CHAPTER VII.
COTTON MOUNTAIN Floyd cannonades Gauley Bridge--Effect on Rosecrans--Topography of Gauley Mount--De Villiers runs the gantlet--Movements of our forces--Explaining orders--A hard climb on the mountain--In the post at Gauley Bridge--Moving magazine and telegraph--A balky mule-team--Ammunition train under fire--Captain Fitch a model quartermaster--Plans to entrap Floyd--Moving supply trains at night--Method of working the ferry--of making flatboats--The Cotton Mountain affair--Rosecrans dissatisfied with Benham--Vain plans to reach East Tennessee.
On the 1st of November the early morning was fair but misty, and a fog lay in the gorge of New River nearly a thousand feet below the little plateau at the Tompkins farm, on which the headquarters tents were pitched.

General Rosecrans's tents were not more than a hundred yards above mine, between the turnpike and the steep descent to the river, though both our little camps were secluded by thickets of 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.