either could be passed by infantry or wagons. The little ferries which had been made in a few eddies of the rivers were destroyed in the first campaign, and the post at the Gauley became nearly impregnable in front, and could only be turned by long and difficult detours. An interval of about a hundred miles separated this mountain fastness from the similar passes which guarded eastern Virginia along the line of the Blue Ridge. This debatable ground was sparsely settled and very poor in agricultural resources, so that it could furnish nothing for subsistence of man or beast. The necessity of transporting forage as well as subsistence and ammunition through this mountainous belt forbade any extended or continuous operations there; for actual computation showed that the wagon trains could carry no more than the food for the mule teams on the double trip, going and returning, from Gauley Bridge to the narrows of New River where the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad crossed upon an important bridge which was several times made the objective point of an expedition. This alone proved the impracticability of the plan McClellan first conceived, of making the Kanawha valley the line of an important movement into eastern Virginia. It pointed very plainly, also, to the true theory of operations in that country. Gauley Bridge should have been held with a good brigade which could have had outposts several miles forward in three directions, and, assisted by a small body of horse to scour the country fifty miles or more to the front, the garrison could have protected all the country which we ever occupied permanently. A similar post at Huttonsville with detachments at the Cheat Mountain pass and Elkwater pass north of Huntersville would have covered the only other practicable routes through the mountains south of the line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railway. These would have been small intrenched camps, defensive in character, but keeping detachments constantly active in patrolling the front, going as far as could be done without wagons. All that ever was accomplished in that region of any value would thus have been attained at the smallest expense, and the resources that were for three years wasted in those mountains might have been applied to the legitimate lines of great operations from the valley of the Potomac southward. [Illustration: GAULEY BRIDGE & VICINITY.]