The position taken by the battery
had been chosen with a soldier's eye. A better place could not
have been selected to hold the pass. It was its highest point,
just where the road crawled over the shoulder of the mountain
along the limestone cliff, a hundred feet sheer above the deep river,
where its waters had cut their way in ages past, and now lay deep and silent,
as if resting after their arduous toil before they began to boil over
the great bowlders which filled the bed a hundred or more yards below.
The little plateau at the top guarded the descending road on either side
for nearly a mile, and the mountain on the other side of the river
was the centre of a clump of rocky, heavily timbered spurs, so inaccessible
that no feet but those of wild animals or of the hardiest hunter
had ever climbed it. On the side of the river on which the road lay,
the only path out over the mountain except the road itself
was a charcoal-burner's track, dwindling at times to a footway
known only to the mountain-folk, which a picket at the top
could hold against an army. The position, well defended, was impregnable,
and it was well defended. This the general of the division knew
when he detailed the old Colonel and gave him his order to hold the pass
until relieved, and not let his guns fall into the hands of the enemy.
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