The position at Dalton was an impregnable one to an attack in front on the Chattanooga road. Mill Creek breaks through the Chattanooga Mountains (here known by the local name of Rocky Face), by a crooked gorge flanked by precipitous cliffs called the Buzzards Roost. The west side of Rocky Face is a nearly perpendicular wall, and in the Mill Creek gorge, spurs from the sides so project as to enfilade the entrance like bastions. A little north of the gorge a larger spur from the ridge runs down to the east, connecting with a subordinate parallel ridge, and from the lower slope a line of heavy earthworks continued the defences toward the Cooyehuttee. Mill Creek had been dammed so as to make an inundation in the gorge, and the Confederates held the ridge and cliffs on both sides as well as the fortified line in the lower ground. Some three miles north of Mill Creek Gap, Rocky Face and Tunnel Hill break down into smaller disconnected hills, and here about Catoosa Springs a bit of more open country made a practicable connection between the centre of the Union Army at Ringgold and its left wing advancing from Cleveland. Johnston hoped that Sherman would dash himself against the walls of Rocky Face and suffer severe loss in doing so; and if the ridge was turned on the north by part of the Union Army, this wing would find itself in presence of the strong earthworks skirting Mill Creek, and would be so separated from the centre that he could reasonably hope to crush it. Sherman, of course, could know little of the Confederate position till he was near enough to reconnoitre it, and must find out by experiment how the nut was to be cracked. On Thursday, the 5th of May, the Army of the Ohio under General Schofield was at Red Clay, a hamlet just south of the Georgia state line. My own division (the third) was encamped a mile in advance, at some springs which furnished a good supply of water. General Judah's division (the second) was at Red Clay. General Hovey's division (the first) was still at Blue Springs, Tennessee, covering the army trains and the repairs of the railway. The cavalry covered the left flank and reconnoitred forward toward Varnell's Station, skirmishing with the enemy's horse. The valley was a narrow one, tributary to the principal valley of the Connasauga, and, near my camp, was filled with a dense thicket of loblolly pine, a second growth which came up in the exhausted light soil of abandoned fields, and which we were to become very familiar with as we advanced into Georgia. As we could not see out in any direction except that of the road, I covered my front with a slashing of the trees by way of a rough abatis to prevent a surprise. We were now the left flank of the grand army.