lacing it at Kanawha Falls, a mile below Gauley Bridge,
and within the limits of that post. To connect this with the
steamboats wherever the shoaling water might force them to stop, I
recommended the use of batteaux or keelboats, a craft which a
natural evolution had brought into use in the changeable mountain
rivers. They were a canoe-shaped open boat, sixty feet long by eight
wide, and were pushed up the stream by quants or poles. They
required a crew of five men,--four to do the poling, and a
steersman. In the swiftest "chutes" they carried a line ashore and
made fast to a tree, then warped the boat up to quieter water and
resumed the poling. Each boat would carry eight tons, and, compared
with teaming over roads of which the "bottom had dropped out," it
proved a most economical mode of transport. The batteaux dropped
alongside the steamer wherever she had to stop, the freight was
transferred to them directly, covered with tarpaulins, and the boats
pushed off. The number of hands was no greater than for teaming, and
the whole cost of the teams and their forage was saved. I had built
two of these early in the winter and they were in successful
operation. Two more were partly done when Fremont assumed command,
and I urgently recommended a fleet of fifteen or twenty as an
auxiliary to our transportation when active operations should be
resumed. By their use Gauley Bridge could be made the practical
depot of supply, and from ten to twenty miles of wretched and costly
wagoning be saved. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. iii.
pp. 45-48.]

I became satisfied, also, that the regulation army wagon was too
heavy for the difficult mountain roads, and recommended a strong but
much lighter farm wagon, in which four mules could draw nearly or
quite as much as six usually drew in the heavier wagon. This became
a matter of great consequence in a country where forage could not be
found, and where the wagon had to be loaded with the food for the
team as well as the rations and ordnance stores for the men.

It had already been determined to substitute the shelter tent for
other forms in the principal armies, and the change soon became
general. We, however, had to wait our turn after more important
columns were supplied, and our turn did not come till the campaign
was over. Even our requisitions for ammunition were not filled, our
artillery was not reduced to uniformity, and we could not secure
muskets enough of any one cali