s marching toward us--Communications
renewed--Advance toward Lewisburg--Camp Lookout--A private sorrow.

The position at Gauley Bridge was an important one from a military
point of view. It was where the James River and Kanawha turnpike,
after following the highlands along the course of New River as it
comes from the east, drops into a defile with cliffs on one side and
a swift and unfordable torrent upon the other, and then crosses the
Gauley River, which is a stream of very similar character. The two
rivers, meeting at a right angle, there unite to form the Great
Kanawha, which plunges over a ledge of rocks a mile below and winds
its way among the hills, some thirty miles, before it becomes a
navigable stream even for the lightest class of steamboats. From
Gauley Bridge a road runs up the Gauley River to Cross Lanes and
Carnifex Ferry, something over twenty miles, and continuing
northward reaches Summersville, Sutton, and Weston, making almost
the only line of communication between the posts then occupied by
our troops in northwestern Virginia and the head of the Kanawha
valley. Southwestward the country was extremely wild and broken,
with few and small settlements and no roads worthy the name. The
crossing of the Gauley was therefore the gate through which all
important movements from eastern into southwestern Virginia must
necessarily come, and it formed an important link in any chain of
posts designed to cover the Ohio valley from invasion. It was also
the most advanced single post which could protect the Kanawha
valley. Further to the southeast, on Flat-top Mountain, was another
very strong position, where the principal road on the left bank of
New River crosses a high and broad ridge; but a post could not be
safely maintained there without still holding Gauley Bridge in
considerable force, or establishing another post on the right bank
of New River twenty miles further up. All these streams flow in
rocky beds seamed and fissured to so great a degree that they had no
practicable fords. You might go forty miles up New River and at
least twenty up the Gauley before you could find a place where
either could be passed by infantry or wagons. The little ferries
which had been made in a few eddies of the rivers were destroyed in
the first campaign, and the post at the Gauley became nearly
impregnable in front, and could only be turned by long and difficult
detours.

An interval of about a hundred miles separated thi