Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 2.djvu/201

 river route, through the occupancy of Lookout Mountain and by cavalry raids upon our lines of communication between the Tennessee and Nashville. Haste had also been made in bringing up heavy guns for the bombardment of the town. It was their début that roused me from my slumber.

I made my way to the summit of Cameron Hill, where I had a fine panoramic view of the town, Missionary Ridge, and Lookout Mountain. The firing was carried on by ten guns stationed singly at considerable intervals along the winding road up the Mountain, and from one heavy piece and several light rifled pieces on Missionary Ridge. The highest gun on Lookout seemed to fire from an elevation of from 1200 to 1500 feet above the river. The heavy guns fired from a distance, measured by the sound, of about three miles. The firing continued all day till sunset, but varied greatly. Sometimes there were lively outbursts so that I could not count the number of shots, and again the discharges were single and in slow succession, as if for purposes of range-finding. Hundreds of shells were thrown in the course of the day, ranging from missiles six inches in diameter to those of three-inch fieldpieces. But the enemy inflicted hardly any damage. So far as I could learn, only one private was wounded in our camps, although crowds of our men freely exposed themselves by watching the fire from our parapets. Even the children pursued their games in the streets without concern. From our side only one field battery tried a little rifle practice from one of the redoubts. A couple of thirty-pounder rifle Parrotts had arrived from Nashville, but were not yet in position.

Before my return to the army, the Northern papers had been full of all sorts of accounts of the course of the two days' battles, the causes of our defeat, and the behavior of Generals Rosecrans, McCook, Crittenden, Negley, Davis, Sheridan, Wood, and Van Cleve. Charges that the first three had sought safety in flight from the battle-field had