s of troops and horses and guns, but they were
all gone--the armies, to my seeming, had vanished--and on that lovely
summer morning the stillness and silence of death pervaded the
localities where so recently the shouts and the cannon had thundered.
The recent rains had washed out many an unsightly spot, and smoothed
many a harrowed trace of the conflict; but one still needed no guide
save the eyes, to follow the track of that storm, which the storms of
heaven were powerless soon to entirely efface. The spade and shovel, so
far as a little earth for the human bodies would render their task done,
had completed their work--a great labor, that. But still might see under
some concealing bush, or sheltering rock, what had once been a man, and
the thousands of stricken horses still lay scattered as they had died.
The scattered small arms and the accoutrements had been collected and
carried away, almost all that were of any value; but great numbers of
bent and splintered muskets, rent knapsacks and haversacks, bruised
canteens, shreds of caps, coats, trowsers, of blue or gray cloth,
worthless belts and cartridge boxes, torn blankets, ammunition boxes,
broken wheels, smashed limbers, shattered gun carriages, parts of
harness, of all that men or horses wear or use in battle, were scattered
broadcast over miles of the field. From these one could tell where the
fight had been hottest. The rifle-pits and epaulements and the trampled
grass told where the lines had stood, and the batteries--the former
being thicker where the enemy had been than those of our own
construction. No soldier was to be seen, but numbers of civilians and
boys, and some girls even, were curiously loitering about the field, and
their faces showed not sadness or horror, but only staring wonder or
smirking curiosity. They looked for mementoes of the battle to keep,
they said; but their furtive attempts to conceal an uninjured musket or
an untorn blanket--they had been told that all property left here
belonged to the Government--showed that the love of gain was an
ingredient at least of their motive for coming here. Of course there was
not the slightest objection to their taking anything they could find
now; but their manner of doing it was the objectionable thing. I could
now understand why soldiers had been asked a dollar for a small strip
of old linen to bind their own wound, and not be compelled to go off to
the hospitals.

Never elsewhere upon any field have