the bust, with an epaulette on the shoulder. The Blue Ridge, as it
traverses from this point the breadth of Virginia, breaks into various
natural eccentricities--the Peaks of Otter, rising a mile above the
sea, the Natural Bridge, Weyer's Cave, Madison's Cave--and gives issue
to those rich heated and mineralized springs for which the State is
famous.

[Illustration: SCENE AMONG THE MARYLAND ALLEGHANIES.]

The tinge of regret with which we leave Harper's Ferry is mitigated
by the hope that greater wonders may lie beyond. In two miles the
railroad, as if willing to carve out a picture-frame in which the
heroic river may be viewed, excavates the "Potomac Tunnel," as it is
named, through which the water is seen like a design in _repoussé_
silver, with two or three emerald islands in it for jewel-work. The
perforation is eighty feet through, but in contrast with its rocky
breadth our picture-frame is not too deep: whenever we shift our
position, the view seems to increase in art-beauty, and as a final
comprehensive picture it recedes and crowds under the spandrels of the
arch the whole mountain-pass, with the confluence of the two rivers in
the finest imaginable aspect.

Poor Martinsburg! during the rebellion a mere sieve, through which the
tide of war poured back and forth in the various fluctuations of our
fortune! It is said to have been occupied by both armies, alternately,
fifteen times. The passenger sees it as a mere foreground of big
restaurant and platform, with a conglomeration of village houses in
the rear--featureless as the sheep which the painter of Wakefield put
in for nothing. One incident, however, supervenes. An old man, with
positive voice and manners, and altogether a curious specimen in