The bugles were blaring out the reveille long before daylight next morning, and in a short time the army had eaten its breakfast, formed in column and was marching away by the left flank along the base of Tahkahokuty, seeking a passage around or through the mountain into the country beyond, whither the enemy had fled. General Sully himself went straight up to the crest by a pathway which had been discovered by Al and others the previous evening, but what he saw there was extremely discouraging. As far as the eye could look to the northward the country was intersected by precipitous hills and steep ravines, some of the latter one hundred feet deep, entirely impracticable for either cavalry or wagons. The army marched for six or seven miles along the foot of the mountain without finding a route by which it could be ascended or turned, and at last the General, bearing in mind that he had rations left for only two more days, reluctantly gave the order to halt and countermarch to the abandoned Sioux camps, in order that these might be destroyed before the army returned to Heart River. Large detachments from the Second and Eighth Minnesota, the Sixth Iowa, and the Dakota Cavalry were at once detailed as fatigue parties and placed under command of Colonel McLaren to collect and burn the lodge poles and lodge skins, the vast accumulations of dried buffalo meat and dried berries,--food which, though great in quantity, was utterly unfit for white men,--the tanned robes, clothing, cooking utensils, saddles, travois poles, and countless other articles left in the camps and the near-by ravines. Thirteen companies were engaged in the task, and they spent half a day of hard work at it, when, finding that they would be unable to finish by evening, they set the woods and prairie on fire, and burned the remainder of the captured property in one great conflagration. The poles and coverings of between fourteen and sixteen hundred lodges were destroyed, being the camp equipment, so General Sully estimated, of between five and six thousand warriors and their families. If correct, this meant that at Tahkahokuty the Sioux had assembled a greater army than they ever brought together on any other field, before or since.