ery, ordered to the front, dashed up by batteries,
took positions, unlimbered and opened savagely. The Union batteries,
already posted, commenced their splendid practice. Sheet after sheet of
deadly flame burst from one side and the other of the combatants; the
rattling crack of the volleys of firearms became blended with the heavy
metallic ring and sullen boom of the artillery; and the first battle of
Malvern Hill--that which was to decide the approach to the main
position--was now fairly begun.

From various and hitherto unknown paths through the woods and marshes,
the gray-clads came on in swarms, every moment adding to the formidable
character of the attack, the evident numbers of the assailants, and the
certainty that the struggle was to be a close and terrible one. But the
gathering thousands were fiercely met by the blue-clad veterans of the
Union, and repeatedly driven back in confusion. Let this be recorded,
from the personal knowledge of sharers in that combat--whatever
after-history may choose to consider authority on the subject,--that
_the Federal troops never permanently yielded one foot of ground during
the fight_, however worn-out with fatigue, embarrassed by a cramped
position, outnumbered and at one time half-surrounded.

It has before been said that the Battle of Malvern Hill was one of the
most magnificent artillery duels known to the history of war; and though
the most splendid effects of that terrible arm were shown at a later
period, when the whole range of McClellan's heavy pieces came into play,
yet even now the effects were such as to have satisfied the very Moloch
of destructive war. The play of the Union regular batteries was
beautiful, (if such a term can be applied to that which defaces the
beauty of God's handiwork, in however holy a cause.) Every shot could be
seen to tear open the dense masses of the enemy in wide spaces, through
which the white background could be distinctly seen until they were
closed again by almost superhuman efforts. The volunteer batteries
seemed little behind in their practice--their solid shot and bursting
shell falling in a perpetual shower and making fearful havoc alternately
in the solid masses of the rebels and among the gunners of their
artillery.

When the Confederates opened with their batteries, General Porter,
accompanied by a part of his staff, was occupying the upper slope of an
eminence to the right, from which a tolerably good view of the
battle-g