s mountain
fastness from the similar passes which guarded eastern Virginia
along the line of the Blue Ridge. This debatable ground was sparsely
settled and very poor in agricultural resources, so that it could
furnish nothing for subsistence of man or beast. The necessity of
transporting forage as well as subsistence and ammunition through
this mountainous belt forbade any extended or continuous operations
there; for actual computation showed that the wagon trains could
carry no more than the food for the mule teams on the double trip,
going and returning, from Gauley Bridge to the narrows of New River
where the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad crossed upon an important
bridge which was several times made the objective point of an
expedition. This alone proved the impracticability of the plan
McClellan first conceived, of making the Kanawha valley the line of
an important movement into eastern Virginia. It pointed very
plainly, also, to the true theory of operations in that country.
Gauley Bridge should have been held with a good brigade which could
have had outposts several miles forward in three directions, and,
assisted by a small body of horse to scour the country fifty miles
or more to the front, the garrison could have protected all the
country which we ever occupied permanently. A similar post at
Huttonsville with detachments at the Cheat Mountain pass and
Elkwater pass north of Huntersville would have covered the only
other practicable routes through the mountains south of the line of
the Baltimore and Ohio Railway. These would have been small
intrenched camps, defensive in character, but keeping detachments
constantly active in patrolling the front, going as far as could be
done without wagons. All that ever was accomplished in that region
of any value would thus have been attained at the smallest expense,
and the resources that were for three years wasted in those
mountains might have been applied to the legitimate lines of great
operations from the valley of the Potomac southward.

[Illustration: GAULEY BRIDGE & VICINITY.]

Nothing could be more romantically beautiful than the situation of
the post at Gauley Bridge. The hamlet had, before our arrival there,
consisted of a cluster of two or three dwellings, a country store, a
little tavern, and a church, irregularly scattered along the base of
the mountain and facing the road which turns from the Gauley valley
into that of the Kanawha. The lower slope of the