o well protected by nature, and
to avoid surprise from this direction he kept pickets and scouts
well out to his right. Hart regarded a movement around the enemy's
right as certain of discovery, and hence not likely to be
successful.

Promptly at day-dawn Rosecrans passed into the mountain fastness,
whither the adventurous hunter only had rarely penetrated, accompanied
by Col. F. W. Lander, a volunteer aide-de-camp of McClellan's staff
--a man of much frontier experience in the West. In a rain lasting
five hours the column slowly struggled through the dense timber,
up the mountain, crossing and recrossing ravines by tortuous ways,
and by 1 P.M. it had arrived near the mountain top, but yet some
distance to the southward of where the Beverly road led through a
depression, over the summit. After a brief rest, when, on nearing
the road at Hart's house, it was discovered and fired on unexpectedly
by the enemy.

To understand how it turned out that the enemy was found near the
summit where he was not expected, it is necessary to recur to what
McClellan was doing in the enemy's front. Hart had assured Rosecrans
there was no hostile force on the summit of the mountain, and on
encountering the Confederates there, Rosecrans for the time suspected
his guide of treachery.

But first an incident occurred in the 3d Ohio Regiment worth
mentioning. I. H. Marrow, its Colonel, who professed to be in
confidential relations with McClellan, returned from headquarters
about midnight of the 10th, and assuming to be possessed of the
plans for the next day, and pregnant with the great events to
follow, called out the regiment, and solemnly addressed it in
substance as follows:

"Soldiers of the Third: The assault on the enemy's works will be
made in the early morning. The Third will lead the column. The
secessionists have ten thousand men and forty rifled cannon. They
are strongly fortified. They have more man and more cannon than
we have. They will cut us to pieces. Marching to attack such an
enemy, so intrenched and so armed, is marching to a butcher-shop,
rather than to a battle. There is bloody work ahead. Many of you,
boys, will go out who will never come back again."( 4)

This speech, thus delivered to soldiers unused to battle was
calculated to cause the credulous to think of friends, home--death,
and it certainly had no tendency to inspire the untried volunteers
with hope and confidence. The speech was, of course