“Every foot south of the Potomac was fighting-ground; every town was, at some time, the headquarters of well-known forces; nearly every farm house was a hospital, and some of the dead and wounded of the many contests had fallen on every acre. On the Union side Fremont and Sigel, Milroy and Shields, Hunter and Banks, Kelley and Crook, Wilson and Sheridan, and others of note had there met Jackson, Ewell, Early, Stewart, Ashby, and the advance of Lee in force. There were innumerable small affairs, and many extended and fierce engagements. Columns in advance and in retreat ebbed and flowed there through every year of the war; while every gap opening eastward poured its footmen and its horsemen upon the flanks, first of the one army, and then of the other. From the opening of the contest till is close it was the vortex of strategy. The war found it an ideal pastoral country, of rich and beautiful farms, of wealthy and aristocratic families, where life in its ease and sunshine rivaled that in older lands. It was the granary and store-house of the Confederacy. The war left it a bare, blackened, and blasted region, its homes destroyed, its farms desolated, and its able-bodied population decimated in the field. But it has fully recovered again. Grass and grain have woven nature’s beautiful covering over all scars of battle, and the countless miles of parapets are green each year with verdure, and the fields and orchards are laden with flowers again.”
HARPER’S FERRY, WEST VIRGINIA, FROM BOLIVAR HEIGHTS.—Harper’s Ferry is a place of great scenic as well as historic interest; but it is the magnificent scenery surrounding the place that now chiefly attracts the tourist’s attention. From Maryland Heights, on the opposite side of the Potomac, the observer is able to look into seven counties and across stretches of three States, the view being at last arrested by a soft haze that crowns the summit of the Blue Ridge range. The Shenandoah River unites with the Potomac at this point, sprinkled with white-crested waves that dash and roar over the boulders that uselessly attempt to impede its progress.
The southwestern branch of the Baltimore and Ohio skirts the Cumberland Range, following the valley of the Shenandoah, until it joins the main line at Harper’s Ferry, where the Shenandoah and Potomac likewise form a junction, each stream cleaving a way through the mountains and watering a region of extraordinary scenic beauty. Sheridan, when operating in these valleys, declared that the country was so barren that a crow would have to carry its rations when flying over it; but the country has blossomed into fertility since that time, and now presents glorious visions of great productiveness, as well as bluffs and mountains of rugged picturesqueness.
Harper’s Ferry was well known before the war as being the location of one of the important Government armories and arsenals, which were destroyed soon after the beginning of hostilities, and have not since been rebuilt. Its chief fame, however, is derived from the fact that the town was the seat of the John Brown insurrection (in October, 1859); and at Charleston, seven miles distant, on the road to Winchester, is the place where he was tried and executed. Harper’s Ferry was thus not only the scene of the opening events of the war, but it remained the center of action for a long time, being alternately occupied by the Union and Confederate forces, who contended with varying fortunes, but always with immense loss of life, in efforts to retain it as a base for their supplies. It is the magnificent scenery surrounding the place that now attracts the tourist’s interest, for a more beautiful section of mountain country is nowhere to be seen in the East. Particularly fine views are afforded from Maryland Heights, on the opposite side of the Potomac, and from Bolivar Heights, which are above the town, the latter being a more extensive perspective, commanding as it does a long stretch of river and the huge mountain ramparts on the south. From this point of observation, too, the Shenandoah River is presented to the view, sprinkled with white-crested waves dashing over smooth-worn bowlders, that have long lain in its course, and its frowning shores that rise up into towering mountains and form a chain of peaks that girdle the horizon. From Maryland Heights the observer is able to look into seven counties, and across stretches of three States, the view being at last arrested by a soft haze that crowns the soaring summits of the Blue Ridge Range. The route from Harper’s Ferry was north by way of the Baltimore and Ohio and the Cumberland Valley Railroads to Harrisburg, and thence some of the fine scenery of Pennsylvania was visited, particularly that which lies along the line of the Pennsylvania Railroad. In going East, the first view of great interest which greets the eyes of observant travelers along this road, after leaving Pittsburgh, is Johnstown, a great manufacturing place, at the confluence of Conemaugh River and Stony Creek, but whose largest fame dates from June 1, 1889, when the town was swept by one of the most appalling cataclysms that has found a record in history. On that ever-memorable date the immense reservoir away up in the Alleghenies that held the waters of South Fork, burst without warning and rushed down, a very devastating monster, into the smiling valley, which it overwhelmed with a flood forty feet deep. The result is too awful to dwell upon; two thousand people were whirled to their death, and the city was carried from its foundations, with a loss of $10,000,000. But Johnstown has recovered from the terrible blow which it received on that opening day of summer, and the blazing forge of the rolling-mills has again brought prosperity to the place.
THE HORSESHOE CURVE AT KITTANNING, PENNSYLVANIA.—This point is in one of the finest scenic localities of the great State of Pennsylvania, the rolling and broken hills rising in many places almost to the dignity of mountains. The valleys and sloping sides of the hills are covered with rich and well-cultivated farms, adorned with elegant farm-houses, barns and other improvements, superior to almost any of the other rural districts of our country. It is a region also famous for fruits of various kinds, and in the early spring the whole country seems abloom with the apple, peach, pear and other fragrant and familiar blossoms.