The scenery grew even more picturesque as we
proceeded, the bluffs becoming very bold in their descent upon the river,
which, at Harper's Ferry, presents as striking a vista among the hills as
a painter could desire to see. But a beautiful landscape is a luxury,
and luxuries are thrown away amid discomfort; and when we alighted in the
tenacious mud and almost fathomless puddle, on the hither side of the
Ferry (the ultimate point to which the cars proceeded, since the railroad
bridge had been destroyed by the Rebels), I cannot remember that any very
rapturous emotions were awakened by the scenery.
We paddled and floundered over the ruins of the track, and, scrambling
down an embankment, crossed the Potomac by a pontoon-bridge, a thousand
feet in length, over the narrow line of which--level with the river, and
rising and subsiding with it--General Banks had recently led his whole
army, with its ponderous artillery and heavy laden wagons. Yet our own
tread made it vibrate. The broken bridge of the railroad was a little
below us, and at the base of one of its massive piers, in the rocky bed
of the river, lay a locomotive, which the Rebels had precipitated there.
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