Inquiring as we went, we forded a wide creek in which
soldiers were washing their clothes, the name of which we did not then
know, but which must have been the Antietam. At one point we met a
party, women among them, bringing off various trophies they had picked up
on the battlefield. Still wandering along, we were at last pointed to a
hill in the distance, a part of the summit of which was covered with
Indian corn. There, we were told, some of the fiercest fighting of the
day had been done. The fences were taken down so as to make a passage
across the fields, and the tracks worn within the last few days looked
like old roads. We passed a fresh grave under a tree near the road. A
board was nailed to the tree, bearing the name, as well as I could make
it out, of Gardiner, of a New Hampshire regiment.

On coming near the brow of the hill, we met a party carrying picks and
spades. "How many?" "Only one." The dead were nearly all buried, then,
in this region of the field of strife. We stopped the wagon, and,
getting out, began to look around us. Hard by was a large pile of
muskets, scores, if not hundreds, which had been picked up, and were
guarded for the Government. A long ridge of fresh gravel rose before us.
A board stuck up in front of it bore this inscription, the first part of
which was, I believe, not correct: "The Rebel General Anderson and 80
Rebels are buried in this hole." Other smaller ridges were marked with
the number of dead lying under them. The whole ground was strewed with
fragments of clothing, haversacks, canteens, cap-boxes, bullets,
cartridge-boxes, cartridges, scraps of paper, portions of bread and meat.
I saw two soldiers' caps that looked as though their owners had been shot
through the head. In several places I noticed dark red patches where a
pool of blood had curdled and caked, as some poor fellow poured his life
out on the sod. I then wandered about in the cornfield. It surprised me
to notice, that, though there was every mark of hard fighting having
taken place here, the Indian corn was not generally trodden down. One of
our cornfields is a kind of forest, and even when fighting, men avoid the
tall stalks as if they were trees. At the edge of this cornfield lay a
gray horse, said to have belonged to a Rebel colonel, who was killed near
the same place. Not far off were two dead artillery horses in their
harness. Another had been attended to by a burying-party, who had thrown
s