Stoneman with the cavalry of the Army of the Ohio entered Allatoona on June 1st, and reported the gorge a place he could hold against a superior force. [Footnote: _Id_., p. 379.] General Johnston was so well persuaded that his position was no longer tenable that he issued the same day a confidential order directing a withdrawal, but recalled it late in the day in view of the changes evidently going on at our extreme right, and so remained a few days longer. [Footnote: _Id_., p. 753.] On the morning of the 2d, the preliminary changes in the line being completed, Schofield marched with the Twenty-third Corps to the left until he reached the Burnt Hickory and Marietta road, near the Cross Roads Church, or Burnt Church, [Footnote: _Id_., p. 396.] then turning to the east and guiding his left on the road he pushed forward through an almost impenetrable forest where it was impossible to see two rods. There was great difficulty in keeping the movement of the invisible skirmish line in accord with the line of battle, which we directed by compass, like a ship at sea. In the advance, my adjutant-general, Captain Saunders, was mortally wounded by my side, as we were riding, unconscious of our danger, through an opening out of our skirmishers in a momentary loss of direction. There were extensive thickets of the loblolly pine occasionally met, where these scrub trees were so thick and their branches so interlaced that neither man nor horse could force a way through them, and the movement would be delayed till these densest places were turned by marching around them. The connection would then be made again, the direction of the skirmishers rectified, and the advance resumed. The regiments advanced by the right of companies in columns of fours at deploying distance, but not even the men of a company could see those on right or left, so dense was the tangle.