September 21st. This morning the Second corps fell in at an early hour and marched to Harper’s Ferry, encamping on Bolivar Heights. The march was very pleasant, the roads being good, and the weather superb. The whole army is in camp in the vicinity, and every hill and valley within sight is dotted over with canvas villages. Harper’s Ferry is one of the picturesque spots in America, delightfully situated in the gap of the Blue Ridge mountains. The Shenandoah here unites with the Potomac, and together they flow between the range of mountains on the way to the deep blue sea. Away off to the southwest the Blue Ridge mountains, with their thickly wooded slopes, form an impenetrable wall on the easterly side of the beautiful valley of the Shenandoah, and to the equally fertile Louden valley on the opposite side of the range.
The town lays in the hollow, at the foot of the heights, and is now of no importance, except as the place where the celebrated John Brown and his followers immortalized themselves. The old blackened walls of the government arsenals, destroyed at the very beginning of the war, stand like grim skeletons in their hideousness, and with the exception of a few straggling huts, is all there is of the place.
