Connecticut western news., 1883-10-10
AN OLD BATTLEFIELD.
A VISIT TO TT AFTER LAPSE OF MANY YEARS.
The First Battle of Bull Rtin and what
 Joaquin Miller Has to Say About It.
MANASSAS ! MANASSAS !"

from the swarthy conductors lips as the cars slowed tip at little village In an open and half barren land. There was a memory, sense of history, sound of war, scent of Waterloo color about this nalne, roar of cannon, which can never be quite disassociatedf from "Man- assas 7
 l wonder if biblical old Manassah, who kept the wayside inn at Manassas Gap hundred years ago, and gave his name to the place, was 8 man of war or man of peace, or felt the weight of cannon on his shoulders as he bore about this great battle name.
 This railway station is about thirty miles from Washington City, through the City of Jackson, which was laid ot1t--and buried, too-during Jackson's administration; also through Alexan- dria, storied town, where Washington went to church after he had buried the hatchet and that cherry tree episode. We got good dinner at Manassas, and hiring team and driver we set out for the battlefield of Bull Run, four miles distant, over the same road which Beau regard travelled to meet Mcdowell on the 21st of July, 1861.
 The trouble now is not what to say, but what to say in single letter. Briefly, then, the South was massing for battle on this point. You can to this day see miles of earthworks here. Fort Beauregard is still an imposing piece of fortifeation, earthwork, with peach trees, pear trees, willows, and, in fact, all kinds of wild as well as tame woods climbing over. It is too heavy to level down and restore again to the dominion of the plow. But nearly all the other lines and earth forts have quietly sur rendered to the husbandman, and mount ing there today the tall corn stands in regiments, flashing its green, bent sabres in the sun.
 The first battle of Bull Run stands first in the alphabet of great American battles. Greater battles have been taught hereabouts; greater battle in- deed; on this same ground. But the first has fastened itself on us. There is 8 savage fascination about it which we who lived on that day cannot escape. And yet it was not yesterday. I saw lounging against 8 lamp-post here at Manassas, not an hour ago, a handsome young Southerner pulling at his mous- tache. I approached and asked him of the battle. He had been born since it was fought So you see it was not fought yesterday, this battle of Bull Run, when the cannon shook the earth even to the shores of Oregon. And do you know the North played the air of "Dixie'' in this first battle ? It is so. The South had not yet learned it, but played "The Girl Left Behind Me-" Let us look back upon this battlefield as we look upon the face of one whom we knew | well nearly 8 quarter of a century ago. By wide, well-kept country road, through cornfelds and clumps of oak, chestnut, walnut, hickory and half a dozen other kinds of scrub trees, some of them badly shot to pieces, we were driven to the muddy, sluggish, crooked and ugly little stream of Bull Run. In this drive of four miles we met one man on horseback; we passed one man on a horse and 8 barefoot negro boy on foot, driving little flock of sheep. Over head I saw single raven; not bird, not squirrel on either hand; but the crickets and grasshoppers, in the corn fields and clumps of wood on either side of us, chirped and sang necessarily.
 At the end of four miles we turned through gate to the right into field Cows were scattered here and there around the crescent of the hill On the crest of the hill stood 8 long frame farm house; back of this house, little brown stone monument to the dead soldiers. il front of it, in the door yard, 8 grave stone. The house which formerly stood here had been torn to splinters during the battle. The lady buried in the grav' in the door yard was killed here. Sh' was the mother of the kind old gentle man who.now inherits this place.. Tai
 battlefield was his mothers farm. It |
 now his, and he shows you about ove
 1t. He was teaching school down a
 Alexandria at the time his mother wa
 killed here; school teacher for fort
 years. He and his sister live in this ol,
 gray house together; no one but thes two old deaf people for may be mil
 about. The peach frees are breakin, down under loads of fruit in the heart 0 the battlefield, little way down tn slope of the hill below the grave in tn door yard. Long strings of fat turkey
 tread the tangle-grass through the or chard chasing the grasshoppers. Belo1 the orchard, half mile away, and curvin around in muddy crescent, but quit hidden by young growth of trees creeps Bull Run. On the morning c
 the battle the broad cornfelds on tn
 other side and away out wonder mile away over the foot hills the Federa ; bayonets gleamed by tens of thousands They were marching for Beauregard F rear, or rather for the Midland line, b which he had come up from the Soutl I He had come out from Manassas, for 2 miles away, to stop this movement, {
 all the world knows. The North WE s not to be stopped. Hence the bait
 here. But this is trenching on histor,
 and we must draw the line. You ca > see where the South retreated to whel <. stood Jackson ''like a stone wall." IS Back of this house, where the O.