The Northwest.
We make an extract or two from recent letters of a gallant officer in
Lee's division, on the road to
Huttonsville.
They are dated at
Big Spring, in
Pocahontas; but the army has moved a little farther forward (the
Yankees retreating,) since they were written:
‘
"The
Yankees are twelve or fifteen miles from our petition.
They had come to within three miles of it, and we secured it only at the eleventh hour * * * The Hampden Artillery is in the advance.
The post of danger, so coveted by the brave, is enjoyed by us Hard fighting and an chundance of it is before us. The next fortnight will witness, in my opinion, some as severe battles in this section as have yet marked this conflict.
The army we have gathered together are, you may say, picked troop, and will give a splendid account of themselves.
It is well that it is so for the army we oppose is not made up of dandies or dastards either, but the best material in the
Federal service.
They are flushed with their success at
Rich Mountain and on
Cheat River.
We are flushed with the
Southern triumphs at
Manassas, and determined to redeem the reverses in the
Northwest and will fight better.
"There are about — men on the mountain three miles from here, and — more pushing
on, not as fast as they can
walk, but as fast as they can
eat. The commissariat is the great difficulty in this far-off, hilly, rough, and inhospitable section.
I think they ought to pay us treble wages for the rain, which falls six-teen times a day, and the rocks in the roads and the swollen creeks and tall mountains we have to pass.
Indeed, it is paying very dear to be shot at, and were it not for the
du'ce et tecorum pro patrid mort, I should be monstrously inclined to retire to a more comfortable corner of this world's surface.
Yet my health is magnificent.
I never did have such in appetite, and you would not know me, with my long beard, flannel shirt, and sun-burnt, attend face.
This life will make robust, athletic men of many delicate, effeminate looking boys, whose friends have felt anxious about them for years.
"The enemy are about ten miles off, with 7,000 men, more or less.
By the time you get his, there will in all probability have been a fight, a skirmish, or a battle, or a grand stampede, or something or other of that kind.--Well, let it come, and let me be in it; for
"Come he slow or come he fast,
It is but death that comes at last.
"This is the 'hard condition of our birth'--Of the sparrow falls not without Heaven's decree, I feel convinced that man's destiny is tely more the subject of
Providence's foresight and direction.
I feel but little concern, comparatively, in the face of the enemy though I am, and leave the issue in the hands of God."
’
