and gun carriages and other vehicles be-
come inextricably stuck. Of course march-
ing columns and artillery and wagon trains
would under these circumstances try their
fortunes in the open fields to the right and
left of the roads, but the fields soon became
covered with the same sort of liquid slime
a foot or more deep, with innumerable
invisible holes beneath. Thus the whole
Thus the whole
country gradually became 'road', but road
of the most bewildering and depressing
kind, taxing the strength of men and horses
beyond endurance. One would see large
stretches of country fairly covered with
guns and army wagons and ambulances
stalled in a sea of black or yellow mire, and
infantry standing up to their knees in mud,
shivering and swearing very hard, as
hard as
a thoroughly disgusted soldier
can swear. I remember having passed by
one of the pontoon trains that were to take
the army across the Rappahannock, stuck
so fast in the soft earth that the utmost
exertions failed to move it. Such was
'Burnside stuck in the mud'."

of the First Regiment" (Boston, 1866): "Along these roads horses and mules struggled and floundered, drawing much lighter loads than usual, covered with mud and perspiration, sending up clouds of vapor from their heated and reeking bodies, and breathing so violently whenever they stopped for rest that the motion shook them from end to end like a convulsion. Some pieces of light artillery had double and even triple teams attached to them, 12 to 18 animals being sometimes harnessed to a single gun, which even then they dragged at a snail's pace, requiring frequent assistance from the soldiers, who threw rails and branches from the trees across the worst places, and pried up the wheels when they sank so low as to be utterly immovable.

"At the crossings of the streams, where bridges had been rendered indispensably necessary by the depth of the water, horses and mules were killed in their effort to get over, or broke their legs and had to be put out of their misery. Every mile

Chaplain Cudworth says in his "History presented some such scene, and the general