Even in an aesthetic point of view, however, the war has done a great
deal of enduring mischief, by causing the devastation of great tracts
of woodland scenery, in which this part of Virginia would appear to
have been very rich. Around all the encampments, and everywhere along
the road, we saw the bare sites of what had evidently been tracts of
hard-wood forest, indicated by the unsightly stumps of well-grown
trees, not smoothly felled by regular axe-men, but hacked, haggled, and
unevenly amputated, as by a sword, or other miserable tool, in an
unskilful hand. Fifty years will not repair this desolation. An army
destroys everything before and around it, even to the very grass; for
the sites of the encampments are converted into barren esplanades, like
those of the squares in French cities, where not a blade of grass is
allowed to grow. As to other symptoms of devastation and obstruction,
such as deserted houses, unfenced fields, and a general aspect of
nakedness and ruin, I know not how much may be due to a normal lack of
neatness in the rural life of Virginia, which puts a squalid face even
upon a prosperous state of things; but undoubtedly the war must have
spoilt what was good, and made the bad a great deal worse. The
carcasses of horses were scattered along the way-side.

One very pregnant token of a social system thoroughly disturbed was
presented by a party of contrabands, escaping out of the mysterious
depths of Secessia; and its strangeness consisted in the leisurely
delay with which they trudged forward, as dreading no pursuer, and
encountering nobody to turn them back. They were unlike the specimens
of their race whom we are accustomed to see at the North, and, in my
judgment, were far more agreeable. So rudely were they attired,--as if
their garb had grown upon them spontaneously,--so picturesquely natural
in manners, and wearing such a crust of primeval simplicity, (which is
quite polished away from the Northern black man,) that they seemed a