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If therefore Rodman had been sent to cross at eight o'clock, it is safe to say that his column, fording the stream in the face of Walker's deployed division, would never have reached the further bank, a contingency that McClellan did not consider when arguing, long afterward, the favorable results that might have followed an earlier attack.
A sudden freshet in the ordinarily shallow and partially dry bed of the Donglee River tells of the heaviness of last night's rainstorm among the hills, and compels a halt of a couple of hours until the rapidly subsiding water gets low enough to admit of fording it with a native bullock gharri.
'Twas touch and go, but happily, as I have said, the river was at hand. We came to the high bank some hundred yards above the fording place, and lacking Dick's example to shame me to the braver course, I fear I should have recoiled at the brink.
The River had swollen too turbulent for fording and she had crossed the white bridge she remembered she had crossed at a gallop contrary to the little notice tacked on the board railing. Then, the horses steaming from rain had stopped in front of the Mission gate and Mrs. Williams had come out "wondering about Fordie in the storm."
Four hundred and fifty miles from Santa Fé, being about one half the distance across the prairies, had been accomplished by the party Kit had joined for this homeward trip. The fording of the Arkansas River had been reached. Here Kit's party met with some traders bound for New Mexico.
They had been rushed here and rushed there wet with sweat and wet with fording the streams, under a sun that would have made moving a fan an effort, and they lay prostrate, gasping at the hot air, with faces aflame, and their tongues sticking out, and their eyes rolling.
Upon finding that his crossing would be opposed by the troops who had passed over to the east bank, Burgoyne had decided to go back the way he came as far as Saratoga, and on fording the river at that place. Orders were therefore given to destroy the bridge. Just before day, his rearguard set fire to it, and marched off without interference. All the sick and wounded were left behind.
From Dulcigno the road I had to take to Scutari was a plunge into the unknown. I hired two horses, one a pack-horse for the baggage and the other a poor hack for riding. The roads were fetlock deep in mud, and the whole region so inundated that we often had to take across country, profiting by the ridges to avoid fording the unconjecturable depths of water in the ancient roads.
We returned the next day, and while fording a creek, which we had crossed in a canoe the day before, one of our party forgot my horse's peculiarity and came up to me; he darted fairly out to sea, and not till he found himself off his legs was he frightened; fortunately alarm made him tractable, and I easily turned his head and landed in safety.
I afterward heard that two drunken officers had rushed out into the street, and so apprised her of the danger. After this the detachment set out towards Rivas. We advanced along the lake shore some distance, fording the mouth of the little Rio Lajas, whose waters had lost much depth since I first, passed over this road, crossing the stream in a bungo.
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