and crossing into the Sequatchie Valley, climbed and crossed Walden's Ridge, reaching Poe's Tavern in the Tennessee Valley, twelve miles north of Chattanooga, on the 21st of August; on the 22nd, Wilder and his brigade went to a point north of Chattanooga to directly threaten that city, while my regiment went to Harrison's Landing, threatening to cross at that point fifteen miles north of Chattanooga. We found the enemy in earthworks on the edge of the river on the opposite bank, with quite a heavy fort on the hills back from the river, mounting three guns en barbette. Our Spencer rifles carried over the river easily, nearly a mile wide, and the Confederates were kept closely within their rifle pits by our sharpshooters.

For a bullet from a rifle to travel a mile takes a long time. Let me illustrate that. The Confederate officer of the day, with his sash across his shoulder, came riding down to the river from the Confederate fort, and was soon kneeling under a box elder tree on the bank of the river, and I said to my adjutant standing by me, "What is he doing?" but I had hardly asked the question, when a blue puff of smoke told me that he was shooting at us; Adjutant Lawyer stepped behind a tree, when the bullet from the Confederate rifle passed over my head, and through the side of the house by which I was standing, wounding one of my soldiers inside of the house, the first soldier in my regiment to be struck with rebel lead. If you see a man shooting a rifle at you a mile away, you will have abundant time to dodge before the bullet reaches you; if you can dodge behind a tree, as my Adjutant did, you will be safe; but if you are in the open you may as well stand still, for you are as liable to dodge in front of the bullet as away from it.

On the 24th of August I returned to Harrison's Landing with my regiment and two 10-pound rifled guns of Lilly's Indiana Battery, under a Lieutenant. He was a volunteer officer, but a studious one, and had mastered the science of artillery firing. I placed the two guns on the bluff on our side of the river, and ordered the Lieutenant to open fire at the Confederate fort, probably about two miles away, when I rode on to the bank of the river, opposite the Confederate fort, where I could plainly see the effect of the artillery firing. I waited an hour for the guns to open, but they didn't, and I rode back to see about it. He had cut down some trees to get a plain view of the Confederate fort, dug holes for the trails of the guns, and there they stood, pointing at the sky, and the Lieutenant stood there steadily eyeing the Confederate fort, with its three guns, en barbette, a brass gun in the center and a steel gun each side of it. I yelled at him to know why he didn't fire, and he replied, without taking his eyes from the fort, "I am waiting for some one to stand up on the parapet of the fort; I have an instrument here (a flat piece of brass full of holes of different sizes) by which I can tell the exact distance in yards if some one will stand up; with another instrument I know the elevation, just how much lower that fort is than where my guns stand." I replied, "Perhaps no soldier will ever stand up," and he answered, "Oh, yes, there will," and almost immediately said, "There. I have got it," and while he kneeled upon the ground to figure out the problem, and cut his shells, and load his guns, I dismounted and went down the bluff immediately in front of his guns until I found a place from which I could plainly see the Confederate fort, and, adjusting my field glass, hoped to see the effect of his shots; but I was enveloped in smoke when he fired, and could see nothing. But we learned the effect of his scientific firing a few days afterward when we captured a copy of the Daily Chattanooga Rebel, printed on wall paper, Henry Watterson, now the distinguished editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal, publisher, that said the Yankee artillery at Harrison's Landing at