The morning of the 16th was fair and frosty, and we were astir early. Pine Mountain loomed before us like the steep roof of some vast gothic cathedral. The ridge seemed as straight as a house ridge, and we could not see that any natural depression made the ascent much easier in one place than another. Our road ran up a spur of the mountain till the regular slope was reached, then turning to the right it gradually mounted the steep incline by a diagonal course on a long shelf cut in the hillside, with here and there a level spot on which the teams could breathe. From where we stood in the valley the mountain face looked precipitous, and the road a mere line gradually rising along its front. It would have been bad enough if it had been a metalled road in good order; but it was only a rough track alternating in mud and rock, that had never been good even in mid-summer, and it was now next to impassable. Under the direction of Captain Day and the wagonmaster the teams were doubled, two of the wagons being left in the valley till the others should reach the summit, when the teams were to be brought back. When they came to the long and hard pull, the drivers gave us a good sample of army wagoning, their yelling and cracking of whips keeping up a continual chorus, and at specially hard points the quartermaster and wagon-master joined in the music like the baying of a pack of hounds, while the horses seemed to be stimulated to almost frantic action. This could not be kept up long, and when one of the level breathing-places was reached all subsided into quiet, while the steaming and puffing horses regained their wind for another effort. Five miles of advance was the utmost we could make on that day, but this was fifteen for the teams, as they had to be brought down the mountain over the same road and drag up the wagons which had been left at the foot. Our party of cavaliers waited lazily in the valley till the first of the wagons were near the summit, and then rode on to overtake them on the other side of the ridge. It was an easy and picturesque ride for us who were well mounted, but a wearing labor and strain for the teamsters and their animals. We congratulated ourselves on the care with which the "outfit" had been selected at Lexington, for we came through without accident on a road where wrecks were plentier than milestones.