wn
to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, or up to Dogtail to see a break in the
levee, but after Merwin's talk about China he began to grow restless,
and it is generally said in Vicksburg that it was purely in order to
have something to tell Merwin about, the next time he saw him, that he
made his celebrated trip to the source of the Nile. As for Merwin, he
has never been invited back to Vicksburg, and it is to be observed that,
even to this day, Marse Harris, by nature of a sunny disposition, shows
signs of erosion of the spirit when China is mentioned.

It is apropos the battlefield that I mention the peculiarities of the
soil. Had the bare ground been exposed to the rains of a few years, the
details of redoubts, trenches, gun positions, saps, and all other
military works would have melted away. Fortunately, however, there is a
kind of tough, strong-rooted grass, called Bermuda grass, indigenous to
that part of the country, and this grass quickly covered the
battlefield, holding the soil together so effectually that all outlines
are practically embalmed. So, although those in charge of the park have
contributed not a little to its preservation--putting old guns in their
former places, perpetuating saps with concrete work, and placing white
markers on the hillsides, to show how far up those hillsides the
assaulting Union troops made their way in various historic charges--it
is due most of all to Nature that the Vicksburg battlefield so well
explains itself.

Could Grant and Pemberton look to-day upon the hills and valleys where
surged their six weeks' struggle for possession of the city, I doubt
that they would find any important landmark wanting, and it is certain
that they could not say, as Wellington did when he revisited Waterloo:
"They have spoiled my battlefield!"

Besides the old guns and the markers, the field is dotted over with
observation towers and all manner of memorials. Of the latter, the
marble pantheon erected by the State of Illinois, and the beautiful
marble and bronze memorial structure of the State of Iowa, are probably
the finest. The marble column erected by Wisconsin carries at its summit
a great bronze effigy of "Old Abe," the famous eagle, mascot of the
Wisconsin troops. Guides to the battlefield are prone to relate to
visitors--especially, I suspect, those whose accents betray a Northern
origin--how "Old Abe," the bird of battle, went home and disgraced
himself, after the war, by his ungentlemanl