"It is a solitary sugar-loaf, and looms up from the horizon gray and grand. Northwest, some eight miles, is the Chattahoochee River, a yellow, muddy and swift-running stream, some two hundred yards wide. Chattahoochee means 'blossoming rocks.' The Cherokees so named it from a great ledge of beautifully-colored rock on its banks, which resembles flowers. The river of 'blossoming rocks' is anything but a beautiful stream. Peach Tree Creek, the now famous scene of the battle of the 20th of July, is three miles north, a muddy, deep slimy stream. Its true name is 'Pitch-Tree,' from a great pitch-pine tree on its banks. The Indians called it 'Pitch-Tree.' "The whole face of the earth is marked and scared for many miles around with the rival fortifications." A quarter of a century has nearly obliterated them all. A series of military operations around Atlanta followed. Further pursuit of Hood's army was for a time suspended while Sherman's army rested, and its leader was planning the next step in the campaign. Thus passed the month of September. Many changes occurred in the composition and organization of the army. The field portion of the Army of the Tennessee was consolidated into two corps numbered Fifteenth and Seventeenth, and commanded, during the temporary absence of Logan and Blair, by P. J. Osterhaus and T. E. G. Ransom, General Howard retaining his place at the head of that army which now lay at East Point, and the Sixteenth corps now in the Mississippi Valley. The Army of the Cumberland, under General Thomas, was in Atlanta. The Army of the Ohio was at Decatur under General Cox, General Schofield having returned temporarily to Knoxville. Atlanta was carefully fortified, on a smaller but stronger scale than had been done by Johnston, so that it might be held by a comparatively small force when Sherman's main army had left.