Fayetteville, Virginia, November 29, 1861.
Dear Uncle: — We have just got our orders for the winter. We are to stay here, build a little fort or two, keep here fifteen hundred men or so — sixty horsemen, a battery of four or six small cannon, etc., etc. We shall live in comfortable houses. The telegraph will be finished here in a day or two. We shall have a daily mail to the head of navigation — sixteen miles down the Kanawha. On the whole a better prospect than I expected in western Virginia. Our colonel will command. I am consequently in command of the Twenty-third Regiment. This is the fair side. The other side is, sixteen miles of the sublimest scenery to travel over. We get supplies chiefly, and soon will wholly, by pack mules. We have a waggon in a tree top ninety feet high. If a mule slips, good-bye mule! This is over the “scenery,” and where there is no scenery, the mud would appal an old-time Black Swamp stage-driver. If rations or forage give out, this is not a promising route, but then we can, if forced, march the sixteen miles in one day — we have done it — and take the mouths to the food if the food can’t be carried to the mouths.
If the river gets very low, as it sometimes does, the head of navigation will move thirty or forty miles further off; and if it freezes, as it does once in six or eight years, there will be no navigation, and then there will be fifteen hundred souls hereabouts anxiously looking for a thaw.
You now have the whole thing. I rather like it. I wish you were in health. It would be jolly for you to come up and play chess with the colonel and see things. As soon as we are in order, say four or five weeks, I can come home as well as not and stay a short time. . . .
Sincerely,
R. B. Hayes.
S. Birchard.
