With Wagner,
Merrill, and Bowen, I rode up the mountain on our left this afternoon. We had
one field-glass and two spy-glasses, and obtained a magnificent view of the
surrounding country. Here and there we could see a cultivated spot or grazing
farm on the top of the mountain; but more frequently these were on the slopes.
We descried one house with our glasses on the very tiptop of Rich, and so far
away that it seemed no larger than a tent. How the man of the house gets up to
his airy height and gets down again puzzles us. He has the first gush of the
sunshine in the morning, and the latest gleam in the evening. Very often;
indeed, he must look down upon the clouds, and, if he has a tender heart, pity
the poor devils in the valley who are being rained on continually. Is it a
pleasant home? Has he wife and children in that mountain nest? Is he a man of
dogs and guns, who spends his years in the mountains and glens hunting for bear
and deer? May it not be the baronial castle of "old Leather Breeches"
himself?
Away off to the east
a cloud, black and heavy, is resting on a peak of the Cheat. Around it the
mountain is glowing in the summer sun, and appears soft and green. A gauze of
shimmering blue mantles the crest, darkens in the coves, and becomes quite
black in the gorges. The rugged rocks and scraggy trees, if there be any, are
at this distance invisible, and nothing is seen but what delights the eye and
quickens the imagination.
We see by the papers
that Ohio is preparing to organize a grand Union party, with a platform on
which both Republicans and Democrats can stand. I am glad of this. There should
be but one party in the North, and that party willing to make all sacrifices
for the Union.
SOURCE: John
Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, p. 63-4
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