Fayetteville, Virginia, November 29, 1861.
Dear Uncle: — We have
just got our orders for the winter. We are to stay here, build a little fort or
two, keep here fifteen hundred men or so — sixty horsemen, a battery of four or
six small cannon, etc., etc. We shall live in comfortable houses. The telegraph
will be finished here in a day or two. We shall have a daily mail to the head
of navigation — sixteen miles down the Kanawha. On the whole a better prospect
than I expected in western Virginia. Our colonel will command. I am
consequently in command of the Twenty-third Regiment. This is the fair side.
The other side is, sixteen miles of the sublimest scenery to travel over. We
get supplies chiefly, and soon will wholly, by pack mules. We have a waggon in
a tree top ninety feet high. If a mule slips, good-bye mule! This is over the “scenery,”
and where there is no scenery, the mud would appal an old-time Black Swamp
stage-driver. If rations or forage give out, this is not a promising route, but
then we can, if forced, march the sixteen miles in one day — we have done it —
and take the mouths to the food if the food can't be carried to the mouths.
If the river gets
very low, as it sometimes does, the head of navigation will move thirty or
forty miles further off; and if it freezes, as it does once in six or eight
years, there will be no navigation, and then there will be fifteen hundred
souls hereabouts anxiously looking for a thaw.
You now have the
whole thing. I rather like it. I wish you were in health. It would be jolly for
you to come up and play chess with the colonel and see things. As soon as we
are in order, say four or five weeks, I can come home as well as not and stay a
short time. . . .
Sincerely,
R. B. Hayes.
S. BlRCHARD.
SOURCE: Charles
Richard Williams, editor, Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard
Hayes, Volume 2, p. 151-2
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