The first week in June had passed, and General Sherman’s troops, after marching more than a hundred miles since leaving Chattanooga, through a country unknown to them, daily skirmishing with the watchful foe, striking against works capable of resisting twice their number of troops, and all the time without broken ranks, gaining substantial advantage, now fairly confronted General Johnston intrenched upon Lost Mountain, Pine Hill, and Kenesaw Mountain, three bold peaks connected together by a line of ridges, and twenty-six miles north of Atlanta. His line was closely circumscribed by ours. In no place were the hostile parallels more than a musket-shot apart. The rebel right rested on Kenesaw Mountain, on the railroad, four miles north of Marietta, their left on Lost Mountain, some six miles west of Kenesaw. Between these two formidable ridges the rebels had gradually been forced back from a triangle, with the apex toward us, until their line was but a faint crescent, their centre still being slightly advanced. Right, left, and centre, their position was closely invested. Our troops shed parallel after parallel, until the country in their rear was furrowed with rifle-pits and abatis, and scored with a labyrinth of roads. “The country is covered with primitive forests, and in very few places are there cleared spaces sufficiently large to display the movements of a brigade. There is an abundance of scrubby undergrowth which hides every thing a few yards distant from view; and when one inspects the difficulties, it seems hardly credible, though such is the case, that we fully developed the enemy’s position with two days’ skirmish.”