THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 39 which were by no means favorable to the exchange of confidential eoimnunieations. So the Army of the Potomac moved on in the dark toward Yorktown. We were two days on the road. The column of the General-in-Chief had passed some fortified positions abandoned by the enemy. A few horsemen were occasionally seen at rare intervals. No sooner had we come under the walls of Yorktown than we were arrested by the cannon. A few gunboats, which had appeared at the mouth of York river, had found it guarded by some forty pieces of heavy calibre. The naval officers concluded that they could not pass this battery; the investment of the place by water must consequently be abandoned. When we undertook to invest it by land, we came upon a series of works stretching across the peninsula, on the edge of a marshy stream, called Warwick Creek, and high enough to make investment impossible. The confederates had dammed this marshy stream m places so as to convert it into a pond, and their dams, with other accessible points, were defended by artillery, redoubts, and rifle-pits. Abattis had been formed in front of these redoubts and upon the opposite side of the marsh so as to secure a wide range for the guns. General Keyes, in trying to pass the river Warwick, had been the first to encounter this line of defence. His march had been very slow. The country, perfectly flat, and covered -with marshy forests, was only traversed by a few roads scarce worthy of the name. The rain, falling in torrents, unusual at this season of the year, had made these roads, if we must so call them, completely impracticable. The infantry could contrive to get on by marching in the water through the woods, but as soon as two or three wagons had made ruts in the ground, no wheeled vehicle could move an inch. Of course all movement was impossible, for we could not leave the wagons. The country was utterly de
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