Reveille this morning at 5 o'clock—a long and tedious march before us to-day, as we will have to cross the Blue Ridge at Millan's Gap. The route was terribly tedious, for the road wound along side the mountain first one way and then another. Although we would march for mile after mile yet it seemed as if we could throw a rock from where we first started in the morning.
One spot in this ragged mountain gap struck me as being peculiarly lovely—a bold and limpid stream dashed down the mountain side and plunged into the deep gorge beneath us; the jagged rocks covered with a thick and beautiful coat of moss; the wild "arbor vitae" and the "mountain ash" entwined with luxuriant and gigantic creeping vines made this a spot ever so green and fair, though winter's icy blast howled mournfully by. What a fairy spot to spend a summer's night in!
NIGHT!
"Tell me not of morning breaking,
From the chambers of the deep:
Or the world to beauty waking
From the arms of balmy sleep,
Give me midnight gems of glory,
Glowing in the moonlit sea,
Gilding lake and mountain hoary,
Night, oh! night hath charms for me.
"As the tears of angels falling,
Turn to diamonds on each flower,
And the beetle's horn is calling
Fairies to their green-wood bower:
When the holy light is streaming,
And the leaves droop on each tree,
Then, when all the world is dreaming,
Night, ah! Night, hath charm for me."
But before we reached this beautiful spot another mountain scene has been presented to me-just before we reached the summit of the Blue Ridge I noticed a miserable log hovel near the road-side and, for curiosity, to see its inmates, if it were possible that human beings lived in such a miserable pen, I walked in. Oh! what a picture of human misery met me upon my entrance-huddled together in the chimney corner were a half dozen flaxen haired children, perfectly begrimed with filth, some of whom were almost in the state of nudity. Great holes and crevices were in the walls of this miserable cabin, through which the chilly north wind whistled and roared with impunity. Not a thing to eat did they have, and the two old crones who, with the little children, dwelled therein, managed to pick up a precarious living as best they could-perhaps they subsisted on the sublimity of the mountain scenery. Judging from their conversation "they feared neither God, nor man," and their curses upon the soldiers for stealing an axe from them were both loud and deep.
SOURCE: William S. White, A Diary of the War; or What I Saw of It, pp. 140-1
