208 ADVENTURES IN THE WILDERNESS. 



" It was at the battle of Malvern Hill, — a battle 

 where the carnage was more frightful, as it seems 

 to me, than in any this side of the Alleghanies dur- 

 ing the whole war, — that my story must begin. I 

 was then serving as Major in the — th Massachu- 

 setts Eegiment, — the old — th, as we used to call 

 it, — and a bloody time the boys had of it too. 

 About 2 P. M., we had been sent out to skirmish 

 along the edge of the wood in which, as our gen- 

 erals suspected, the Eebs lay massing for a charge 

 across the slope, upon the crest of which our army 

 was posted. We had barely entered the under- 

 brush when we met the heavy formations of Ma- 

 gruder in the very act of charging. Of course, 

 our thin line of skirmishers was no impediment 

 to those onrushing masses. They were on us and 

 over us before we could get out of the way. I do 

 not think that half of those running, screaming 

 masses of men ever knew that they had passed 

 over the remnants of as plucky a regiment as ever 

 came out of the old Bay State. But many of 

 the boys had good reason to remember that after- 

 noon at the base of Malvern Hill, and I among the 

 number ; for when the last line of Eebs had passed 

 over me, I was left amid the bushes with the breath 

 nearly trampled out of me, and an ugly bayonet-gash 

 through my thigh ; and mighty little consolation 

 was it for me at that moment to see the fellow 

 who run me through lying stark dead at my side, 



