January 14 — Snowed last night and this morning till ten o’clock, then cleared up with a very cold and unfriendly wind that swept fiercely over the bleak hills and mountains. We renewed our march, crossed Third Hill Mountain, the top of which was one vast stretch of pine thicket gracefully bowing under a crystal shroud of beautiful snow and glittering hoarfrost.
We reached Shanghai a little before sunset, and camped here for the night. Shanghai is a little hamlet on Back Creek, about twelve miles west of Martinsburg. That little old faded cap that General Jackson wears may shelter a brain that is filled with skeletons of strategic maneuvers, war maps, and battle-field plans, but if he thinks that we are India-rubber and can keep on courting Death with impunity, by marching in the snow with wet feet all day, and then be snowed under at night, he will find that by the time the robins sing again half of his command will be in the hospital or answering roll call in some other clime.
This morning when I got up I crawled from under four inches of snow on my blanket, and this was the third time we were snowed under in the last two weeks. We marched in the snow all day, and this evening I stood barefooted in the snow, on a little plank however, wringing the water not only out of my socks, but shoes too. My shoes are Confed. and the leather is only half tanned. I wrung them out this evening like an old heavy dish rag, and now they look like dog-feed. Looking at my dog-feed shoes sitting by the campfire is what causes the pessimistic reflections to troop through my brain.
