w of long one and two
story buildings, most of them painted yellow. These were divided into
small apartments which had been used as lodging rooms. There were a
dozen or more of these buildings, all dilapidated by age rather than
suffering from the ruthless usage of war. They inclosed the grove which
occupied ten or twelve acres of land.

Except the circle of buildings immediately surrounding the grove and
springs, there were but very few dwellings in the neighborhood, those
evidently intended for the purpose of receiving summer boarders. It was
said that about five hundred boarders used to spend the summer here
every year, and double that number of visitors took rooms at Warrenton,
a mile and a half distant, from which place they rode to the springs
morning and evening to quaff the odorous fluid, or to stroll about the
groves. The new White Sulphur Springs in the Shenandoah Valley had, for
some years past, diverted the patronage from the Warrenton springs, and
thither, at the foot of the Blue Ridge mountains, great numbers of
fashionable southerners had resorted.

It was evidently a blessing that this resort had been despoiled by war.
It sadly needed renovating and modernizing, and so long as the old
buildings stood, no southerner had the enterprise to pull them down and
replace them with better ones. A few thousands of dollars in the hands
of an enterprising Yankee would soon make this one of the most
delightful resorts in the southern states.

One of the characteristic features of our picket duty on the
Rappahannock, was the great number of contrabands who came through our
lines.

Squads of gray-headed old negroes, young negro women and children,
carrying in bundles all their worldly store, constantly applied for
permission to enter the lines on their way to the north. The cavalry who
scouted in front on the south side of the river, returned with wagons
loaded with little darkies, whose mothers and elder sisters and
grandsires trudged along on foot. All wagons going to Warrenton without
other lading were filled with these refugees from slavery, old and
young, some black, some olive and some white; some with black curly
wool, some with wavy black hair, and some with brown ringlets.

Our northern soldiers had, by this time, begun to look upon slavery in
its true light. They had also learned that the negroes were their
friends. It required a long schooling to teach them this lesson, but it
was thoroughly learned at