Bolivar Hights, October 25.
"The view from the mountains at Harper's Ferry," said Thomas Jefferson, "is worth a journey across the Atlantic."
Curiosities of the Signal-Corps.
Let us approach it at the lower price of climbing Maryland Hights. The air is soft and wooing to-day. It is the time—
——"just ere the frost Prepares to pave old Winter's way, When Autumn, in a reverie lost, The mellow daylight dreams away; When Summer comes in musing mind To gaze once more on hill and dell, To mark how many sheaves they bind, And see if all are ripened well."
Half way up the mountain, you rest your panting horse at a battery, among bottle-shaped Dahlgrens, sure at thirty-five hundred yards, and capable at their utmost elevation of a range of three miles and a half; black, solemn Parrotts, with iron-banded breech, and shining howitzers of brass. Far up, accessible only to footmen, is a long breast-work, where two of our companies repulsed a Rebel regiment. How high the tide of war must run, when its waves wash this mountain-top! Here, on the extreme summit, is an open tent of the Signal-Corps. It is labeled:
"Don't touch the instruments. Ask no questions."
Inside, two operators are gazing at the distant hights, through fixed telescopes, calling out, "45," "169," "81," etc., which the clerk records. Each number represents a letter, syllable, or abbreviated word.
Looking through the long glass toward one of the seven signal-stations, from four to twenty miles away, communicating with this, you see a flag, with some large black figure upon a white foreground. It rises; so many waves to the right; so many to the left. Then a different flag takes its place, and rises and falls in turn.