May 20 — Moved camp again to-day, back to Dayton, from where we moved yesterday.
Three Years in the Confederate Horse Artillery — George Michael Neese.
May 19 — This was a beautiful day. Nature has her grand glories on exhibition now, with azure skies and balmy air. Spring, the smiling young dame, is decorating the landscape with new beauties every day, and the fair face of nature reveals a thousand unimagined beauties to those whose admiration has ripened into love for the beautiful children of the sunshine that unfold and display their charming beauties with a thousand lovely tints as they drink deep at the fount of gold that unlocked their treasure of fragrance and unclasped their enchanting loveliness.
We moved camp to-day, and are now camped two miles below Harrisonburg, and at the same place where we camped last June just after the battle of Port Republic.
May 17 — About a dozen of us members of the battery went to Bridgewater to-day to attend church. The Rev. Mr. Carson, chaplain of the Seventh Virginia Cavalry, preached from the tenth chapter and twenty-third verse of Hebrews.
Bridgewater is a pretty little town of about five hundred inhabitants. It is situated on North River and on the Warm Spring pike, seven miles southwest of Harrisonburg. The little town is neat and the streets are clean, and a row of pretty shade trees, mostly maple, extends along both sides of Main Street, affording a grateful and inviting shade during the noontide of summer and autumn.
May 8 — The Yankee raiders fell back toward Winchester last night, and we moved back to our camp near Dayton to-day.
May 7 — To-day some Yankee cavalry advanced up the Valley as far as New Market, eighteen miles below Harrisonburg. When the report of their advance reached our camp we were ordered to move immediately with the battery to the Valley pike and select a good stand for the butcher business. We marched in quick time down the Warm Spring pike to Harrisonburg, and then went two miles below town on the Valley pike and put our guns into battery on a hill that afforded a first-class position which commanded the pike for a mile and a half on our front. All our available force in the Valley was in line and ready for the fray. My gun was in position on the extreme right of the line, in the edge of a wood and in perfect range and line with the pike for a mile in our front. Our force all told is very small at present, as General Jones’ brigade of cavalry is still raiding around somewhere in the mountains of West Virginia.
We remained in battery until after dark, then fell back a short distance and bivouacked for the night. The Yankees did not advance any further than little above New Market. As we were going to the front to-day great excitement and stir-up prevailed among the citizens in Harrisonburg and the country around. Refugees of all descriptions, sheep, cattle, and dogs, were streaming hastily up the Valley pike and out the Warm Spring road, conglomerated in one grand mixture of men, cattle, horses, negroes, sheep, hogs, and dogs, all fleeing from the invading foe and trying to escape the bluecoated scourge that was coming. One old citizen from down the Valley somewhere undoubtedly saw the Yankees this morning before he started, for when he passed us as we were going to the front he did not stop to tell us the news, but shouted, as he hastened and pressed toward the West Augusta Mountains: “Hurry up! you ought to been down there long ago.”
In Harrisonburg the excitement was set in the top notch. I saw men loading wagons with all kinds of furniture and household goods for removal to a more congenial clime, where war’s dread alarms are not so frequent. I saw one man running through the street with a clock under his arm. I suppose he was determined to run with time. I saw another man hastily leaving town with a fine mirror, striking out toward the heart of Dixie. War is surely a stirring-up affair, especially when it breaks out in a fresh place among peace-loving citizens.
May 3 — About thirty of us members of the battery went to Harrisonburg to-day and attended the burial of a member of our company who died in the hospital at Harrisonburg.
May 2 — Moved camp to-day to near Dayton, a pleasant little village situated in a beautiful and fertile country on the Harrisonburg and Warm Spring pike four miles southwest of Harrisonburg. We are now camped at a schoolhouse about half mile north of Dayton.
April 30 — Rained nearly all last night, which it rendered very disagreeable, for we were without the least sign of a shelter. A trio of us, all old campaigners at that, were very indiscreet in choosing a bed-chamber on the lower floor of the outdoor hotel, and in a rather depressed portion of the floor, and the impressive consequence was that the water ran under us just before day, and we had to get out of bed an hour or two before reveille to keep out of the water. No more bed-making in a sink hole for me on a rainy night, after this little striking experience.
Renewed our march over a rough road, through a long narrow ravine drained by the headwaters of Dry River, and filled with wild mountain scenery from end to end. At some places the steep, rugged ridges rise almost perpendicular from the roadside, and huge masses of moss-covered rocks stand out in bold relief from the evergreen tangle that hides the roughness of the craggy acclivities.
We passed Rawley Springs to-day, situated on a grassy hillside rising from the right bank of Dry River, twelve miles northwest of Harrisonburg. The environments of the Springs are delightful, the scenery is just picturesque enough to hang between the mountain hills and the plain, and its enjoyableness is greatly enhanced by the wild sweet music of the river’s soft roar as it murmuringly rolls from its umbrageous mountain wanderings to roam among the sunny fields of the open valley near by. Rawley is a pleasant summer resort of local reputation, and judging from the thick coating of rust on the old tin cup that hung by the spring the water is strongly impregnated with iron, therefore has valuable medicinal qualities.
Little before sunset we arrived at our old camp near Harrisonburg, and as a fitting finale to our mountain expedition we had a hard thunder shower just as we reached camp. I had built myself a good shelter in our camp before we started to West Virginia, which was waterproof in any common rain. This evening after we came back to our old camp I went to my house with the intention of occupying it, but when I looked in at the door I saw an old sow lying in my bedroom, with at least a bushel of new pigs around her, and from all appearances my house is where they first saw the light.
April 29 — Rained little last night, and this morning when we awoke a thick curtain of misty fog hung all around our spacious bed-chamber. We renewed our march early. At the lower end of Franklin we left the grade and took the Harrisonburg road, which is rough and bounds over hills and mountains. About a mile from Franklin we forded the South Branch where on the east side the mountain comes down and dips its foot in the limpid waters of the rolling river.
Franklin, the county seat of Pendleton County, is nestled amid green hills and wooded mountains that rise majestically from the banks of the South Branch. The little town is situated on the left bank of the South Branch, twenty-four miles below Monterey and forty miles above Moorefield. Right opposite Franklin a beautiful mountain rises gently from the river bank, and with regular wave-like swell lifts its wooded crest toward the eastern sky. It is heavily timbered, which carefully conceals all the rocky protuberances, and from the streets of Franklin the western side of the mountain looks like an extensive wall magnificently upholstered and decorated in various shades of green. Trout Run empties into the South Branch on the east side about one mile below Franklin, and near the ford we crossed to-day. The limpid little stream of pure mountain water drains some mountain dells and pasture lands that lie high and far above the level of the Branch, its waters being as clear as crystal and full of mountain trout. The last half mile of its course is through a rough gorge with shelvy sides, ornamented with mossy rocks, with here and there a bunch of mountain fern clinging to a scanty bed, all darkly shaded with spruce and pine and at places form a thick canopy a hundred feet above the rocky bed over which the turbulent little stream rushes wildly, lashing its laughing waters into snowy spray a thousand times, when, with a death song, it gently glides into the quieter embrace of the South Branch that winds away to the Potomac.
We marched hard all day over hills and mountains. Early in the day we crossed between the South Branch and South Fork a little mountain composed of knobby hills and rocky slopes, wooded ridges and grassy fields. Toward noon we arrived in the little mountain-environed valley of the South Fork, which is very narrow. The land along the little stream is of the first quality and produces abundant crops of corn and hay. We forded the South Fork some six or eight times and then struck into the foothills of the Shenandoah Mountain, and soon after we were winding up the side of the lofty Shenandoah. The road up the mountain is smooth and of an easy grade, but so crooked that at one place it appears like three parallel roads. When we were about halfway up the mountain a heavy thunder cloud that had been bombarding at long range for some little time opened on us, and for about thirty minutes the rain came pouring down in torrents and drenched us to dripping of the last stitch. Flash after flash of vivid lightning shot its fiery lances into the mountain sides close around us, and crashing peals of thunder made the rocky slopes tremble as the deep diapason roar rolled from cliff to cliff and leaped from peak to peak.
We are camped this evening at the eastern base of the Shenandoah Mountain, six miles from Rawley Springs.
April 28 — We renewed our march early this morning and kept on a steady move all day, over a good grade, although some of the country we passed through is rough and hilly and the Valley is full of fragmentary mountain-like hills scattered around promiscuously. We forded the South Branch but once to-day, at Kile’s Ford, which was very deep and rough. At some places the grade winds along at the foot of steep and rocky bluffs, and at other places through rich and beautiful alluvial bottoms along the river; then again through dense mountain forests of oak and pine, with a thick undergrowth of laurel and mountain shrubbery. We marched twenty-three miles to-day, and are camped this evening one mile below Franklin.
