General Forrest stopped at the village of Pea Ridge, about eight miles from the battle field, and on Tuesday, with all the cavalry he could get together, met a division of the enemy which had advanced to Monterey. As we charged this column, General Forrest’s horse became unmanageable and carried him through and beyond the Union line, and we felt sure that he would be either killed or captured; but, after turning his horse, he charged back through a troop of the enemy and miraculously escaped with a wound in the foot. Thus ended the battle of Shiloh, the first grand battle of the great war. It is almost inconceivable that a battle so great and so deadly was fought by men unacquainted with the harrowing art of war--raw troops thrown hastily together, a citizen soldiery that had never marched to battle except through the pages of books, white-handed Robin Hoods of the orchard and the meadow--indeed, “boys” in years as well as in that glorious comradeship of danger and death; and yet the “Old Guard” of Napoleon never “fixed bayonets” with firmer courage than that which made history on the field of Shiloh sixty years ago. The soldiers of Johnston’s army were armed with a variety of guns which looked more like the gathered heirlooms of a museum than arms of battle--shotguns, squirrel rifles, antiquated muskets, and a few modern rifles. The Union troops, for the most part, were neither so new to war nor so poorly armed as the Confederates, many of them having been in the fights of Henry and Donelson, and the entire army being equipped with the latest improved firearms. But, considering all things, history must march these two armies of blue and gray down the years, bannered with a fadeless glory; and the great National Park which the government has established on their battle field is a beautiful and impartial testimonial which will speak to the centuries. To the friends and schoolmates of my youth who were among the killed of this great struggle, my heart has paid sixty years of silent tribute. My last glimpses of some of them, as the smoke of the conflict wrapped them in its thundering folds, have become vivid and cherished memories. It is the strange way of nature that the vanished spirits of my comrades linger in my vision as boys in the joyous flush of life’s morning, while I have marched far up into the gray hills of the evening twilight, and I salute them across the long stretch of years. I had, as I thought, many narrow escapes [Illustration: THOMAS D. DUNCAN Fifty-seven years after his last ride with Forrest] from death at Shiloh. At one time a cannon ball passed so near me that the current of air created by its passage almost swept me from my horse. Many bullets and grapeshot fanned me and left their unwelcome whistle in my memory.