young trees and laurel bushes. Breakfast was over, the fog was
lifting out of the valley, and I was attending to the usual morning
routine of clerical work, when the report and echo of a cannon-shot,
down the gorge in the direction of Gauley Bridge, was heard. It was
unusual, enough so to set me thinking what it could mean, but the
natural explanation suggested itself that it was one of our own
guns, perhaps fired at a target. In a few moments an orderly came in
some haste, saying the general desired to see me at his tent. As I
walked over to his quarters, another shot was heard. As I
approached, I saw him standing in front of his tent door, evidently
much excited, and when I came up to him, he said in the rapid,
half-stammering way peculiar to him at such times: "The enemy has
got a battery on Cotton Mountain opposite our post, and is shelling
it! What d' ye think of that?" The post at the bridge and his
headquarters were connected by telegraph, and the operator below had
reported the fact of the opening of the cannonade from the mountain
side above him, and added that his office was so directly under fire
that he must move out of it. Indeed he was gone and communication
broken before orders could be sent to him or to the post. The fact
of the cannonade did not disturb me so much as the way in which it
affected Rosecrans. He had been expecting to be attacked by Lee in
front, and knew that McCook was exchanging shots across the river
with some force of the enemy at Miller's Ferry; but that the attack
should come two miles or more in our rear, from a point where
artillery had a plunging fire directly into our depot of supplies
and commanded our only road for a half-mile where it ran on a narrow
bench along New River under Gauley Mountain cliffs, had been so
startling as to throw him decidedly off his balance. The error in
not occupying Cotton Mountain himself was now not only made plain,
but the consequences were not pleasant to contemplate. I saw that