hillside behind the
houses was cultivated, and a hedgerow separated the lower fields
from the upper pasturage. Above this gentler slope the wooded steeps
rose more precipitately, the sandstone rock jutting out into crags
and walls, the sharp ridge above having scarcely soil enough to
nourish the chestnut-trees, here, like Mrs. Browning's woods of
Vallombrosa, literally "clinging by their spurs to the precipices."
In the angle between the Gauley and New rivers rose Gauley Mount,
the base a perpendicular wall of rocks of varying height, with high
wooded slopes above. There was barely room for the road between the
wall of rocks and the water on the New River side, but after going
some distance up the valley, the highway gradually ascended the
hillside, reaching some rolling uplands at a distance of a couple of
miles. Here was Gauley Mount, the country-house of Colonel C. Q.
Tompkins, formerly of the Army of the United States, but now the
commandant of a Confederate regiment raised in the Kanawha valley.
Across New River the heavy masses of Cotton Mountain rose rough and
almost inaccessible from the very water's edge. The western side of
Cotton Mountain was less steep, and buttresses formed a bench about
its base, so that in looking across the Kanawha a mile below the
junction of the rivers, one saw some rounded foothills which had
been cleared on the top and tilled, and a gap in the mountainous
wall made room on that side for a small creek which descended to the
Kanawha, and whose bed served for a rude country road leading to
Fayette C. H. At the base of Cotton Mountain the Kanawha equals the
united width of the two tributaries, and flows foaming over broken
rocks with treacherous channels between, till it dashes over the
horseshoe ledge below, known far and wide as the Kanawha Falls. On
either bank near the falls a small mill had been built, that on the
right bank a saw-mill and the one on the left for grinding grain.

Our encampment necessarily included the saw-mill below the falls,
where the First Kentucky Regiment was placed to guard the road
coming from Fayette C. H. Two regiments were encamped at the bridge
upon the hillside above the hedgerow, having an advanced post of
half a regiment on the Lewisburg road beyond the Tompkins farm, and
scouting the country to Sewell Mountain. Smaller outposts were
stationed some distance up the valley of the Gauley. My headquarters
tents were pitched in the door-yard of a dwellin