as this creditable fight. While no
excuse can be given for the slovenly and ungainly riding, rusty sabres,
and dirty accoutrements, raw-boned and uncurried horses that had too
often made many of our cavalry regiments appear like a body of Sancho
Panzas thrown loosely together; it would still be exceedingly unfair to
have required as much of them as of the educated horsemen and superior
horseflesh that gave the Rebel cavalry their efficiency in the early
stages of the war. Since then the scales have turned. Frequent
successful raids and resistless charges have given the courage, skill,
and dash of our Gregg, Buford, Kilpatrick, Grierson, and others that
might be named, honorable mention at every loyal fireside.

While on the top of this ridge, Rush's regiment of lancers, with lances
in rest and pennons gaily fluttering beneath the spear heads, cantered
past the regiment. Their strange equipment gave an oriental appearance
to the columns moving toward the ford. With straining eyes we followed
their movement up the river and junction with the cavalry then crossing
at a ford above the pontoons. The Regiment had been almost continually
broken up for detached service, at different head-quarters, or for the
purpose of halting stragglers. With many of the men, their service
appeared like their equipment, ornamental rather than useful, and in
connexion with their foraging reputation, won for them the expressive
designation of "Pig Stickers."

Darkness was just setting in when our turn came upon the pontoon bridge,
and it was quite dark when we prepared ourselves, in a pelting rain, for
rest for the night, as we thought, in a meadow half a mile distant from
the road. At midnight, in mud and rain, we resumed the march, in convoy
of a pontoon train, and over a by-road which from the manner its
primitive rock was revealed, must have been unused for years. The
streams forded during that night of sleepless toil, the enjoined
silence, broken only by the sloppy shuffle of shoes half filled with
water, and the creaking wagons, the provoking halts that would tempt the
eyes to a slumber that would be broken immediately by the resumption of
the forward movement, have left ineffaceable memories. A somewhat
pedantic order of "Accelerate the speed of your command, Colonel," given
by our General of Division, as the head of the Regiment neared his
presence towards morning, reminded us of the "long and rapid march" that
the Commander-in-Chief in