But the pleasantest and most picturesque sight of those remarkable days was the almost endless stream of sturdy men who rushed to the rescue from the rural districts of the State.  These were known as the “Squirrel-Hunters.”  They came in files numbering thousands upon thousands, in all kinds of costumes, and armed with all kinds of fire-arms, but chiefly the deadly rifle, which they knew so well bow to use.  Old men, middle-aged men, young men, and often mere boys, like the “minute-men” of the old Revolution, they left the plough in the furrow, the flail on the half-threshed sheaves, the unfinished iron upon the anvil,—­in short, dropped all their peculiar avocations, and with their leathern pouches full of bullets and their ox-horns full of powder, poured into the city by every highway and by-way in such numbers that it seemed as if the whole State of Ohio were peopled only with hunters, and that the spirit of Daniel Boone stood upon the hills opposite the town beckoning them into Kentucky.  The pontoon-bridge, which had been begun and completed between sundown and sundown, groaned day and night with the perpetual stream of life all setting southward.  In three days there were ten miles of intrenchments lining the hills, making a semicircle from the river above the city to the banks of the river below; and these were thickly manned from end to end, and made terrible to the astonished enemy by black and frowning cannon.  General Heath, with his twenty thousand Rebel veterans, flushed with their late success at Richmond, drew up before these formidable preparations, and deemed it prudent to take the matter into serious consideration before making the attack.

Our men were eagerly awaiting their approach, thousands in rifle-pits and tens of thousands along the whole line of the fortifications, while our scouts and pickets were skirmishing with their outposts in the plains in front.  Should the foe make a sudden dash and carry any point of our lines, it was thought by some that nothing would prevent them from entering Cincinnati.

But for this also provision was made.  The river about the city, above and below, was well protected by a flotilla of gun-boats improvised from the swarm of steamers which lay at the wharves.  A storm of shot and shell, such as they had not dreamed of, would have played upon their advancing columns, while our regiments, pouring down from the fortifications, would have fallen upon their rear.  The shrewd leaders of the Rebel army were probably kept well posted by traitors within our own lines in regard to the reception prepared for them, and, taking advantage of the darkness of night and the violence of a thunder-storm, made a hasty and ruinous retreat.  Wallace was anxious to follow them, and was confident of success, but was overruled by those higher in authority.

The address which he now published to the citizens of Cincinnati, Covington, and Newport was manly and well-deserved.  He said,—­