The heart of that engineer, and he was a brave man, as brave as any soldier on the battlefield, had sunk very low.

Railroads were little past their infancy then and this was the first to cross the mountains.

He was by no means certain of his track, and, moreover, the rocks and forest might shelter an ambush.
The Alleghanies and their outlying ridges and spurs are not lofty mountains, but to this day they are wild and almost inaccessible in many places.

Nature has made them a formidable barrier, and in the great Civil War those who trod there had to look with all their eyes and listen with all their ears.

The engineer was not alone in his anxiety this night.