ifting--A Quaker battery--At
Newport News--Compliments of the Teaser.

On Sunday morning, March 23d, we marched to Alexandria. The whole of our
division, and of the other divisions of Keyes' corps, were there,
besides part of Heintzelman's corps and other troops. In the course of
the afternoon, this great body of men was embarked upon the transports.
The vessels having received their lading, swung out upon the river and
laid at anchor during the night. Early in the morning the whole fleet
was under way, steaming down the river. We passed Mount Vernon--the
bells of the fleet tolling. The tomb lies in the midst of a clump of
firs just south and a little below the house; the mansion and the
grounds are nearly as they were left by Washington, and the whole looks
down upon the river, calling upon the passer-by for a thought upon the
great man whose dust lies beneath the fir trees. After passing Mount
Vernon, nothing of special interest was seen except the broad expanse of
waters of this magnificent stream. A few large mansions, a few inferior
houses, and now and then a little hamlet, appeared on the banks; and at
Aquia creek could be seen the insignificant earthworks that had covered
the few field pieces which for so many months had kept up an efficient
blockade of the Potomac.

How different was all this from our Hudson! The country bordering on the
river is beautiful; nature has done everything for it, but a cursed
institution has blighted it. There is not a country in the world where
nature has been more lavish with its blessings, and yet it is forsaken,
worn out, almost a wilderness. The magnificent rivers and unsurpassed
harbors of Virginia, its natural fertility and the mildness of its
climate, present natural advantages scarcely equaled by any country. As
we stood upon the deck of the steamer, watching and admiring the
ever-varying beauties of the noble stream, some one repeated these lines
from Barlow's _Columbiad_:

"Thy capes, Virginia, towering from the tide,
Raise their blue banks, and slope thy barriers wide,
To future sails unfold a fluvian way,
And guard secure thy multifluvian bay,
That drains uncounted realms and here unites
The liquid mass from Alleganian hights.
York leads his way embanked in flowery pride,
And noble James falls winding by his side;
Back to the hills, through many a silent vale,
Wild Rappahannock seems to lure the sail;
Patapsco's bosom courts the hand of