Our second day's journey ended far from any village or tavern, in this romantic valley. A pouring rain had begun about noon, and we plodded and splashed along till we reached a large log house which seemed a convenient halting-place as far advanced as our wagons could be brought. The house belonged to a thrifty widow. Half of it was simply furnished, and in this part she and her children lived. The other half was a large unfurnished room with the walls of hewn logs and a great fireplace of stone in the middle of the long side of the room. Out of this opened a little bedroom, a mere closet, in which the spare bed for guests was placed. The widow put these two rooms at our disposal. A roaring fire was soon burning on the hearth, our saddles and horse trappings were arranged on the sides of the room to serve as pillows, and blankets were brought in from the ambulance. Supper was got, partly from our own stores, cooked with the help of the family, and we were early ready for bed. The guest chamber was assigned to me, but it was so small that for the sake of ventilation the door was kept open, and the ruddy firelight flashed upon as picturesque and as merry a group as one could wish to see. A weary day in the saddle made all of us ready for sleep, and quips and jokes soon died out as one after another seemed to drop off into forgetfulness. The physical fatigue of the day made one of the party develop a phenomenal capacity for snoring in his heavy sleep, and in the quiet his nasal trumpeting grew more pronounced. It proceeded by phrases, as it were, each effort stronger than the preceding, till a fortissimo passage came and ended with a snort which echoed through the room and was followed by perfect silence. From the corner of the room came a drawling voice with a sigh as of deep relief, "Thank God he's dead." The shout of laughter which followed showed that nearly all had roused themselves for the finale, and the badgered performer of the music lost much of the real comfort of his night's rest by his fear of committing himself to a complete oblivion which might subject him to another chaffing bout from his companions.
Another wet and uncomfortable day's ride brought us to London, an unattractive village at the parting of the ways, the principal road leading on to Cumberland Gap, and another on the right going to a ford of the Cumberland River at Williamsburg, where there would be again a choice of routes up the Elk Fork of the Cumberland between the ridges known as Jellico Mountain and Pine Mountain. The left wing of Burnside's column had taken this route in October, and after crossing the Cumberland had climbed Jellico Mountain on their right hand, and reached the headwaters of Emory River, a tributary of the Tennessee which breaks through the mountains at Emory Gap, the easiest route into East Tennessee. Another road kept in the valley of Elk Fork till a place was reached where Pine Mountain, on the left, could be scaled, and once over its summit a hard road led to Big Creek Gap in the Cumberland Mountains, and thence by way of Jacksboro to Knoxville.
At London we were met with news from East Tennessee which made me reconsider the question of our route. We heard from Cumberland Gap that after General Foster had joined Burnside at Knoxville, Longstreet had moved in force to Rutledge, where he intercepted this line of communication, and that Knoxville could not be reached by that road for some time to come. This seemed to make it necessary to turn off to the south. As between the road to Emory Gap over Jellico Mountain and that to Big Creek Gap over Pine Mountain, the best evidence seemed to indicate the latter as the easier, but with the qualification which travellers in so wild a region have often to face, that whichever way you go you will wish you had gone the other. The name of Williamsburg on the Cumberland sounded as if it might be a considerable town, but the man who gave us the route warned us that we should find "it's not much of a 'burg neither when you git thar." Our ride into London had been on Sunday, and was surely a work of necessity if not of mercy. Captain B. had found his horse a little shaky in coming down the steep hills, and at one little stream the jaded beast came down on his knees in the water. The captain with affected seriousness argued that it was a punishment for travelling on the day of rest, but was effectually silenced by the wag of the party, who humorously remarked, "Ah! if your horse is so weak on Sunday what would have become of him and you on a week day?" London did not afford us any lodgings that tempted us indoors, and we wrapped ourselves in our blankets and slept on the open veranda of a dilapidated house, building a camp-fire in the yard in front. The rain had ceased, and we preferred the frosty air to the narrow and stuffy quarters we should otherwise have had to take.
The evening of the 14th of December brought us to the Cumberland River, and as it was rising from the heavy rain of the preceding week, we should have been glad to get over at once, but the wagons could not overtake us till night, and we stopped at a country-house on the north side where we were made quite comfortable. About one o'clock in the morning, however, I was awakened by voices in the room below me, and recognized that of Captain French of Burnside's staff, who was asking the farmer to light a fire and prepare to receive the general and his party, who were a little behind, wet and nearly frozen. I got up and dressed myself, went downstairs to greet the captain, who was soon joined by the rest of the party. The general had come by the route I was taking, but his wagons had broken down on the mountain-side, and he had been obliged to abandon them. The party had picked up somewhere an old-fashioned stage-coach on thorough braces, and this was drawn by ten mules. They had packed on the backs of other mules such of their personal effects and stores as they could, and had left the rest by the roadside. They had halted for the night on the south side of the river, but at midnight had been roused by the news that the river was rising, and that they must pass the ford at once if they expected to get over. In the darkness of the night it had been both difficult and perilous, for the ford was diagonal to the course of the stream, and there was great danger of getting into deep water. They were all soaking wet and chilled, covered with mud, and as forlorn and unkempt a set of men as was ever seen. They warmed and partly dried themselves by the fire, and pushed on as soon as day began to break, for the general was impatient to get forward. Colonel Goodrich, Colonel Richmond, Major Van Buren, and the personal staff were with him, and as my own staff had been well acquainted with them, it was an interesting rencounter with all the events of the Knoxville campaign to discuss. The general had sent his proposal to me to join him, the very day Longstreet reached the Holston River at Loudon, and when it had become evident that the Confederates were committed to an active campaign in East Tennessee. General Hartsuff had found that he could not endure the work, and had decided to leave before Knoxville should be invested. My regret that I could not start at once was diminished by the fact that the investment was complete before I could possibly have reached Knoxville, so that no time had been lost. But all the circumstances showed that Burnside had regarded his request to be relieved as indefinitely postponed, and the appointment of General Foster to succeed him was unexpected. He had not heard that I was on my way, but after meeting me sent a dispatch to Foster as soon as he reached the telegraph line. He had informed Foster at Knoxville of his purpose in having me join him, and sent this message in a friendly wish to promote my interests.
As soon as the general and his party were off, we began our preparation to cross the river. Their experience had shown that the increase of difficulty in keeping the ford at night was more than would probably come from the rise of the water. I therefore ordered everything to be ready as soon as it was broad daylight. We had eaten our breakfast and were in the saddle as soon as we could see clearly. Captain Day carefully examined the ford with a few of the cavalrymen, and fixed the landmarks which would guide us to the shallowest places. With these precautions and by carefully following directions we got over without mishap. The water did not quite reach the bodies of the wagons, and by lifting our feet out of our stirrups we got over dryshod. The stream was swift, and the only way to keep one's direction safely was to look ahead and not downward. Had we tried it in the night, we should no doubt have fared as badly as our friends who had preceded us.
A day's hard journey for the wagon teams brought us to the foot of Pine Mountain at the point where the road leaves the bed of Elk Fork to climb the steep ascent. We were now only nineteen miles from Jacksboro, in the valley of the Clinch, but the distance was multiplied by the cumulating difficulties of the way. We were not far from Cross Mountain, a ridge which, as its name indicates, connects the long parallel ranges of Jellico, Pine, and Cumberland mountains. We must climb Pine Mountain to its crest, descend along the shoulders of Cross Mountain near the head of the valley, then scale the side of Cumberland Mountain to reach Big Creek Gap, from which the valley of East Tennessee would open before us. We camped for the night and prepared for an early start in the morning. The teams were well fed and groomed, and the whole equipment was carefully inspected to see that everything was ready for the strain of the rough work of the morrow.
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.
We had sweet slumber that night in the keen air of the mountain top, and were ready for the last day of mountain work. We were fourteen miles from Jacksboro, and were resolved to reach the little town before night. The road was unlike the long inclined plane cut in the side of Pine Mountain. We were in the midst of a mass of irregular stony hills, all of them part of the highlands between the summits of the two ranges. It was hard and rough work, but we were not obliged to double the teams again. The last ascent of the Cumberland Mountains toward Big Creek Gap was over bare rock much of the way, the sandstone strata lying horizontal, and the road being a gigantic staircase in which the steps were sometimes a foot each, but oftener more, with an occasional rise of fully four feet in the edge of the rocky outcrop. In the road the sharp edges of these stairs had been rounded off, partly by wear and a little by mechanical means, but they distinctly retained the stair-like character and looked absolutely impracticable. At the worst places the teamsters would halt and throw together stones or branches of trees to fill the angle in the rock, then mounting, a whoop and a crack of the whip was the signal for the team to dash at the obstacle. The horses' shoes would strike fire from the level rock of the long "treader" above, the wagon would be bounced up the step, when a little bit of level would bring them to another rise in the staircase. We zigzagged along as the road sought the easiest places among the rocks, and perseverance at last had its reward when we crowned the summit and looked down into the broad and beautiful valleys of the Clinch and the Holston, the lovely tributaries which form the Tennessee River.
Our first look into Big Creek Gap was a startling and pleasurable surprise which has remained indelibly fixed in memory. Clouds had been hanging about the top of the mountain, and as we ascended the last slope and reached the crest, they hung so low over us that we could almost touch them. It was not like going into a fog, as is usually the case in climbing mountains, but these seemed smooth as silk on the under surface and hung over us as well defined as the covering of a tent. This gave to the prospect an accidental and very peculiar effect that one might not see again in crossing the pass a hundred times. As we looked eastward from the depression in the crest in which our roadway ran, a great circling amphitheatre lay before us, almost perfect in the symmetry of its curves. The ridge on right and left which formed its outer margin was higher than the spot on which we stood, and the silky clouds over our heads rested on it as on the walls of a natural coliseum, like the velum of canvas of the ancient gigantic structure in Rome, except that here, nature outdoing all art, spread the lovely awning over the whole vast and cavernous auditorium a mile or more across. The gloom of the interior threw the retreating slopes into a mysterious shadow in which it were easy to imagine them peopled with ranks of ghostly auditors gazing upon the stage. It was there, full in our faces, that the most startling and almost incredible effect was visible. The circle of the mountains was there broken by an opening flanked on either side by stupendous perpendicular cliffs, and we looked through it upon a charming landscape bathed in glorious sunshine. A blue stream dashed foaming through the great gap and wandered off to join the river beyond. The broad and undulating valley fifty miles across was backed by another mountain wall which towered opposite to that from whose battlements we were gazing, not a long and level ridge like so many of those in the Alleghanies, but a picturesque Alpine mountain scene, with peaks snow-clad and dazzling in the sunlight,--the Great Smokies, the noblest of all the mountain groups of the Appalachian chain. The gloom and shadow of our vast amphitheatre held us in awe, while the brilliancy of the scene beyond the great stage opening seemed to draw us to it as to a promised land. We sat upon our horses, spellbound, gazing upon what seemed at once too grand and too beautiful to be real. Had we been superstitious like soldiers of an ancient time, we might have seen a miraculous portent in it; and even as it was, such sentiment as may be permitted in the sceptical spirit of our own day could find a happy omen in the scene. We were entering upon a new chapter in our military lives, and it was cheering to us, in entering East Tennessee, through the great gate that opened before us, to have so charming a picture to lure us on. We wound down the mountain side, happy but quiet. There was no one among us so lacking in earnest character as to be unmoved. We had left the wagons far behind, and the clinking of our horses' shoes upon the rocks was the only sound which broke the silence till the roaring and laughing brook that gives a name to the pass met us and rollicked beside us, as we went out between the giant cliffs into the broad and cheerful valley.