sire—­Eclipse, Brighteyes, and Timoleon—­in their veins, and they knew how to care for them.  They were acquainted with every country lane and woodland track.  They had friends in every village, and their names were known to every farmer.  The night was no hindrance to them, even in the region of the mountain and the forest.  The hunter’s paths were as familiar to them as the turnpike roads.  They knew the depth and direction of every ford, and could predict the effect of the weather on stream and track.  More admirable material for the service of intelligence could not possibly have been found, and Ashby’s audacity in reconnaissance found ready imitators.  A generous rivalry in deeds of daring spread through the command.  Bold enterprises were succeeded by others yet more bold, and, to use the words of a gentleman who, although he was a veteran of four years’ service, was but nineteen years of age when Richmond fell, “We thought no more of riding through the enemy’s bivouacs than of riding round our fathers’ farms.”  So congenial were the duties of the cavalry, so attractive the life and the associations, that it was no rare thing for a Virginia gentleman to resign a commission in another arm in order to join his friends and kinsmen as a private in Ashby’s ranks.  And so before the war had been in progress for many months the fame of the Virginia cavalry rivalled that of their Revolutionary forbears under Light-Horse Harry, the friend of Washington and the father of Lee.

But if the raw material of Jackson’s army was all that could be desired, no less so was the material of the force opposed to him.  The regiments of Banks’ army corps were recruited as a rule in the Western States; Ohio, Indiana, and West Virginia furnished the majority.  They too were hunters and farmers, accustomed to firearms, and skilled in woodcraft.  No hardier infantry marched beneath the Stars and Stripes; the artillery, armed with a proportion of rifled guns, was more efficient than that of the Confederates; and in cavalry alone were the Federals overmatched.  In numbers the latter were far superior to Ashby’s squadrons; in everything else they were immeasurably inferior.  Throughout the North horsemanship was practically an unknown art.  The gentlemen of New England had not inherited the love of their Ironside ancestors for the saddle and the chase.  Even in the forests of the West men travelled by waggon and hunted on foot.  “As cavalry,” says one of Banks’ brigadiers, “Ashby’s men were greatly superior to ours.  In reply to some orders I had given, my cavalry commander replied, “I can’t catch them, sir; they leap fences and walls like deer; neither our men nor our horses are so trained.""* (* Brook Farm to Cedar Mountain, General G.H.  Gordon page 136.)