The advancing line of musketry-fire from Orchard Knoll disappeared to us behind a spar of the hill, and could no longer be seen; and it was not until night closed in that I knew that the troops in Chattanooga had swept across Missionary Ridge and broken the enemy’s centre.  Of course, the victory was won, and pursuit was the next step.

I ordered General Morgan L. Smith to feel to the tunnel, and it was found vacant, save by the dead and wounded of our own and the enemy commingled.  The reserve of General Jeff.  C. Davis was ordered to march at once by the pontoon-bridge across Chickamauga Creek, at its mouth, and push forward for the depot.

General Howard had reported to me in the early part of the day, with the remainder of his army corps (the Eleventh), and had been posted to connect my left with Chickamauga Creek.  He was ordered to repair an old broken bridge about two miles up the Chickamauga, and to follow General Davis at 4 a.m., and the Fifteenth Army Corps was ordered to follow at daylight.  But General Howard found that to repair the bridge was more of a task than was at first supposed, and we were all compelled to cross the Chickamauga on the new pontoon-bridge at its mouth.  By about 11 a.m.  General Jeff.  C. Davis’s division reached the depot, just in time to see it in flames.  He found the enemy occupying two hills, partially intrenched, just beyond the depot.  These he soon drove away.  The depot presented a scene of desolation that war alone exhibits —­corn-meal and corn in huge burning piles, broken wagons, abandoned caissons, two thirty-two-pounder rifled-guns with carriages burned, pieces of pontoons, balks and chesses, etc., destined doubtless for the famous invasion of Kentucky, and all manner of things, burning and broken.  Still, the enemy kindly left us a good supply of forage for our horses, and meal, beans, etc., for our men.

Pausing but a short while, we passed on, the road filled with broken wagons and abandoned caissons, till night.  Just as the head of the column emerged from a dark, miry swamp, we encountered the rear-guard of the retreating enemy.  The fight was sharp, but the night closed in so dark that we could not move.  General Grant came up to us there.  At daylight we resumed the march, and at Graysville, where a good bridge spanned the Chickamauga, we found the corps of General Palmer on the south bank, who informed us that General Hooker was on a road still farther south, and we could hear his guns near Ringgold.

As the roads were filled with all the troops they could possibly accommodate, I turned to the east, to fulfill another part of the general plan, viz., to break up all communication between Bragg and Longstreet.