s of the great battle
of the "Crater."

* * * * *

ELLIOTT'S BRIGADE.

After the explosion, with less than one thousand two hundred men, and
with the co-operation of Wright's Battery and Davenport's Battery, and
a few men of Wise's Brigade, resisted nine thousand of the enemy from
five to eight o'clock. Then four thousand five hundred blacks rushed
over, and the Forty-ninth and Twenty-fifth North Carolina, Elliott's
Brigade, welcomed them to hospitable graves at 9 o'clock A.M.

At about 9.30 A.M. old Virginia--that never tires in good works--with
eight hundred heroes rushed into the trench of the Seventeenth and
slaughtered hundreds of whites and blacks, with decided preference for
the Ethiopians.

Captain Geo. B. Lake, of Company B, Twenty-second South Carolina, who
was himself buried beneath the debris, and afterwards captured, gives
a graphic description of his experience and the scenes around the
famous "Crater." He says in a newspaper article:

BY CAPTAIN GEORGE B. LAKE.

The evening before the mine was sprung, or possibly two evenings
before, Colonel David Fleming, in command of the Twenty-second South
Carolina Regiment--I don't know whether by command of General
Stephen Elliott or not--ordered me to move my company, Company B,
Twenty-second South Carolina, into the rear line, immediately in rear
of Pegram's four guns. I had in my company one officer, Lieutenant
W.J. Lake, of Newberry, S.C., and thirty-four enlisted men. This rear
line was so constructed that I could fire over Pegram's men on the
attacking enemy.

The enemy in our front had two lines of works. He had more men in his
line nearest our works than we had in his front. From this nearest
line he tunnelled to and under Pegram's salient, and deposited in a
magazine prepared for it not less than four tons of powder, some of
their officers say it was six tons. We knew the enemy were mining, and
we sunk a shaft on each side of the four-gun battery, ten feet or more
deep, and then extended the tunnel some distance to our front. We were
on a high hill, however, and the enemy five hundred and ten feet in
our front, where they began their work, consequently their mine was
far under the shaft we sunk. At night when everything was still, we
could hear the enemy's miners at work. While war means kill, the idea
of being blown into eternity without any warning was anything but
pleasant.

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