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Updated: May 12, 2025
There would be no forage for the horses; the streams would be swollen and unfordable; the mountains rendered impassable by snow, and frost, and slippery roads. The men, too, unused to campaigning on the frontier, would not be able to endure a winter in the wilderness, with no better shelter than a tent; especially in their present condition, destitute of almost every thing.
Rested all day on the banks of the Choma, which is a muddy stream coming from the north and going to the south-west to join the Chiséra. It has worn itself a deep bed in the mud of its banks, and is twenty yards wide and in some spots waist deep, at other parts it is unfordable, it contains plenty of fish, and hippopotami and crocodiles abound.
With the unfordable stream on one side of them, an Indian band on the other, and an Indian band behind them their case was indeed serious. The transition from the Garden of Eden to a world of danger was sudden and complete. The band in the rear gave answer to the cry of their comrades in the west, and Henry and the shiftless one had never before heard a whoop so full of exultation and ferocity.
Another thousand or three-quarters of a mile and the water was waist-deep; another thousand about a mile in all and the water was unfordable, 'waters to swim in, a river that could not be passed over. Where did the increase come from? There were no tributaries. We do not hear of any side-stream flowing into the main body. Where did the increase come from?
"Owing," he says, "to the swollen condition of the Shenandoah River, the plan of operations which had been contemplated when we recrossed the Potomac could not be put in execution". The points fixed upon by Lee for passing the mountain were probably Snicker's and Ashby's Gaps, opposite Berryville and Millwood. The rains had, however, made the river, in these places, unfordable.
Was Ours a Guerilla War? Something almost miraculous now happened! Hardly had we been three hours across the river when it became completely unfordable! We knew that we should have now a few days at least in which to rest ourselves, and we marched slowly to the farm of Lubbeshoop.
The region, moreover, was complicated for both armies by the mighty Mississippi and the Big Black River, itself a large stream, and there were deep and often unfordable bayous. But Grant showed great qualities, and Dick, who was experienced enough now to see and know, admired him more than ever. He pushed forward with the utmost resolution and courage.
We could show that it was owing to changes of wind that the Spaniards failed to take Leyden, the fall of which into their hands would probably have proved fatal to the Dutch cause; that a sudden thaw prevented the French from seizing the Hague in 1672, and compelling the Dutch to acknowledge themselves subjects of Louis XIV.; that a change of wind enabled William of Orange to land in England, in 1688, without fighting a battle, when even victory might have been fatal to his purpose; that Continental expeditions fitted out for the purpose of restoring the Stuarts to the British throne were more than once ruined by the occurrence of tempests; that the defeat of our army at Germantown was in part due to the existence of a fog; that a severe storm prevented General Howe from assailing the American position on Dorchester Heights, and so enabled Washington to make that position too strong to be attacked with hope of success, whereby Boston was freed from the enemy's presence; that a heavy fall of rain, by rendering the River Catawba unfordable, put a stop, for a few days, to those movements by which Lord Cornwallis intended to destroy the army of General Morgan, and obtain compensation for Tarleton's defeat at the Cowpens; that an autumnal tempest compelled the same British commander to abandon a project of retreat from Yorktown, which good military critics have thought well conceived, and promising success; that the severity of the winter of 1813 interfered effectively with the measures which Napoleon had formed with the view of restoring his affairs, so sadly compromised by his failure in Russia; that the "misty, chilly, and insalubrious" weather of Louisiana, and its mud, had a marked effect on Sir Edward Pakenham's army, and helped us to victory over one of the finest forces ever sent by Europe to the West; that in 1828 the Russians lost myriads of men and horses, in the Danubian country and its vicinity, through heavy rains and hard frosts; that the November hurricane of 1854 all but paralyzed the allied forces in the Crimea; and many similar things that establish the helplessness of men in arms when the weather is adverse to them.
Perhaps once a month the big, clumsy flatboat was rowed across the river with horses or cattle or sheep. And the season was now close at hand when for weeks, sometimes months, the river was unfordable. There were a score of permanent families, a host of merry, sturdy children, a number of idle young men, and only one girl Lucy Bostil.
At length arriving within a few hundred yards of the glacier, full of panax barbs, I found that both the glacier and its unfordable stream were pressing hard against a shelving cliff, dangerously steep, leaving no margin, and compelling me to scramble along its face before I could get on to the glacier.
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