the grape and canister which to the
last moment the enemy flung behind him. It would not have been well
for them to have fired too much if they had had ever so good a chance,
for they would have been no more likely to hit our men than their own,
who were our prisoners and scattered in squads of twenty, squads of
ten, and squads of one, all over the vast field. At one time they
made a determined stand along a ridge in front of our brigade. A
breastwork of rails was thrown together, colors planted, a nucleus
made, and both flanks grew longer and longer with wonderful rapidity.
It was evident that they were driving back their men to this line
without regard to regiment or organization of any kind. This could be
plainly seen from the adjacent and similar ridge over which we were
moving,--the pursuers being in quite as much disorder (so far as
organizations were concerned) as the pursued. That growing line began
to look ugly and somewhat quenched the ardor of the chase. It began to
be a question in many minds whether it would not be a point of wisdom
'to survey the vantage of the ground' before getting much further. But
just as we descended into the intervening hollow, a body of cavalry,
not large but compact, was seen scouring along the fields to our right
and front like a whirlwind directly toward the left flank of that
formidable line on the hill. When we reached the top there was no
enemy there! They had moved on and the cavalry after them.

"Thus the chase was continued, from position to position, for miles
and miles, for hours and hours, until darkness closed in and every
regiment went into camp on the identical ground it had left in such
haste in the morning. Every man tied his shelter tent to the very same
old stakes, and in half an hour coffee was boiling and salt pork
sputtering over thousands of camp fires. Civil life may furnish better
fare than the army at Cedar Creek had that night, but not better
appetites; for it must be borne in mind that many had gone into the
fight directly from their beds and had eaten nothing for twenty-four
hours.

"Men from every company started out the first thing after reaching
camp to look for our dead and wounded, many of whom lay not fifty rods
off. The slightly wounded who had not got away had been taken
prisoners and sent at once toward Richmond--while the severely wounded
had lain all day on the ground near where they were hit while the
tide of battle ebbed and flowed over t