considerable force, or establishing another post on the right bank
of New River twenty miles further up. All these streams flow in
rocky beds seamed and fissured to so great a degree that they had no
practicable fords. You might go forty miles up New River and at
least twenty up the Gauley before you could find a place where
either could be passed by infantry or wagons. The little ferries
which had been made in a few eddies of the rivers were destroyed in
the first campaign, and the post at the Gauley became nearly
impregnable in front, and could only be turned by long and difficult
detours.

An interval of about a hundred miles separated this mountain
fastness from the similar passes which guarded eastern Virginia
along the line of the Blue Ridge. This debatable ground was sparsely
settled and very poor in agricultural resources, so that it could
furnish nothing for subsistence of man or beast. The necessity of
transporting forage as well as subsistence and ammunition through
this mountainous belt forbade any extended or continuous operations
there; for actual computation showed that the wagon trains could
carry no more than the food for the mule teams on the double trip,
going and returning, from Gauley Bridge to the narrows of New River
where the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad crossed upon an important
bridge which was several times made the objective point of an
expedition. This alone proved the impracticability of the plan
McClellan first conceived, of making the Kanawha valley the line of
an important movement into eastern Virginia. It pointed very
plainly, also, to the true theory of operations in that country.
Gauley Bridge should have been held with a good brigade which could
have had outposts several miles forward in three directions, and,
assisted by a small body of horse to scour the country fifty miles