May 3 — Remained in camp yesterday, but renewed our march this morning over the muddiest and worst road that I ever saw or dreamed of. So far, this has been a wet, rainy spring, and the roads in general are in a bad condition. Just two days ago Jackson’s trains passed over the road that we traveled on to-day, and when his trains pass over a road they generally succeed in knocking the bottom out, especially when the weather is wet.
Our road to-day hugged the base of the Blue Ridge nearly all the way, through a brushy stretch of country, with here and there low, wet swampy places. At some points the mud was too deep in the road to venture in, and we cut saplings and brush away with our pocket knives to make sort of a roadway around the bottomless mud holes.
I know that we pried our pieces and caissons out of mud holes a dozen times to-day, and at some places we made bridges with cordwood. It may seem incredible, but twice to-day I helped to pry out with fence rails a horse that was in mud up to its shoulders. I think these deep muddy places belong to the quagmire family, as it is the deepest and softest and blackest mud I ever saw. We marched and worked hard all day, and made only six miles.
This evening we are camped one mile above Port Republic, a small village situated at the confluence of North and South Rivers which form the Shenandoah.
