Virginia. The bridge is
peculiar and artistic. It is about nine hundred feet long; its two
ends are curved in opposite directions, and at its farther extremity
it splits curiously into two bridge-branches, one of which supports
the road running up the Shenandoah, while the other carries the main
road along the Potomac. The latter fork of the bridge runs for half
a mile up the course of the Potomac stream over the water, the road
having been denied footing upon the shore on account of the presence
there of the government arsenal buildings. The effect to the eye is
very curious: the arsenal is at present razed to the level of the
ground (having been fired, the reader will remember, by the Federal
guard at the beginning of hostilities, and some fifteen thousand stand
of arms burnt to prevent their falling into Lee's hands), and there
is no topographical reason to prevent the track running comfortably on
dry ground. The arrangements, however, for purchasing the right to
a road-bed on the arsenal grounds, though under way, are not yet
complete, and the road marches on aquatically, as aforesaid.

Harper's Ferry, a town supported of old almost entirely by the arsenal
works, is a desolate little stronghold among towering mountains, the
ruins being in the foreground. The precipices on either side of the
river belong to the Elk Ridge, through which, at some antediluvian
period, the colossal current has hewed its way. At the base of
the Virginia side of the mountains, hugged in by the Potomac and
Shenandoah Rivers, and by Loudon and Bolivar Heights, cowers the town.

[Illustration: BATTLE-GROUNDS OF THE POTOMAC VALLEY.]

Across the river towers the mighty cupola of Maryland Height, far
overtopping the other peaks, and farther down the stream, like a
diminishing reflection of it, the softer swell of South Mountain. An
ordinary rifle-cannon on Maryland Height can with the greatest ease
play at bowls to the other summits. From this eminence one Colonel
Ford, on September 13, 1862, toppled down his spiked and coward
cannon: the hostile guns of the enemy quickly swarmed up the summit he
had abandoned, and the Virginia crests of Loudon and Bolivar belched
with rebel artillery. The town was surrendered by Colonel Miles at
the very moment when McClellan, pressing forward through the passes
of South Mountain from Frederick, was at hand to relieve it: Miles was
killed, and the considerable military stores left in the village were
bagged