through which the main road from Huttonsville eastward, the Parkersburg turnpike, led in a narrow defile. The two posts were about seven miles apart by bridle path through the hills.
The army of the Northwest, now well organized, and under the immediate command of General Loring, consisted of the brigades of S. R. Anderson, D. S. Donelson, William Gilham, H. R. Jackson, and W. B. Taliaferro, and unassigned commands, amounting nominally to 11,700 men, including about 300 each in the cavalry and artillery arms.
One portion of the army, the "Monterey division," under Gen. H. R. Jackson, was encamped at "Camp Bartow," near where the Parkersburg pike crosses the Greenbrier river, and included Jackson's Georgia brigade, Rust's Arkansas regiment, Taliaferro's brigade (Twenty-third, Thirty-first, Thirty-seventh and Forty-fourth regiments), Hansbrough and Reger's battalions, two batteries of artillery, and a few companies of cavalry, in all about 2,500 effective men.
The other wing of the army, under General Loring, in camp at Valley mountain, included the brigades of Donelson, Anderson and Gilham (Twenty-first and Forty-second Virginia and Irish battalion in the latter), Colonel Burk's command and Major Lee's cavalry. About 3,500 men in this division were effective.
General Lee went to the front early in August, accompanied by his aides, Col. John A. Washington and Capt. Walter H. Taylor, and Maj. W. H. F. Lee's cavalry battalion. He entered personally upon the work of reconnoissance, a work in which he had contributed brilliantly to the success of General Scott's army in Mexico, and hardly a day passed when he was not climbing over rocks and crags, to get a view of the Federal position. One day, Captain Preston, adjutant of the Forty-eighth Virginia (the incident is recorded by Gen. A. L. Long), his regiment being on picket, saw three men on a peak about
