Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 2.djvu/197

 while it lasted by rebel raids upon our communications, of which I shall speak hereafter.

I lost no time in pushing on from Bridgeport to Chattanooga, which I found to be an arduous undertaking of much hardship. The falling back of our army had been unfortunately accompanied by the abandonment of Lookout Mountain and Lookout Valley to the enemy. The Mountain rises, within a little over a mile from and to the west of the town limits, sheer up from the south bank of the Tennessee to the height of 2500 feet. Around its base ran the roads which formed the only direct western approaches from the Tennessee to Chattanooga, one down Lookout Valley, and the other over Raccoon Mountain. The occupation of Lookout by the rebels cut us completely off from the use of these roads, and limited us to the one longer and very difficult line of supply from Stevenson and Bridgeport up the Sequatchie Valley to Jasper, and thence over Walden's Ridge to the north bank of the Tennessee River opposite Chattanooga, a distance of forty-eight miles. I had no choice but to take this. I left Bridgeport on the afternoon of October 3, in an ambulance with three officers, and our horses gave out when we reached Jasper, ten miles distant, after dark. Starting again at daylight, the roads proved so execrable that we decided to continue on foot, and had the hardest struggle in ascending and descending in the darkness. It took until after midnight to make the eight miles to the river. I bivouacked the rest of the night with some teamsters around a camp fire, and crossed over to the town on one of the two bridges at daybreak on the 5th. I went directly to the general headquarters, where I was very well received by Generals Rosecrans and Garfield. The chief of staff provided me with quarters in a small brick house of which some of the staff had taken possession. Having been obliged to leave my hand valise and roll of wraps behind in the ambulance, my whole equipment consisted of what I carried on my body. I continued in this