Colonel Scott placed the troops in line, and at early dawn the enemy advanced across the pass firing rapidly, but after a short contest was driven back by combined musketry and canister fire. Through the morning until 11 o’clock, skirmishers kept up a desultory fire on the front, and at 11 o’clock the enemy advanced in full force and opened with artillery. Firing then became rapid and continuous, and four successive efforts were made to pass the narrow defile formed by the sinking and rising of the river, where the concentrated fire of the whole line made the attack hopeless. Cadets from the West Florida Seminary, now Florida State University, were stationed just to the left of Houstoun’s battery as an artillery guard, under orders not to fire unless a charge was made on the battery, and during the battle they watched bark fly from trees and sand kick up as bullets struck around them while their teachers kept them behind cover. Jacob Gardner of Company A, Milton Light Artillery, wrote that by ten o’clock his unit had reached the battlefield about seven miles from camp and about twelve miles from Tallahassee, that the forces skirmished all morning, that several were killed and wounded, and that at eleven o’clock the fight began in earnest and lasted three and a half hours. He recalled that three guns of his battery and two guns of Captain Houstoun’s battery were there, that the enemy had to pass through a narrow defile of about forty yards, and that the artillery concentrated on that point caused heavy damage.