Battle of White Mountain

“ Very soon the Yankees were on the mountain in heavy force, and hardly noticing the shells from White’s little howitzer, they placed a battery in the Gap from which they threw shells clear over his position, and killed men in A. P. Hill’s division, a mile beyond the river. White’s men thought it was time to be leaving, but the Major held on until dark, when, leaving Lieut. Dowdell, with Company C, to watch the enemy, he crossed the river and encamped for the night. ”

“ Always there was a thunder rolling among the mountains. From apparently inaccessible crags dark against the blue, from bare snow ridges, from bleak white wastes where there seemed nothing to detain the eye, spurted little darts of flame, drifted faint smoke. Detonations came in sharp direct cracks, fantastically re-echoed; in a long rumbling angry mutter from the more distant guns. From steep mountain-sides, avalanches, loosened by the concussions, rushed downwards in a white smoke of flying snow, their thunders rivalling the persistent artillery. ”

“ It is the threshold to the undiscovered country, to that untouched north whose fields of white are only furrowed by the giant forces of the elements; on whose frigid hearthstone no fire is ever lit; where the electric phantoms of a nightless land pass and repass, and are never still; where the magic needle points not towards the north but darkly downward; where the sun never stretches warm hands to him who dares confront the terrors of eternal snow.
The White Guard slept.
IV
“No, Captain; leave me here and push on to Manitou Mountain. You ought to make it in two days. ”

“ The attack on the Cheat River works was a failure, owing to the 6th Regiment being driven back by a heavy infantry force, which defended the ugly mountain gorges leading to the rail road, and which fought from barricades inaccessible to cavalry, even with no enemy to hold them. ”

“ Yet still in July they put out their bright green, corrugated - 100 - leaves, array themselves in the beauty of golden tassels flecked with dark brown, and scatter pollen gold on the waters that now prattle so lovingly by.
In places the river-side banks are white with stars of Houstonia and the lilac alpine violets nod from slender stems nearby. Down the high cliffs the mountain avens climbs and sets its golden blooms in the most inaccessible places, flowers from the low valleys and the alpine heights thus mingling and making the deep ravine sweet with fragrance and wild beauty. ”

“ Some strike for hope of booty, Some to defend their all— I battle for the joy I have To see the white man fall: I love, among the wounded, To hear his dying moan, And catch, while chanting at his side, The music of his groan.
Ye’ve trailed me through the forest, Ye’ve tracked me o’er the stream; And struggling through the everglade, Your bristling bayonets gleam: But I stand as should the warrior, With his rifle and his spear; The scalp of vengeance still is red, And warns ye, “Come not here!” ”

“ The march was rather an exciting one, leading as it did over the broad battle-fields of the Wilderness, where many hundreds of dead men still lay unburied, and the squadron was obliged to pass directly over them, when, as the hoofs of the horses would strike the corpses, the flesh would strip from the bones, leaving them glistening in the phosphorescent light that played around them, and the weird, ghostly influence of the scene affected the men, in the silence and gloom of that early morning, more than the presence of any number of live Yankees could have done ”

“ Not the grandeur and dignity of Washington, lifting the sphinx's head from the Presidential Range, not the jagged line of the Sandwich peaks cutting with points of distance-blued steel the smoke opalescence of the far southern sky, not the emerald marvels of all the low-lying ranges all about, can compare in beauty or impressiveness with that mountain mass of solid blue that walls the west across the rugged miles of the Pemigewasset Valley. ”

“ All the southerly ridge - 290 - beyond the boulder is a rolling smoke of these golden birch tops pricked through with the green-black spires of spruce and fir, nor has any slope on any mountain more beauty to offer to the eye on this day in late September when the air is like a crystal lens through which one looks into unmeasured distances and sees clearly. ”

“ Ghosts of the trees they once were, they stand silvery gray in the midst of the green wood, as if a patch of moonlight had forgotten to go when the day came. Into this sunlit place in the surrounding shade of the forest the mountain goldenrod has come till its flowers make all the space beneath the dead trees yellow, a very lake of sunlight. Silver and gold the rocks of the White Mountains may or may not have in their veins, but the White Mountain forests hold the two precious metals in nuggets and pockets and veritable placers for all who will seek. ”

“ It stands, not only in the rock but in the imagination of the onlooker, once he has found the dignity and grandeur of the highest summit, for authority. Dignity and grandeur are the impressions which come to one from the north through the crystal clear, thin air out of the cool, snow-samite which still stands in the deep ravines even on the southerly slope of the master mountain, just as illusion and romance dwell in the violet haze which veils all the south in pleasing mystery. ”

“ These linger long in the memory after the climb. But longer perhaps even than the hopes the summit gives will linger in the memory of him who climbs Thorn Mountain in early June the recollection of two things, one at least not of the summit. The first is the joy of June in the bobolink meadows far down toward Jackson Falls, the celestial melodies that the bobolinks echo as they flutter upward in the vivid sunshine and sing again to mingle their white and gold with that of the flowers that bloom the meadow through. ”

“ Though the Indians were driven from their camp they were not yet defeated. Joseph's voice, and that of his lieutenants, White Bird and Looking Glass, were heard above the din of battle, rallying their warriors and cheering them on to deeds of valor.
"Why are we retreating?" shouted White Bird. "Since the world was made, brave men have fought for their women and children. Shall we run into the mountains and let these white dogs kill our women and children before our eyes? It is better that we should be killed fighting. Now is our time to fight. ”

“ From the cairn which mountaineers have built of its loose rocks the eye has a wide sweep of the mountain world in every direction. To the south the land fades into shadowy mountains far down the Ossipee Valley, mountains that seem to float there in a soft, violet haze as if they were but massed bloom of the Gulf Stream that flows and gives off its wondrous colors half a thousand miles farther on. East the tossing sea is dappled with green and blue as the cloud shadows follow one another over the forest growth. ”

“ But days before the battle began the advantages as well as the disadvantages of this plan of action were all considered. The passage over the mountain was a difficult one to make in the face of an enemy. It might consume so much time as to lose us the use of the troops engaged in it at other points where they were more wanted. After reaching Chattanooga Valley, the creek of the same name, quite a formidable stream to get an army over, had to be crossed. I was perfectly willing that the enemy should keep Lookout Mountain until we got through with the troops on Missionary Ridge. ”

“ It is not only that they have failed to learn the modern art of war, but that they have forgotten the old methods. It was thought that Chinese troops, though deficient in enterprise, might at least make a respectable defense. They were advised never to risk a pitched battle, but to retreat slowly, giving trouble to the enemy by night attacks on his baggage, and compelling him to use up an army corps to keep open his line of communication. They failed in every point, and allowed themselves to be chased and caught like sheep, losing stores, guns, and munitions. ”

“ The Spur is itself no mean mountain, rising with precipitous abruptness from between Tuckerman Ravine and the Gulf of Slides, bounding in rounding, thousand-foot ledges from Pinkham Notch to a height of more than 5500 feet; it lifts the persistent climber to a veritable mizzen-top whence he looks still upward to the main truck of the summit, with the wonderful rock rift of Tuckerman Ravine between, dropping out of sight behind sheer cliffs at his feet. On such an autumn day there is a mighty exhilaration in thus floating in blue sky on such a pinnacle. ”

“ Afterward came two days of fervent sun on clear peaks that stand all about the horizon from Washington summit, half islanded in an amethystine heat haze, as beautiful, seen from the wind-swept pinnacle, as if old Merlin after a - 118 - day of tricks with pearls had ground all the gems of his magic storehouse to blue dust that filled the valleys of all the mountain world. On those days few men climbed the peak, but all the butterflies of the meadows and valleys far below danced up and held revels in the scent of the alpine plants, then in the full joy of their July blooming. ”

“ In these circumstances, not only will risk of defeat in detail be even greater than in the case of concentric invasion—for small columns can better exercise mutual support, than can a large force moving in a restricted valley—but the length of the convoy train, and the seeming strength of the force, will be a direct temptation to the tribesmen to avoid battle, and have recourse to guerilla warfare. ”

“ In about two hours after the battle ended among the cavalry, the enemy fell back, and Maj. McClellan, of Gen. Stuart’s staff, called for Col. White’s people to go with him and establish communication with the infantry of Gen. Longstreet on the left, and marching quietly through the blazing Wilderness, their greatest care was to prevent their own men from firing into them. ”

“ But the swarms of butterflies go on up the grade and through the dense foliage you still glimpse no mountain tops. With them shines occasionally the pale yellow of Colias philodice, and little orange skippers skip madly from bloom to bloom of the wayside flowers that still fill the margins from woods to wheel tracks. Clearwing moths buzz and poise like miniature humming birds, and with them in the deeper shadow flits a small white moth so delicately transparent and so ethereally pure in color that when he lights on a leaf the green of it shines through his wings. ”

“ When about fifty men had got over, and the shades of an early twilight commenced to gather from the low-hanging clouds, a courier from Lieut. Moon, of the 6th Va. Cavalry, who had charge of the pickets in the Gap, came down the mountain and informed Col. White that the Yankees were moving into the Gap. The boys hastily dressed, and mounting their horses marched up to see if the report was true, but before going far they met Lieut. Moon retiring, while behind him came a large force of Yankee infantry ”

“ Ewell. After this the company took but little part in the battle, but lay quietly in the yard around the house where their General was, until the close of the battle, when the country was cleared of the enemy to such an extent that people from the border could get out to the army, and here many young men came and enrolled themselves in White’s company.
Citizens, also, who had heard of the capture of Means’ horses at Waterford, came to look at the stock, and as that command had been mounted on horses taken from the people of Loudoun, and Capt. ”

“ Behind the boulder, terrace by terrace, the mountain rises to the top of Slide Peak, whence one may see the magic of the air lenses change this mingling of vivid colors to a blend which is a rich violet and loses its red as the distance grows greater till it ends on the far horizon in a pure blue that seems born of the very sky itself, and to sleep in its arms. ”

“ As the light grows the castellated ridge of Boott's Spur shows - 106 - fantastic shapes against the sky, and the pinnacle of the Lion's Head which looms so high above Hermit Lake glooms sternly with grotesque rock faces which are carved like gargoyles along its ravineward margin. Beauty wreathes the cliffs in this wildest of spots, but goblins grow in the rock itself and peer from the wreaths to make their friendliness more complete by gruesome contrast. One wakes shivering and longs for the sun of midsummer to come out of the northeast over the slope of Mount Moriah and warm him. ”

“ The thrushes that sing in the deep woods far down the mountain chant prayers, even until noon, the warblers in a thousand trees twitter simple ditties that are the mother-goose melodies of the forest world, cosy, fireside refrains hummed over and over again, but the goldfinches are the choristers of the summer sunshine when it floods the open spaces. ”

“ As the snow recedes the alders emerge bare and leafless. A rod down stream they are tinged green with the beginnings of crinkly leaves and have hung out their long staminate tassels of bloom. Another rod and they are in full leafage and the staminate tassels have given place to the brown seed cones. These mountain alders have a singularly crimped rich green leaf, and they so love the snow water torrents of Tuckerman's Ravine that they stand in them where they plunge in steepest gullies down the cliffs, bearing their tremendous buffeting with steadfast forgiveness. ”