We were greatly complimented on
it. Old veterans marvelled at it. But what was worse, I had to lie all
night on sharp flints--_i.e._, the slag or _debris_ of an iron smeltery
or old forge out of doors--in a terrible rain, and, though tired to
death, got very little sleep; nor had we any food whatever even then or
the next day. Commissariat there was none, and very little at any time.

From all that I learned from many intimate friends who were in the war, I
believe that we in the battery suffered to the utmost all that men can
suffer in the field, short of wounds and death. Yet it is a strange
thing, that had I not received at this time most harassing and
distressing news from home, and been in constant fear as regards my
brother, I should have enjoyed all this Emergency like a picnic. We
often marched and camped in the valley of the Cumberland and in Maryland,
in deep valleys, by roaring torrents or "on the mountains high," in
scenery untrodden by any artist or tourist, of marvellous grandeur and
beauty. One day we came upon a scene which may be best described by the
fact that my brother and I both stopped, and both cried out at once,
"Switzerland!" The beauty of Nature was to me a constant source of
delight. Another was the realisation of the sense of duty and the
pleasure of war for a noble cause. It was once declared by a reviewer
that in my Breitmann poems