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was a splendid one for defence.- The battle occurred in a narrow mountain defile, where the rebels were in position behind the stone fences, with which the farms are all fenced here, on the mountain sides.- The battle was very fierce and lasted a long time, and the artillery very heavy, but our gallant Genl Hooker was too much for them, and they retreated in haste, leaving all their dead and wounded on the field.- I rode over the field after the fight, and the rebels were piled up in heaps all along the stone fences, where our men had charged on them, and lay thirty and forty in a row in some places. In one garden where I went, the ground was literally covered with dead, in all positions and attitudes.  They had selected it because surrounded by a high stone fence but our men charged over the wall, and not many of them got away.- Our artillery was very destructive by striking the stone walls and scattering the fragments in deadly plenty around. We lost our gallant General Reno who was killed by a sharpshooter; but the rebels were very severely punished, and the hundreds on hundreds of dead that lay piled up all around, told, with what earnestness our men fought. Nearly all the rebels were very young, many that I examined only boys, and were bare-footed and miserably clad, with no blankets and only the clothes which they had on, and all had their