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 heavily 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.

As we passed over, we looked towards the Virginia shore, and beheld the
little town of Harper's Ferry, gathered about the base of a round hill
and climbing up its steep acclivity; so that it somewhat resembled the
Etruscan cities which I have seen among the Apennines, rushing, as it
were, down an apparently break-neck height. About midway of the ascent
stood a shabby brick church, towards which a difficult path went
scrambling up the precipice, indicating, one would say, a very fervent
aspiration on the part of the worshippers, unless there was some easier
mode of access in another direction. Immediately on the shore of the
Potomac, and extending back towards the town, lay the dismal ruins of
the United States arsenal and armory, consisting of piles of broken
bricks and a waste of shapeless demolition, amid which we saw
gun-barrels in heaps of hundreds together. They were the relics of the
conflagration, bent with the heat of the fire, and rusted with the
wintry rain to which they had since been exposed. The brightest
sunshine could not have made the scene cheerful, nor have taken away
the gloom from the dilapidated town; for, besides the natural
shabbiness, and decayed, unthrifty look of a Virginian village, it has