MARYLAND HEIGHTS.

65

umns of some bold crag, softened into beauty by the manycolored lichens that stud its sides. I count an evening walk under Loudon Heights, with the broad, sprawling river hoarsely babbling over its rocky bed on one side, and the still precipices soaring to heaven on the other, and the narrow stony road cut round their base lying before me, untrodden at that hour by any human foot save my own, I count that lonely walk amid the cool, dewy scents stealing out of the undergrowth, and the colors of the evening sky gilding the cliffs, as one of the pleasantest of my life. What is there, as you look up at those soaring summits and the low clouds sailing silently over them, that fills the heart so full?

The morning after my arrival I climbed Maryland Heights by the winding military road which owes its existence to the war. I have seen nothing since the view from Mount Washington to be compared with the panorama which unrolled itself around me as I ascended. Pictures of two States were there, indescribably tinted in the early morning light,-beautiful Maryland, still more beautiful Virginia, with the green Potomac valley marking the boundary between. On the Maryland side were the little valleys of the Monocacy and the Antietam. Opposite lay the valley of the Shenandoah, dotted with trees, its green fields spotted with the darker green of groves, a vast tract stretching away into a realm of hazy light, belted with sun and mist, and bounded by faint outlines of mountains so soft they seemed built of ether but a little more condensed than the blue of the sky.

Yet it was war and not beauty which led man to these heights. The timber which once covered them was cut away when the forts were constructed, in order to afford free range for the guns; and a thick undergrowth now takes its place. There are strong works on the summit, the sight of which kindles anew one's indignation at the imbecility which surrendered them, with Harper's Ferry and a small army, at a time when such an act was sufficient to prolong the war perhaps for years.

It is a steep mile and more by the road from the Ferry to

the top of the cliffs: a mile which richly repays the travel. Yet one need not go so far nor climb so high to see the beauties of the place. Whichever way you turn, river, or rock, or wild woods charm the eye. The Potomac comes down from its verdant bowers gurgling among its innumerable rocky islets. On one side is the canal, on the other the race which feeds the government works, each tumbling its yeasty superflux over waste-weir walls into the river. With the noise of those snowy cascades sweetly blends the note of the boatman's bugle approaching the locks. The eye ranges from the river to the crags a thousand feet above, and all along the mountain side, gracefully adorned with sparse timber, feathery boughs and trees loaded down with vines, and is never weary of the picture. At evening, you sit watching the sunset colors fade, until the softened gray and dusky-brown tints of the cliffs deepen into darkness, and the moon comes out and silvers them.

But while the region presents such features of beauty and grandeur, the town is the reverse of agreeable. It is said to have been a pleasant and picturesque place formerly. The streets were well graded, and the hill-sides above were graced with terraces and trees. But war has changed all. Freshets tear down the centre of the streets, and the dreary hill-sides present only ragged growths of weeds. The town itself lies half in ruins. The government works were duly destroyed by the Rebels; of the extensive buildings which comprised the armory, rolling-mills, foundry, and machine-shops, you see but little more than the burnt-out, empty shells. Of the bridge across the Shenandoah only the ruined piers are left; still less remains of the old bridge over the Potomac. And all about the town are rubbish, and filth, and stench.

Almost alone of the government buildings, John Brown's "Engine-house" has escaped destruction. It has come out of the ordeal of war terribly bruised and battered, it is true, its windows blackened and patched like the eyes of a pugilist; but there it still stands, with its brown brick walls and little wooden belfry, like a monument which no Rebel hands were

permitted to demolish. It is now used as a storehouse for

arms.

The first time I visited this scene of the first blood shed in the great civil war, which, although so few dreamed of it, was even then beginning, - for John Brown's flaming deed was as a torch flung into the ready-heaped combustibles of the rebellion, while I stood viewing the spot with an interest which must have betrayed itself, a genial old gentleman, coming out of the government repair-shop close by, accosted me. We soon fell into conversation, and he told me the story of John Brown at Harper's Ferry.

"So they took the old man and hung him; and all the time the men that did it were plotting treason and murder by the wholesale. They did it in a hurry, because if they delayed, they would n't have been able to hang him at all. A strong current of public feeling was turning in his favor. Such a sacrifice of himself set many to thinking on the subject who never thought before; many who had to acknowledge in their hearts that slavery was wrong and that old John Brown was right. I speak what I know, for I was here at the time. I have lived in Harper's Ferry fifteen years. I was born and bred in a slave State, but I never let my love of the institution blind me to everything else. Slavery has been the curse of this country, and she is now beginning to bless the day she was delivered from it."

"Are there many people here who think as you do?"

"Enough to carry the day at the polls. The most of them are coming round to right views of negro suffrage, too. That is the only justice for the blacks, and it is the only safety for us. The idea of allowing the loyal colored population to be represented by the whites, the most of whom were traitors, of letting a Rebel just out of the Confederate army vote, and telling a colored man just out of the Union army that he has no vote, the idea is so perfectly absurd that the Rebels themselves must acknowledge it."

I was hardly less interested in the conversation of an intelligent colored waiter at the hotel. He had formerly been held

as a slave in the vicinity of Staunton. At the close of the war he came to the Ferry to find employment.

"There was n't much chance for me up there. Besides, I came near losing my life before I got away. You see, the masters, soon as they found out they could n't keep their slaves, began to treat them about as bad as could be. Then, because I made use of this remark, that I did n't think we colored folks ought to be blamed for what was n't our fault, for we did n't make the war, and neither did we declare ourselves free,just because I said that, not in a saucy way, but as I say it to you now, one man put a pistol to my head, and was going to shoot me. I got away from him, and left. A great many came away at the same time, for it was n't possible for us to stay there.

66

Now tell me candidly," said I, "how the colored people themselves behaved."

"Well, just tolerable. They were like a bird let out of a You know how a bird that has been long in a cage. will act when the door is opened; he makes a curious fluttering for a little while. It was just so with the colored people. They did n't know at first what to do with themselves. But they got sobered pretty soon, and they are behaving very decent now."

Harper's Ferry affords a striking illustration of the folly of secession. The government works here gave subsistence to several hundred souls, and were the life of the place. The attempt to overturn the government failed; but the government works, together with their own prosperity, the mad fanatics of Harper's Ferry succeeded easily enough in destroying. "The place never will be anything again," said Mr. B., of the repair-shop, "unless the government decides to rebuild the armory, - and it is doubtful if that is ever done."

Yet, with the grandeur of its scenery, the tremendous waterpower afforded by its two rushing rivers, and the natural advantage it enjoys as the key to the fertile Shenandoah Valley, Harper's Ferry, redeemed from slavery, and opened to Northern enterprise, should become a beautiful and busy town.

FELLOW-PASSENGERS.

69

CHAPTER VIII.

A TRIP TO CHARLESTOWN.

ONE morning I took the train up the Valley to Charlestown, distant from Harper's Ferry eight miles.

The railroad was still in the hands of the government. There were military guards on the platforms, and about an equal mixture of Loyalists and Rebels within the cars. Furloughed soldiers, returning to their regiments at Winchester or Staunton, occupied seats with Confederate officers just out of their uniforms. The strong, dark, defiant, self-satisfied face typical of the second-rate "chivalry," and the good-natured, shrewd, inquisitive physiognomy of the Yankee speculator going to look at Southern lands, were to be seen side by side, in curious contrast. There also rode the well-dressed wealthy planter, who had been to Washington to solicit pardon for his treasonable acts, and the humble freedman returning to the home from which he had been driven by violence, when the war closed and left him free. Mothers and daughters of the first families of Virginia sat serene and uncomplaining in the atmosphere of mothers and daughters of the despised race, late their slaves or their neighbors', but now citizens like themselves, free to go and come, and as clearly entitled to places in the government train as the proudest dames of the land.

We passed through a region of country stamped all over by the devastating heel of war. For miles not a fence or cultivated field was visible.

"It is just like this all the way up the Shenandoah Valley," said a gentleman at my side, a Union man from Winchester. "The wealthiest people with us are now the poorest. With hundreds of acres they can't raise a dollar. Their slaves have