ing. One of the officers on this dreadful re- | and then, terrified lest they should fall into the treats says: "My breakfast was nothing. My dinner at four o'clock was a raw egg and a biscuit. My supper consisted of two hard crackers. My drink was the stagnant, muddy water of the swamp, scooped up with my hand." There is a little stream called White Oak Creek, which passes through the heart of the swamp. The bridge was destroyed as soon as the troops had crossed it. Now and then, all along the lines, soldiers, utterly exhausted, would throw themselves down for a few moments' sleep, hands of the enemy, would spring up, and, not more than half awake, toil painfully on. In the earliest dawn of the morning of this day, as the army torrent was surging forward in its choked and narrow channel, few knew why or where, the Rev. J. J. Marks, the devoted, heroic chaplain of the Sixty-third Pennsylvania Regiment, rode to Savage's Station to see what could be done toward removing the thousands of sick and wounded men collected at that place. At General Heintzelman's tent he found the officers met in council, and orderlies, surgeons, as though a serpent of fire, lashed with demoniac tortures, had escaped from the pit and was rushing it knew not where. Suddenly there was a tremendous crash. Tons of powder and hundreds of shells were exploding. An eye-witness writes: commissaries, and colonels hurrying backward the hills watching the rushing meteor it seemed and forward in the wildest haste. The air was full of rumors of peril and disaster. General Heintzelman, with the calmness of one accustomed to danger, was issuing his commands; and after listening to Dr. Marks's appeal in behalf of the wounded, said that nothing could be done to save them; that all the wounded must be left at Savage's Station to meet such doom as the rebels might award to them. General M'Clellan had ordered all the ambulances to depart empty. He deemed that five thousand wounded men in the train of the army would so retard and embarrass its movements as to render escape impossible. It was therefore deemed a stern necessity to leave the wounded in the hands of the rebels. It is sadly to be deplored that the sick could not have been all removed a few days before the retreat commenced. Nobly Dr. Marks, and his friend Mr. Brunot, resolved to remain with the sufferers to minister to their wants and to share their fate. A colonel rode into the hospital grounds and said, as he withdrew the pickets, that within half an hour the rebels would be there. Every patient who could leave his cot now endeavored to escape. "I beheld," says Dr. Marks, "a long scattering line of the patients staggering away, some carrying their guns and supporting a companion on an arm, others tottering feebly over a staff, which they appeared to have scarcely strength to lift up. One was borne on the shoulders of two of his companions, in the hope that when he had gone a little distance he might be able to walk. One had already sat down, fainting from the exertion of a few steps. Some had risen from the first rest, staggered forward a few steps and fell in the road; but after a few moments in the open air, and stimulated by the fear of the enemy, they could walk more strongly. Never have I beheld a spectacle more touching and more sad."* "Bomb after bomb sprang from the fiery mass, hissing and screaming like fiends in agony, and coursing in every direction through the forests and the clear heavens. Rarely has there been a spectacle of greater wonder and grandeur. Such was the momentum of this train that when it reached the chasm it sprang out fully forty feet; and the engine and first car leaped over the first pier in the stream, and there they hang suspended, one of the most impressive monuments of the Peninsular disasters." It was not until three o'clock in the afternoon that General Heintzelman and his staff left the station. A very affecting scene was now witnessed as the troops bade adieu to their sick and wounded friends, whom they were compelled to leave behind-to abandon as prisoners to the rebels. "Fathers had to drag themselves away from the couches of their sons; and after they had gone a few steps would return to look once more. Up to this time the disabled had not known that they were to be left behind; and when it became manifest, the scene could not be pictured by human language. I heard one man crying out, 'O my God! is this the reward I deserve for all the sacrifices I have made, the battles I have fought, and the agony I have endured from my wounds?' Some of the younger soldiers wept like children; others turned pale and some fainted. Poor fellows! they thought this was the last drop in the cup of bitterness, but there were many yet to be added.” There is a large open plain of several hundred acres opposite Savage's Station. Along this An immense amount of provisions, which had plain the Williamsburg Road passes, by which been accumulated for the army, was here de- our troops were mainly to effect their retreat. stroyed to prevent it from falling into the hands Beyond the plain is a dark pine forest. It was of the enemy. Hundreds of barrels of flour, here on the edge of this forest that General rice, sugar, molasses, salt, and bread were piled Sumner was stationed with 20,000 men, who up in immense pyramids and consigned to the were to hold in check the enemy until our flames. It was not easy to dispose suddenly of troops had escaped beyond White Oak Swamp. the ammunition, consisting of hundreds of bar- Here this heroic band for hours awaited the aprels of powder and tons of shells. The follow-proach of the trebly outnumbering foe, while ing expedient was adopted. The whole mass regiments and divisions and trains of wagons of powder and shells was piled up in a long filed by them. The fate of the army was in train of cars. The engine, under full pressure their hands, and they proved worthy of the of steam, was attached. There was a descend- trust. ing grade of about two and a half miles from the station to the Chickahominy, where the railroad bridge had been destroyed. The torch was applied to the combustibles placed in the cars and the train put in motion. The currents of air fanned the flames, and in billows of fire they wreathed around the long serpentine train, whose wheels revolved every moment with more frightful velocity. As multitudes stood upon * The Peninsula Campaign in Virginia, by J. J. Marks, D.D., p. 243. About five o'clock in the afternoon an immense cloud of dust announced the approach of the enemy. As they drew nearer, from their whole mass of artillery in front they opened a terrific fire. The national guns responded. For an hour not a musket was discharged, but the reverberating thunder of the cannon shook the hills. Then the whole majestic mass of the rebels, with their peculiar yell, not cheer, which their savage allies had apparently taught them, sprang forward upon the open plain, presenting a crested billow of glittering bayonets which it would seem that no mortal power could stem. Every musket in the Union line was brought into deliberate aim. Not a man wavered. For a moment there was a pause until it was certain that every bullet would fulfill its mission, and then there was a flash, followed by a storm of lead, which covered the ground with the dead and the dying. At the same moment, the cheer of the patriot responded to the yell of the rebel. I can not refrain from again quoting from the graphic pen of an eye-witness: "Beaten back by this leaden storm the ene my wavered and retreated a few steps to the railroad. But soon after troops coming up behind them pressed the front line once more into the field. Again there leaped from ten thousand guns the fiery blast, and yell answered yell. For a moment there would be a pause, a lull in the battle, to be succeeded by the instantaneous discharge of five thousand guns; and then, as if the contending hosts had been stung to frenzy, the rage of the contest was redoubled. The clash of arms was occasionally interrupted by the coming into the field of fresh regiments, cheering their companions with loud shouts. The The dullest ear could perceive the difference be- | General-in-Chief. He had stopped to rest in tween the voices of our men and those of the the veranda of a house. The heat was overenemy. Ours shouted in clear, ringing, and whelming. The mistress came to complain manly tones, while the enemy's sounded like that the soldiers were eating her cherries. the scream of the panther and the yell of the General rose with a smile, went himself and put savage. At one time in the conflict there was a stop to their pillage. But he could not prethe simultaneous discharge of two thousand vent the shells next day from setting fire to the muskets, as if men had fired in each other's house of his pretty hostess." faces. It was a moment I shall never forget; the thought of the crushing, the piercing, and the agony; the life-blood gushing out; the strong arm palsied, and the bright eye darkened forever; the many souls appearing the same instant before God-all brought to the heart over An account of the successful achievement of the change of base must be reserved for our next number. OVER THE MEADOW. HERE are some days one never forgets. I whelming emotions as if in a moment I had oubt if I ever forget those days, so long lived years. In the confusion and darkness of the smokeenveloped field, as the shades of evening were deepening, two regiments approached each other, and each withheld its fire, anxiously uncertain whether the other were friend or foe. When they could almost touch with their muskets the patriot Colonel of the one, stepped forward and inquired, "What regiment is that?" hoping that he was in the presence of brothers. There was a moment's pause, and then the response was returned, "What regiment is yours?" "The Fifth Vermont," was the reply. "Then," exclaimed the rebel Colonel of the other, which proved to be the Eleventh Alabama, "in God's name take it—fire." Both regiments discharged their guns simultaneously into each other's bosoms when scarcely ten feet apart. What was the loss of the rebels is not known. But two hundred of the Vermonters, noble boys from their happy homes amidst the Green Mountains, were left by that fire dead or helplessly wounded upon the field. In this, which was one of the most desperate battles of the war, the rebels brought into action fifty thousand men to crush our rear-guard of twenty thousand. The patriots, under their heroic leader, were nobly the victors. They repelled and drove back their assailants. And as night parted the combatants, and the rebels gave up the strife to await the morning and the arrival of fresh troops, a shout of victory ran along our lines which resounded for miles through the solitudes of the forest. General M'Clellan, who, some miles in the rear, was conducting vigorously the retreat, was, by the heroic repulse thus given to the foe, enabled to save our retreating columns and baggage-trains by conveying them through the almost impassable slough of White Oak Swamp. The battle continued quite into the night. Its roar, as heard by the retreating army in the depths of White Oak Swamp, was majestic and awful. During this dreadful day General M'Clellan remained most of the time at his head-quarters, in the interior of White Oak Swamp, watching the passage of the almost interminable lines of the army. "Nothing," writes the Prince de Joinville, "disturbed the serene self-possession of the The Peninsula Campaign in Virginia, by Rev. J. J. Marks, D.D. ago, but still so fresh as if they broke but yesterday-those days spent with Donald gathering the crimson jets of samphire! Oh, but they were days of grace, and though I've jogged through many calmer ones, there's been none like them-none. Since I had just come from believing in fairyfolks haunting the green dimples of the hill, rowing all day down the meadow stream in wherries carved from bubbles by the wandering Djin, the wind, I must needs believe in something, and so I believed in him. Alas, and that passed by as well! I have only to open my window on a still autumn morning with just a breath off the river, and once more I am Christine Miller and twenty, and the samphire is ripening over yonder, and Donald is the gay, handsome heart again, lithe and lovely; but soon this glamour passes too, and I know well that Donald's dead these ten years, and that I am only the Widow Brown with sixty years astern. It was just across the river we always went when my mother had said: "Christine, where is your samphire for pickling, now your preserves be all made and your cowcumbers done?" So Donald would out with his boat, and Susan and Ned Brown and I with our baskets, and away we would spin over the water in the sunshine, making merry. I had two lovers in those days, Ned Brown and Donald; but Donald he was born to be a lover, while Ned was an awkward, staring boy, always with his hands in his breeches pockets when they weren't handling a ship's rope, for he followed the sea between whiles. It was Donald who helped me ashore, but it was Ned who staid behind to anchor the little craft; if I lost my footing in the boggy spots it was Donald who came to my help with a lightsome solicitude, but all the time Ned's eyes never left me, and I knew that but for his clod-hopper ways he would rescue me first from a den of lions if need were. For all that Donald was my earliest and latest thought. "What will Donald think? Will Donald go? Will Donald come?" That was the catechism I learned alike Sunday and week-day; and, sooth to say, I hardly knew Ned lived at all save when I saw him before me! Ah, well-a-day, there's scarce a night, I believe, but in my dream I'm picking my way over the samphire-field behind Donald, and I see his foot slip and catch its balance again as he turns and holds out his hand to me, and always on his handsome face a smile hovers; and anon I trip, and before he can reach me I'm broad awake, sitting up in bed, with a star winking at me through the chink of the shutter. That's why I go to bed so early, for I'm sure to dream of Donald, and the samphire, and the days when we were keeping company! "Then you do?" "Do what?" For I was determined to make him come every step of the way. Was I to be so lightly won? "Love me," he answered. "Well, yes—a little-maybe!" I suppose that answered his turn, for directly he grew gay and glad, made the air ring with his wild tunes and pleasant jests, till, at last, all agreed we never had spent so blithe a day on the meadow. "What's douce to some is dour to others," as I have heard the proverb run, in the tongue my mother brought with her when, a child with a speech of her own, she came from Scotland to these foreign shores of freedom. And Donald went to the city to be clerk in a great importing house, and the boat was sold, and Ned was off and away to the Indies; and henceforth, if Susan and I wanted samphire, there was the bridge across, and the ferryman, but that was all. One day I remember it well-the heavens were like the streets of the new Jerusalem, all paven gold and sapphire-stone, and the crisp air guarded a smell of pine woods and falling leaves, and the river ran sparkling away to the sea, like a string of bright beads that had slipped the knot. But Donald, though he handled the oar briskly, and the boat sped like a flash from reach to reach of the curveting tide, was a trifle down at the mouth as he looked back at the shore yellowing and crimsoning in its autumn sunshine, and out upon the bar, where the unallayed waves tossed up, as by some wizard spell, huge columns and archways, that flashed and silvered and disappeared, like some spectral gateway, into the broad ocean beyond; and then, glancing back at me, I discerned a shadow fall dark-fore my mother's people brought her here; and, ly across his face as he said: Donald's mother was always an ambitious body, and nowise willing he should stay at home, and milk the cows, and plow the field. and reap the harvest, as his forefathers had done since ever they left the bonny Tweedside, and settled in America; for they emigrated long be being longer established, they felt what in the "You will be coming here often when I'm old country would be called a priority of rank away." "Never without thinking of you, Donald," I answered; and even though I whispered it I noted Ned tore his eyes from off me, and sent them gazing out at sea. Surely there's no ears nor eyes like true love's! over us later comers; so Donald's mother would "Shall you be gone for long?" asked Susan. his bearings to this day. "For months; maybe years!" Now it was for me to look aghast; but I forbore to speak, for Ned-wasn't he all ears and eyes and wistful woefulness? But when we were out upon the meadow, and Donald stooping close beside me over the tiny bristling spears of samphire, my curiosity was ready to blaze, but my pride hung fire. So we picked and picked, and the silence was growing hateful, when, suddenly, he stood upright and took off his hat, saying, with a grim smile that was more than half a frown, "You don't ask me any thing; you don't care; Ned has been getting your heart away from me by inches; it is time for me to go!" "Indeed, Master Donald," said I, quite put out, you know, "where got you the deed and title of my heart, that you can gainsay its gift by an inch or an ell?" At that he looked befogged, and drew his hand along his brow, and cried, Well, first along, Donald wrote a thought gloomy; and my letters to him were like the light between riven clouds, he said; but in those days the mail didn't come bothering and disappointing you five or six times a day it was odd if we got a letter from Donald much short of a fortnight old. You may guess how I counted the time till mail-day; how if it stormed, or froze, or parched, it was still the sweetest day that ever gathered to a dawn and smiled from east to west; how I dressed in my finest clothes, and watched and listened. But one day, it was all in vain. "No letters for Christine Miller!" sang out our postmaster-a saucy old rough, who would have called King Solomon himself by his Christian name-"who'd have guessed he'd forget ye a'ready?" "Who, indeed!" thought I. Oh, but the next fortnight was bitter long! and though a letter came it planted a thorn in "Christine, do you mean that you never loved my side. me?" "Do you mean that you ever asked me to ?" "I do now, for I shall love you forever!" "That alters things," said I, coolly enough, considering the words were burning in on my heart. VOL. XXX.-No. 180.-8 C "I am fast making friends," he wrote; "my employer has two agreeable daughters, who often make my evenings pleasant, and keep me out of harm's way, as mother would say." "Harm's way!" thought I. "If that's out of it, where next?" |