As the Autumn of 1863 advanced towards Winter the difficulty of supplying the forces concentrated around Cumberland Gap—­as well as the rest of Burnside’s army in East Tennessee—­became greater and greater.  The base of supplies was at Camp Nelson, near Lexington, Ky., one hundred and eighty miles from the Gap, and all that the Army used had to be hauled that distance by mule teams over roads that, in their best state were wretched, and which the copious rains and heavy traffic had rendered well-nigh impassable.  All the country to our possession had been drained of its stock of whatever would contribute to the support of man or beast.  That portion of Powell’s Valley extending from the Gap into Virginia was still in the hands of the Rebels; its stock of products was as yet almost exempt from military contributions.  Consequently a raid was projected to reduce the Valley to our possession, and secure its much needed stores.  It was guarded by the Sixty-fourth Virginia, a mounted regiment, made up of the young men of the locality, who had then been in the service about two years.

Maj.  C. H. Beer’s third Battalion, Sixteenth Illinois Cavalry—­four companies, each about 75 strong—­was sent on the errand of driving out the Rebels and opening up the Valley for our foraging teams.  The writer was invited to attend the excursion.  As he held the honorable, but not very lucrative position of “high, private” in Company L, of the Battalion, and the invitation came from his Captain, he did not feel at liberty to decline.  He went, as private soldiers have been in the habit of doing ever since the days of the old Centurion, who said with the characteristic boastfulness of one of the lower grades of commissioned officers when he happens to be a snob: 

     For I am also a man set under authority, having under me soldiers,
     and I say unto one, Go; and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he
     cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it.

Rather “airy” talk that for a man who nowadays would take rank with Captains of infantry.

Three hundred of us responded to the signal of “boots and saddles,” buckled on three hundred more or less trusty sabers and revolvers, saddled three hundred more or less gallant steeds, came into line “as companies” with the automatic listlessness of the old soldiers, “counted off by fours” in that queer gamut-running style that makes a company of men “counting off”—­each shouting a number in a different voice from his neighbor—­sound like running the scales on some great organ badly out of tune; something like this: 

One.  Two.  Three.  Four.  One.  Two.  Three.  Four.  One.  Two.  Three.  Four.

Then, as the bugle sounded “Right forward! fours right!” we moved off at a walk through the melancholy mist that soaked through the very fiber of man and horse, and reduced the minds of both to a condition of limp indifference as to things past, present and future.