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We at once commenced disembarking the command: first the cavalry, which started at once for Burnsville, with orders to tear up the railroad-track, and burn the depots, shops, etc; and I followed with the infantry and artillery as fast as they were disembarked. It was raining very hard at the time. Daylight found us about six miles out, where we met the cavalry returning.
The Fifteenth Corps tore up the railroad-track eastward from Griswold, leaving Charles R. Wood's division behind as a rear-guard-one brigade of which was intrenched across the road, with some of Kilpatrick's cavalry on the flanks. General Walcutt was wounded in the leg, and had to ride the rest of the distance to Savannah in a carriage.
Wishing to reconnoitre the place in person, I rode forward by the Louisville road, into a dense wood of oak, pine, and cypress, left the horses, and walked down to the railroad-track, at a place where there was a side-track, and a cut about four feet deep. From that point the railroad was straight, leading into Savannah, and about eight hundred yards off were a rebel parapet and battery.
Neil began to feel rather drowsy himself; the motion was lulling, and now that they had crossed the railroad-track and reached the turnpike along the river, the carriage traveled smoothly. It was black night outside now, and through the nearest window at which the curtain had been lowered Neil could see nothing save an occasional light in some house.
On the 12th, General Kautz, with his cavalry, was started on a raid against the Danville Railroad, which he struck at Coalfield, Powhatan, and Chula Stations, destroying them, the railroad-track, two freight trains, and one locomotive, together with large quantities of commissary and other stores; thence, crossing to the South Side Road, struck it at Wilson's, Wellsville, and Black's and White's Stations, destroying the road and station-houses; thence he proceeded to City Point, which he reached on the 18th.
He made a cautious survey of the premises; then, opening a back window, he seized a small bottle by the neck and hurled it savagely against the brick wall opposite. The snow, which had begun as an insignificant flurry in the morning, developed into a storm by afternoon. Four miles from town, in a dreary stretch of country, a dejected-looking object tramped along the railroad-track.
He got up and walked down the road a quarter of a mile, to where the railroad-track crossed it, winding up the canyon. A train of "empties" was passing, bound into the camp, the cars rattling and bumping as the engine toiled up the grade. This suggested a solution of the difficulty. It was already growing dark.
The good woman kept her hand in her pocket all the rest of the way, eyeing all her fellow passengers sharply. But the professor guessed the truth. He had lost his wallet when he stumbled in the field. He was in a fever of impatience to return and hunt for it. Instead of going on to Chambersburg, he got out at the next station five miles from Knoxville and walked back on the railroad-track.
In the southeastern corner of Massachusetts, if you will take the trouble to follow up a railroad-track for a couple of miles and then plunge into the pine woods, you will come upon a few lonely, stunted scraps of it. The warmer airs which the Gulf Stream sends upon that coast have, it is said, something to do therewith.
On a broad level, stretching back for a quarter of a mile from the railroad-track, and terminating in a strip of noble oak woods, the tents of the encampment were pitched, forty or fifty in number, not too white and cleanly-looking, even at a distance, and decidedly dingy and yellow when brought to a nearer view.
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