Our method of forwarding supplies was to assemble the wagon trains near my lower camp during the day, and push them forward to Gauley Mount and Tompkins farm during the night.

The ferry-boat at Gauley Bridge was kept out of harm's way in the Gauley, behind the projection of Gauley Mount, but the hawser on which it ran was not removed.

At nightfall the boat would be manned, dropped down to its place, made fast to the hawser by a snatch-block, and commence its regular trips, passing over the wagons.

The ferries, both at the bridge and at Montgomery's, were under the management of Captain Lane of the Eleventh Ohio and his company of mechanics.

[Footnote: Captain P.P.Lane of Cincinnati, later colonel of the regiment.] We had found at points along the Kanawha the gunwales of flatboats, gotten out by lumbermen in the woods and brought to the river bank ready to be put into boats for the coal trade, which had already much importance in the valley.
These gunwales were single sticks of timber, sixty or eighty feet long, two or three feet wide, and say six inches thick.