whole as making only 5200 effective men. Every wagon was put to work
hauling supplies and ammunition, even the headquarters baggage
wagons and the regimental wagons of the troops, as well those
stationed in the rear as those in front. We were sixty miles from
the head of steamboat navigation, the wagon trains were too small
for a condition of things where the teams could hardly haul half
loads, and by the 1st of October we had demonstrated the fact that
it was impossible to sustain our army any further from its base
unless we could rely upon settled weather and good roads.

Lee had directed an effort to be made by General Loring, his
subordinate, on the Staunton line, to test the strength of the posts
under Reynolds at Cheat Mountain and Elkwater, and lively combats
had resulted on the 12th, and 14th of September. [Footnote: Official
Records, vol. v. pp. 185-193.] Reynolds held firm, and as Rosecrans
was not diverted from his plans and was pushing forward on the
Lewisburg line, Lee ordered Loring to report to him with most of his
command. Reynolds, in return, made a forced reconnoissance upon the
Confederate position at Greenbrier River on October 2d, but found it
too strong to be carried. The reinforcement by Loring gave Lee a
very positive advantage in numbers, but the storms and foundering
roads paralyzed both armies, which lay opposite each other upon the
crests of Big Sewell separated by a deep gorge. On the 5th of
October the condition of the Kanawha valley had become such that
Rosecrans felt compelled to withdraw his forces to the vicinity of
Gauley Bridge. The freshet had been an extraordinary one. At
Charleston the Kanawha River usually flows in a bed forty or fifty
feet below the plateau on which the town is built; but the waters
now rose above these high banks and flooded the town itself, being
four or five feet deep in the first story of dwelling-houses built