nger, and it
might have been supposed that reverses had broken their spirit. On the
contrary they did not fall back a rod, during the whole day, and at
evening Heintzelman's corps crowned their success by a grand charge,
whereat the Confederates broke and were pursued three miles toward
Richmond. The gunboats Galena and Aroostook, lying in the James at
Turkey Bend, opened fire at three o'clock, and killed promiscuously,
Federals and Confederates. But the Southern soldiers were superstitious
as to gunboats, and they could not be made to approach within range of
the Galena's monstrous projectiles.

I shall always recall my journey from White Oak to Harrison's Bar, as
marked by constantly increasing beauties of scenery, and terrors of
event. At every hoof-fall I was leaving the low, boggy, sparsely settled
Chickahominy region, for the high farm-lands of the James. The
dwellings, as I progressed, became handsome; the negro quarters were
less like huts and cattle-sheds; the ripe wheatfields stretched almost
to the horizon; the lawns and lanes were lined with ancient shade-trees;
there were picturesque gates and lodges; the fences were straight and
whitewashed, there were orchards, heavy with crimson apples, where the
pumpkins lay beneath, like globes of gold, in the rows of amber corn.
Into this patriarchal and luxuriant country, the retreating army wound
like a great devouring serpent. It was to me, the coming back of the
beaten _jetters_ through _Midgards_, or the repulse of the fallen angels
from heaven, trampling down the river-sides of Eden. They rode their
team-horses into the wavy wheat, and in some places, where the reapers
had been at work, they dragged the sheaves from the stacks, and rested
upon them. Hearing of the coming of the army, the proprietors had vainly
endeavored to gather their crops, but the negroes would not work, and
they had not modern implements, whereby to mow the grain rapidly. The
profanation of those glorious stretches of corn and rye were to me some
of the most melancholy episodes of the war. No mind can realize how the
grain-fields used to ripple, when the fresh breezes blew up and down the
furrows, and the hot suns of that almost tropical climate, had yielded
each separate head till the whole landscape was like a bright cloud, or
a golden sea. The tall, shapely stalks seemed to reach out imploringly,
like sunny-haired virgins, waiting to be gathered into the arms of the
farmer. They were the