Floyd cannonades Gauley Bridge--Effect on Rosecrans--Topography of Gauley Mount--De Villiers runs the gantlet--Movements of our forces--Explaining orders--A hard climb on the mountain--In the post at Gauley Bridge--Moving magazine and telegraph--A balky mule-team--Ammunition train under fire--Captain Fitch a model quartermaster--Plans to entrap Floyd--Moving supply trains at night--Method of working the ferry--of making flatboats--The Cotton Mountain affair--Rosecrans dissatisfied with Benham--Vain plans to reach East Tennessee. On the 1st of November the early morning was fair but misty, and a fog lay in the gorge of New River nearly a thousand feet below the little plateau at the Tompkins farm, on which the headquarters tents were pitched. General Rosecrans's tents were not more than a hundred yards above mine, between the turnpike and the steep descent to the river, though both our little camps were secluded by thickets of young trees and laurel bushes. Breakfast was over, the fog was lifting out of the valley, and I was attending to the usual morning routine of clerical work, when the report and echo of a cannon-shot, down the gorge in the direction of Gauley Bridge, was heard. It was unusual, enough so to set me thinking what it could mean, but the natural explanation suggested itself that it was one of our own guns, perhaps fired at a target. In a few moments an orderly came in some haste, saying the general desired to see me at his tent. As I walked over to his quarters, another shot was heard. As I approached, I saw him standing in front of his tent door, evidently much excited, and when I came up to him, he said in the rapid, half-stammering way peculiar to him at such times: "The enemy has got a battery on Cotton Mountain opposite our post, and is shelling it! What d' ye think of that?" The post at the bridge and his headquarters were connected by telegraph, and the operator below had reported the fact of the opening of the cannonade from the mountain side above him, and added that his office was so directly under fire that he must move out of it. Indeed he was gone and communication broken before orders could be sent to him or to the post. The fact of the cannonade did not disturb me so much as the way in which it affected Rosecrans. He had been expecting to be attacked by Lee in front, and knew that McCook was exchanging shots across the river with some force of the enemy at Miller's Ferry; but that the attack should come two miles or more in our rear, from a point where artillery had a plunging fire directly into our depot of supplies and commanded our only road for a half-mile where it ran on a narrow bench along New River under Gauley Mountain cliffs, had been so startling as to throw him decidedly off his balance. The error in not occupying Cotton Mountain himself was now not only made plain, but the consequences were not pleasant to contemplate. I saw that the best service I could render him for the moment was to help him