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| A mule-team under fire. |
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up by night when the army was in line of battle, for, as I have said elsewhere, a mule-team or a mule-train under fire was a diverting spectacle to every one but the mule-drivers.
One of the most striking reminiscences of the wagon-train which I remember relates to a scene enacted in the fall of ‘63, in that campaign of manoeuvres between Meade and Lee. My own corps (Third) reached Centreville Heights before sunset — in fact, was, I think, the first corps to arrive.
At all events, we had anticipated the most of the trains.
At that hour General Warren was having a lively row with the enemy at Bristoe Station, eight or nine miles away.
As the twilight deepened, the flash of his artillery and the smoke of the conflict were distinctly visible in the horizon.
The landscape between this stirring scene and our standpoint presented one of the most animated spectacles that I ever saw in the service.
Its most attractive feature was the numerous wagon-trains, whose long lines, stretching away for miles over the open plain, were hastening forward to a place of refuge, all converging towards a common centre — the high ground lying along the hither side of Bull Run.
The officers in charge of the trains, made somewhat nervous by the sounds of conflict reaching them from
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