fare. One said he had heard a noise of some kind during the night, but on inquiring of his comrades, who had been less wakeful, perhaps, concluded that he must be mistaken. Evidently, they were not "paralyzed by the shock." While the landing of the troops and the capture of the battery was going forward, General Curtis commenced his march up the beach in the direction of Fort Fisher, sending out several detachments to cover his flank by the various roads which here converge into the main road to Wilmington. Beyond the cutting of the telegraph wires in one or two places, the capture of a small earthwork a short distance from Fort Fisher, and a battalion numbering over two hundred of the North Carolina Junior Reserves, under the command of a sort of nondescript personage in a rusty, tattered uniform, calling himself Major Reese, but little was accomplished. A reconnoissance had been made by General Weitzel, accompanied by Colonel Comstock, an engineer officer on General Grant's staff, and they decided that an attack upon Fort Fisher by our land forces would be extremely hazardous in fact, that this work could not be taken by assault.. Here, as far as the practical results of the first expedition against Fort Fisher are concerned, the attack ended. While our skirmish line was deployed in front of the fort, in the dusk of the evening, the fleet still continuing its fire, Lieutenant William H. Walling, of the 142d New York, who commanded a portion of our line, seeing the rebel flag which lay upon the parapet of the fort, where it had fallen under the fire of the fleet, boldly sprang forward, and seizing it, succeeded in carrying it off in triumph. Military discipline forbade others following; but so enthusiastic were his comrades in arms over the possession of this trophy, that the flag was soon literally torn in pieces and divided among them-every one being anxious to share in the capture. Another brave fellow-I regret not being able to give his name-crept up to the parapet and shot a mounted courier who was bearing dispatches from Colonel Lamb, directing a battery to be brought inside the fort. He took the dispatches from his body, and, mounting the empty saddle, brought them off in triumph to our lines. Soon after five o'clock the order to re-embark was given, and before dark the boats were again busily at work carrying the order into effect. One brave fellow, who had marched up the weary sand-beach to the fort and back, as he stood on shore contemplating the boat which was to bear him to sea again, was heard to exclaim-" Well, I'll go; but it's d-d hard that they wouldn't let us take that fort!" Of such material as this were the forces accompanying the expedition, with few exceptions, composed. No wonder the fort was eventually taken. All that was wanting was honest, hearty co-operation between the army and navy to insure success. I must not omit to mention one of the prettiest little events of the day. About noon, Lieutenant Cushing, of the Monticello, with a crew of six men, put off from his ship for the purpose of making soundings in front of the fort--the object being to obtain a closer range for our guns, if possible. The enemy permitted him to approach within about five hundred yards of the beach, when they opened upon him a brisk fire from their guns. Shots fell round him thick and fast, but still the boat sped on, the irrepressible Cushing deliberately standing up in the stern of the boat and marking the depth of water himself. Having obtained the desired information, the courageous Lieutenant turned his tiny craft in the direction of the fleet, and again ran the gauntlet of the guns of the fort on his way to the flag-ship to make his report to the Admiral. The boat was struck but once during the perilous trip, resulting in the loss of a leg to one of the crew. While this was going forward, Commander Guest sent several boats in front of the fort from another direction, and dragged the channel for torpedoes. The knowledge obtained by these several reconnoissances proved of the utmost value to us during the continuance of that and the succeeding attack. A SKETCH OF FORT DEARBORN. BY COLONEL J. G. WILSON. In the year 1685, M. de la Durantaye, who had been stationed at Michilimackinac, erected a fort at Chicago, Illinois, which probably stood on the identical site occupied by Fort Dearborn. In the Chicago Historical Society's collections there is a map, made at Quebec in 1688, by J. Baptiste Louis Franquelin, in which "Fort Checagou" is laid down in its proper position, on the shore of the "Lac des Illinois or Michigany;" and in the narrative of the Rev. J. B. de St. Come, a Canadian priest, who visited Chicago in 1699, he speaks of it as being "built on the bank of the little river, having the lake on one side, and a beautiful prairie on the other." At what date "Fort Chicagou ceased to exist does not appear--probably prior to 1744, at which date French maps make no mention of a mission or fort, but simply of the "Port de Chicago." In 1763, when the Ottawa chief, Pontiac, combined the Indian tribes of the Northwest to destroy all the posts held by the English, no mention is made of the fort at Chicago, which, had one existed at that time, would unquestionably have been the case. Posts at Mackinac, Green Bay, Sault Ste. Marie, Sandusky, Presque Isle, and St. Joseph's fell, one after another, into the hands of the In dians. Detroit, the only post west of Niagara, and Fort Pitt, which was not captured by the savages, sustained a fifteen months' siege, when the garrison was relieved by the arrival of General Bradstreet with an army of three thousand men. None of the Pottowatamies or other Indians, whose huntinggrounds were in Northern Illinois in the early part of the present century, had any personal recollection of the fort; but that one formerly existed on or near the site of Fort Dearborn, was a well-known fact among them. The post at Chicago, designated Fort Dearborn, was garrisoned, on December 3, 1803, by one company of the 1st Regiment United States Infantry, commanded by Captain John Whistler. The fort was named in honor of General Henry Dearborn, then Secretary of War; but by whom erected, or the exact date of its erection, is not known-probably, however, by Captain Whistler, during the autumn of the same year, 1803. It consisted of four log-houses, used as barracks, and two blockhouses, also constructed of heavy logs, containing three cannon; the whole surrounded by a palisade about twelve feet high, surmounted by crows-feet of iron. Except the fort, there was but one other building in Chicago sixty-two years ago, and that was a small log-cabin on the north side of the river, owned and occupied by Pierre Lemay, a French Canadian trader, and his pretty Pottowatamie wife. The year following it was purchased by John Kinzie, also an Indian trader, whose descendants still reside in Chicago. Two of his sons are paymasters in the army, and Major-General Hunter is a son-in-law. Fort Dearborn was commanded continuously by Captain Whistler, until September 30, 1809, at which date Captain Nathan Heald, of the same regiment, took command of the post, and retained it until its evacuation by order of General Hull, August 15, 1812, when the battle or massacre of Chicago occurred on the lake shore, about two miles south of the fort. There were killed in the action Surgeon Isaac V. Van Voorhis, Captain William Wayne Wells, the interpreter; Ensign George Ronan, thirty-six privates, two women and twelve children. The next day the Indians set fire to the fort. Fort Dearborn was rebuilt early in the summer of 1816, by Captain Hezekiah Bradley, by whom it was reoccupied with a detachment of troops, July 4th, nearly four years from the date of its destruction by the Pottowatamies. It continued to be a garrisoned post until September, 1823, when it was again evacuated. From that time until 1828, it was occupied by Dr. Alexander Wolcott, Indian agent, and used for the temporary accommodation of the few families who arrived in Chicago during that period. August 14, 1827, General Scott was directed to reoccupy Fort Dearborn, but the order was countermanded September 5 following. It was again occupied, October 3, 1828, VOL. IV.-21 and a third time evacuated, May 20th, 1831. From that date until June 17, 1832, the fort was left in charge of George W. Dole, as agent for the Government, who afterwards delegated his charge to John Kinzie, sub-agent. The post was again occupied by United States troops, under the command of General Scott, upon the breaking out of the Sauk war. The number of deaths by cholera, which prevailed that season at the fort, was seventy-five. Out of this number were two young officers, Brevet Second-Lieutenants Gustavus Browne, and George W. McDuffie. Fort Dearborn continued to be a regularly garrisoned post until December 29, 1836, when the Indians having been removed west of the Mississippi, it was finally abandoned by virtue of General Order War Department No. 80, dated November 30, 1836. The grounds surrounding the fort, known as the Fort Dearborn Reservation, were sold in 1839 by order of the President. From its evacuation in 1836 until within less than ten years, it was held by the Government for the occasional use of its army officers, engineers, and agents connected with the public works. During the summer of 1856 the principal buildings were torn down, and the old block-house, an object of very great interest as a relic of bygone days, was also completely demolished. The following is a complete list of United States officers in command of Fort Dearborn from its erection in 1803, until its final abandonment as a military post in 1836 : Captain John Whistler, from December 3, 1803, to September 30, 1809. Brevet Colonel John McNeil, from August, 1821, to July, 1823. Major John Fowle, from October 3, 1828, to December 14, 1830. SNICKER'S GAP. THE great battles have their bright chronicles, which are like the illuminated initial letters of medieval MSS. They are elaborated, and colored, and made much-often justly as the turning-points, the beginnings of paragraphs and chapters in the history of the war. But the marches and skirmishes are the ordinary characters making up the body of the page. one thinks of them as individual affairs; and as a letter or a comma would be noticed only in its absence, there have been a myriad of skirmishes that are unknown except to the memory of the participants, or the few friends mourning the fallen. No When McClellan was moving on his last march from the field of Antietam, it became our duty to hold for a day or two Snicker's Gap. Few of us subalterns had ever heard of " Snicker's,' and we could only speculate whether the topographical knowledge in the gray pates of our seniors embraced the queerlynamed place. A careful study of the geographical nomenclature of our country is amusing as well as instructive; and while a critical investigation might easily write its local history, those who pass over its surface, whether in peace or war, have many temptations to laugh at the national taste that baptizes a roadside hamlet "Damascus " or "Corinth," and yet can find no loftier title for a portal into the Valley of the Shenandoah than "Snicker's Gap." So along the dusty road we had our jests over the whole Snickerish commune, and laughed and wondered what the locale resembled. We laughed in the distance, but as we crawled up the winding road towards the depression of the Gap, our admiration for the panoramic beauties around us threw out of view the insignificance of the name. Additionally to the natural charms of a magnificent valley, there lay exposed what to our eyes was more than these-the greatness of the Army of the Potomac. Few of us, participants though we had been in every march, had ever beheld such a display of its strength in its working-dress. There were under our feet immense swarms of blue-clad life, great columns of moving battalions, covered with the dusty mantle every march weaves itself, and crowned with the diadem of steel; cities of white tents, glistening in the sun of that early November afternoon; cluster after cluster of guns, too far off to be grim, thrown into bright relief by their crimson blankets; acres of impedimenta, representing our potential existence; cavalry dotting the distance, and reduced to mere spots and moving specks; clouds of dust that might persuade one the earth had burst into |