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He shortly afterwards sallied out to attack the intrenchments of the Indians, but Pontiac having received intelligence of his intention, laid an ambuscade for him, beat back the troops with great loss, and poor Dalyell fell in the combat that took place near a bridge which still goes by the name of Bloody Bridge. Pontiac cut off the head of Captain Dalyell, and set it upon a post."
They are protected by an interior fosse seven feet deep by thirty-five feet wide. According to measurements carefully made by Colonel Whittlesey, the total area covered by these intrenchments is no less than twelve square miles, and the length of the mounds exceeds two miles.
To guard the line of intrenchments stretching around Petersburg and Richmond for more than thirty-five miles, he had less than 30,000 effective men, and starvation and disease were daily thinning their impoverished ranks; the soldiers were resorting to the corn intended for the horses, and the cavalry were obliged to disperse through the country seeking fodder for their animals in the wasted fields; the defenders of the trenches, barefooted and in rags, lay exposed to the cold and wet, day and night; there were no medicines for the sick and no great supply of ammunition for the guns.
The maneuver brought us within fair range of the Spanish intrenchments along the line of hills which we called the San Juan Hills, because on one of them was the San Juan blockhouse. On that day my regiment had the lead of the second brigade, and we marched down the trail following in trace behind the first brigade.
Notwithstanding all the reinforcement which Oglethorpe had received, it was judged impracticable to take the place by assault from the land side, unless an attack could be made at the same time by the boats of the men of war, and other small craft, on the sea side, on which the town had no intrenchments; and to begin a regular siege on the land side was impossible, as he had neither force enough for investing the place, nor any pioneers for breaking the ground, and carrying on the approaches.
At about one hundred fifty yards from the intrenchments he was perceived by the scouts of the insurgents, who promptly fired on the advancing troops. Upon this reception Captain Thomas gave the order to fire, and the intrenchments were carried with a rush after about ten minutes of sharp fighting.
After the battle at El Caney was well opened, and the sound of the small-arm fire caused us to believe that Lawton was driving the enemy before him, I directed Grimes' Battery to open fire from the heights of El Pozo on the San Juan block-house, which could be seen situated in the enemy's intrenchments extending along the crest of San Juan Hill.
This line ran generally along the crest of high ground, but in one place crossed a ravine which opens into the river between the village and the fort. The ground inside and outside of this intrenched line was very broken and generally wooded. The trees outside of the rifle-pits had been cut down for a considerable way out, and had been felled so that their tops lay outwards from the intrenchments.
Three weeks after the date of that letter, Hooker's army was in motion to head off Lee, who had started to do the very thing thus hinted at, and there was not a soldier in the federal army of Virginia who did not feel, if he gave the matter any thought, that the confederate chief had made a fatal mistake, and rejoice at the opportunity to meet him, since meet him we must, outside his intrenchments and the jungles of Virginia.
No less than a thousand Arabs were found to have fallen in and around their intrenchments, and numbers must have got away only to die subsequently from their wounds. It was learned from prisoners that Osman Digma had not himself been present at the battle, but had sent a thousand men to reinforce those engaged in the siege of Tokar.
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