tle of Raccoon Mountain. There the regiment not only showed its back, but stampeded like a herd of frightened cattle, it being one of those cases when "discretion is the better part of valor;" and, instead of being ashamed of the performance, we are merry over it. Raccoon and Lookout Mountains, you must know, are separated by Lookout Creek. Between the creek and Raccoon are half a dozen high, parallel ridges, whose tops are open and level enough for a roadway, and whose thickly timbered sides slope at angles of forty-five degrees into deep, lonely hollows. Hooker's Corps, of the Federal army, coming up from Bridge-port to reenforce Rosecrans, camped on the night of the 28th in the vicinity of Raccoon. Imagining that here was an opportunity to experience "the stern joy which warriors feel in foemen worthy of their steel," and at the same time to win distinction, Gen. Jenkins proposed to Longstreet to march Hood's Division to the west side of Lookout Mountain and by a night attack capture "Fighting Joe Hooker" and his corps. Longstreet, of course, offered no objections; success would place as brilliant a feather in his cap as in that of Jenkins, while the blame of defeat would necessarily rest upon the projector of the affair. As for us poor devils in the ranks, we had no business to be there if we hesitated to risk our lives in the interest of commanding officers.
The plan of operations appears to have been for Benning's, Anderson's, and Jenkins's Brigades to cross Lookout Creek two miles above its mouth, and, forming in line parallel with the Tennessee River, force the Yankees to surrender or drive them into deep water; while Law's and the Texas Brigades should occupy positions west of the creek, at right angles with the river, and prevent them from moving toward Lookout Mountain and alarming Bragg's army. What became of the Third Arkansas and First Texas I cannot say, every movement being made at night, but the Fifth Texas guarded the bridge, across which the Fourth marched and proceeded in the direction of Raccoon Mountain, climbing up and sliding down the steep sides of intervening ridges, until brought to a halt on the moonlit top of the highest, and formed in line on the right of an Alabama regiment. Here, in blissful ignorance of Gen. Jenkins's plans, and unwarned by the glimmer of a fire or the sound of a snore that the main body of the enemy lay asleep in the wide and deep depression between them and Raccoon, the spirits of the gallant Texans rose at once to the elevation of their bodies, and, dropping carelessly on the ground, they proceeded to take their ease. But not long were they permitted thus to dally with stern and relentless fate. A gunshot away off to the left suddenly broke upon the stillness of the night, and was followed by others in rapid succession, until there was borne to our unwilling ears the roar of desperate battle, while the almost simultaneous beating of the long roll in the hitherto silent depths below us, the loud shouts of officers, and all the indescribable noise and hubbub of a suddenly awakened and alarmed host of men, admonished us that we stood upon the outermost verge of a human volcano, which might soon burst forth in all its fury and overwhelm us.
The dolce far niente to which, lulled by fancied security and the beautiful night, we had surrendered ourselves vanished as quickly as the dreams of the Yankees. The emergency came unexpectedly, but none the less surely. Scouts dispatched to the right returned with the appalling intelligence that between the regiment and the river, not half a mile away, not a Confederate was on guard; skirmishers sent to the front reported that the enemy was approaching rapidly and in strong force. To add to the dismay thus created, the thrilling whisper came from the left that the Alabamians had gone "hunting for tall timber" in their rear. Thus deserted to "suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" in a solitude soon to be invaded by a ruthless and devouring horde, the cheerless gloom of an exceedingly great loneliness fell upon us like a pallgrew intense when, not twenty feet away, we heard the laborious struggling and puffing of the Yankees as, on hostile thoughts intent, they climbed and pulled up the almost precipitous ascent, and became positively unbearable when a dozen or more bullets from the left whistled down the line and the mild beams of the full moon, glinting from what seemed to our agitated minds a hundred thousand bright gun-barrels, revealed the near and dangerous presence of the hated foe. Then and there, charming Nelliedeeming it braver to live than to die, and moved by thoughts of home and the loved ones awaiting them therethe officers and privates of the gallant and hitherto invincible Fourth Texas stood not upon the order of their going, but went with a celerity and unanimity truly remarkable, disappeared bodily, stampeded nolens volens, and plunged recklessly into the umbrageous and shadowy depths behind them, flight hastened by the loud huzzaing of the triumphant Yankees and the echoing volleys they poured into the tree tops high above the heads of their retreating antagonists.
Once fairly on the run down the steep slope, voluntary halting became as impossible as it would have been indiscreet. Dark as it was among the somber shadows, the larger trees could generally be avoided, but when encountered, as too frequently for comfort they were, invariably wrought disaster to both body and clothing; but small ones bent before the wild, pellmell rush of fleeing humanity as from the weight and power of avalanche or hurricane. The speed at which I traveled, let alone the haunting apprehension of being gobbled up by a pursuing blue coat, was not specially favorable to close observation of comrades, but nevertheless I witnessed three almost contemporaneous accidents. One poor unfortunate struck a tree so squarely and with such tremendous energy as not only to flatten his body against it and draw a sonorous groan from his lips, but to send his gun clattering against another tree. As a memento of the collision, he yet carries a face ragged enough to harmonize admirably with his garments. Another fellow exclaimed, as, stepping on a round stone, his feet slipped from under him and he dropped to the ground with a resounding thud, "Help, boys, help!" and then, with legs wide outspread, went sliding down the hill, until, in the wholly involuntary attempt to pass on both sides of a tree, he was brought to a sudden halta sit-still, so to speak. But adventure the third was the most comical of all. The human actor in it was a Dutchman by the name of Brigger, a fellow nearly as broad as he is long, who always carries a huge knapsack on his shoulders. Aid-
