"All our supplies are coming from Nashville, and we are getting farther
away from our base every day."
But Ohio laughed.
"Our chief task is to catch Bragg," he said. "They said he was going to
occupy Chattanooga and wait for us. He's been in Chattanooga, but he
didn't wait for us there. He's left it already and gone on, anxious to
reach the Gulf before winter, I suppose."
The Union army in its turn entered Chattanooga, a little town of which
Dick had seldom heard before, although he greatly admired its situation.
The country about it was bold and romantic. It stood in a sharp curve
of the great river, the Tennessee. Not far away was the lofty uplift of
Lookout Mountain, a half-mile high, and there were long ridges between
which creeks or little rivers flowed down to the Tennessee.
One of these streams was the Chickamauga, which in the language of the
Cherokee Indians who had once owned this region means "the river of
death." Why they called it so no one knew, but the name was soon to have
a terrible fitness. Chattanooga itself meant in the Cherokee tongue "the
hawk's nest," and anybody could see the aptness of the term.
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