CHAPTER XLI.

Assuming the command at Chattanooga—­opening A line of supplies—­battle of Wauhatchie—­on the picket line.

The next day, the 24th, I started out to make a personal inspection, taking Thomas and Smith with me, besides most of the members of my personal staff.  We crossed to the north side of the river, and, moving to the north of detached spurs of hills, reached the Tennessee at Brown’s Ferry, some three miles below Lookout Mountain, unobserved by the enemy.  Here we left our horses back from the river and approached the water on foot.  There was a picket station of the enemy on the opposite side, of about twenty men, in full view, and we were within easy range.  They did not fire upon us nor seem to be disturbed by our presence.  They must have seen that we were all commissioned officers.  But, I suppose, they looked upon the garrison of Chattanooga as prisoners of war, feeding or starving themselves, and thought it would be inhuman to kill any of them except in self-defence.

That night I issued orders for opening the route to Bridgeport—­a cracker line, as the soldiers appropriately termed it.  They had been so long on short rations that my first thought was the establishment of a line over which food might reach them.

Chattanooga is on the south bank of the Tennessee, where that river runs nearly due west.  It is at the northern end of a valley five or six miles in width, through which Chattanooga Creek runs.  To the east of the valley is Missionary Ridge, rising from five to eight hundred feet above the creek and terminating somewhat abruptly a half mile or more before reaching the Tennessee.  On the west of the valley is Lookout Mountain, twenty-two hundred feet above-tide water.  Just below the town the Tennessee makes a turn to the south and runs to the base of Lookout Mountain, leaving no level ground between the mountain and river.  The Memphis and Charleston Railroad passes this point, where the mountain stands nearly perpendicular.  East of Missionary Ridge flows the South Chickamauga River; west of Lookout Mountain is Lookout Creek; and west of that, Raccoon Mountains.  Lookout Mountain, at its northern end, rises almost perpendicularly for some distance, then breaks off in a gentle slope of cultivated fields to near the summit, where it ends in a palisade thirty or more feet in height.  On the gently sloping ground, between the upper and lower palisades, there is a single farmhouse, which is reached by a wagon-road from the valley east.