ill next day morning. Crossing an estuary of the bay upon a
narrow causeway, I passed Hampton,--half burned, half desolate,--and at
three o'clock came to "Big Bethel," the scene of the battle of June 11,
1861. A small earthwork marks the site of Magruder's field-pieces, and
hard by the slain were buried. The spot was noteworthy to me, since
Lieutenant Greble, a fellow alumnus, had perished here, and likewise,
Theodore Winthrop, the gifted author of "Cecil Dreeme" and "John Brent."
The latter did not live to know his exaltation. That morning never came
whereon he "woke, and found himself famous."

The road ran parallel with the deserted defences of the Confederates for
some distance. The country was flat and full of swamps, but marked at
intervals by relics of camps. The farm-houses were untenanted, the
fences laid flat or destroyed, the fields strewn with discarded
clothing, arms, and utensils. By and by, we entered the outer line of
Federal parallels, and wound among lunettes, cremailleres, redoubts, and
rifle-pits. Marks of shell and ball were frequent, in furrows and holes,
where the clay had been upheaved. Every foot of ground, for fifteen
miles henceforward, had been touched by the shovel and the pick. My
companion suggested that as much digging, concentred upon one point,
would have taken the Federals to China. The sappers and miners had made
their stealthy trenches, rod by rod, each morning appearing closer to
their adversaries, and finally, completed their work, at less than a
hundred yards from the Confederate defences. Three minutes would have
sufficed from the final position, to hurl columns upon the opposing
outworks, and sweep them with the bayonet. Ten days only had elapsed
since the evacuation (May 4), and the siege guns still remained in some
of the batteries. McClellan worshipped great ordnance, and some of his
columbiads, that were mounted in the water battery, yawned cavernously
through their embrasures, and might have furnished sleeping
accommodations to the gunners. A few mortars stood in position by the
river side, and there were Parrott, Griffin, and Dahlgren pieces in the
shore batteries.

However numerous and powerful were the Federal fortifications, they bore
no comparison, in either respect, to those relinquished by the
revolutionists. Miniature mountain ranges they seemed, deeply ditched,
and revetted with sods, fascines, hurdles, gabions or sand bags. Along
the York riverside there were wat