The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-07-08

Virginian plateau west of Arlington; it's flags scarlet flashing on the heights far above the Potomac.
 Like the Soldiers Home and along the Rock Creek roads, lover to Fort Myer," Is, and has been for twenty years or more, one of the prize driyeways and riding l courses around the District
 In general historical interest there are points of value; Fort Myer having been of Civil War time birth and the first school of the Signal Service Corps, while
 in military records from the beginning, it has been written in illuminated letters and framed in sabres of the cavalry. Then, too, it has another interest most ] picturesque to the civilian mind if com pulsory and somewhat dulled by routine and repetition to the Fort Myer soldier; namely, the participation in the funerals of the great leaders, the music and the escort of the solemn way to Arlington.
 This last office of the post brings it perhaps oftenest before the public eye, drives it home to Washington that she has an army post in hail. and there IS no one not impressed who does not halt before the color, the warlike sense and all the stirring pageant of a military funeral.
 Every big city in the country, inland and along the coast. has it's garrison in call. It's soldier mounting guard.
 Boston has an artillery man, Fort War ren, in the sea. That Is a long, level stretch of green grasses and sloping em- bankments, little planted trees in as se- we're and correct alignment as though in company drill, and quarters like straight, stout majors on inspection tour-the whole bound in rigidly by blank stone walls, behind which sleep the guns. So with New York, Savannah, Mobile; each grim | fortress frother with salt and wind of the sea, and pregnant with cannon. | Chicago boasts the infantry man on 1 dress parade-Fort Sheridan on the lake | shore. Superb villas are built here along sweeping circles and loops of roads that waltz around under the Illinois trees down to the waters edge then back by wide stretches of campus to solid built barracks.
 St. Louis decrepit old soldier, Jefferson Barracks, Grandfathei of so many of the others, still shoulders his gun on the hot Mississippi bluffs and looks off to the west to the boys in scouting rig; old 1 Riley in Western Missouri; Leavenworth in Kansas Bliss in Texas, and far be- yond to the Calfrnia coast to Frisco's Spanish pride, the white Presidio.
 But Washington has the cavalry man. Washington has the trooper Here the rough riding days of the frontier were re-
 vived under Lieutenant Short of the Fighting Fifth- Here, thousand things, social military, funeral have occurred to bind 1t in the history of Washington.
 Fort Myer proper comprises 2S2 acres,
 formerly portion of the Arlington estate, owned by General Robert E. Lees wife, and later by w P. Custis. There is ac- ] commodation for eighteen officers, 800 men and for four companies of cavalry, the | quarters for the signal corps being located ] some little distance off on a descending spur.
 The arrangement of the garrison differs somewhat from the regulation run, in that "Officers' Row. faces the river front, and thus backs in on the Quadrangle, while headquarters. commissary, guard house, riding halls, barracks and the ad- dftional quarters for officers are located l pretty much where there's room" as one of the officers remarked. There is no uniform architecture, saving in the little red brick Heutenants' quar- | ters, which lie like bright-painted row of blocks on the road nearing the Arlington gate. The houses on the old officers row are rather like English cottages. broad, roomy and comfortable-looking, with vine covered porches and lawn fronts shaven dead level green and bordered with few scrupulous flowers as upright in car riage as the soldiers themselves.
 Fine old trees, their branches meeting overhead, shadow the broad white drive way punctuated with mortars and mounds of cannon balls.
 At the central point of "OfffcerS' Row" across the road, crownng the topmost terrace Is the white-painted flagstaff, its base flanked by cannon.
 Here comes the first pause for the view. And it Is superb: Looking far down the tiers of old grass-covered earthworks, over sea of waving forest. to the mystic white of the river and the city rising beyond
 To see that in the late evening, to watch the lights come, the far line of roofs and chimneys growing one vast outline of quiverlng black - Washington takes strange dream-form.
 Then it is so fair by day, there from the flagstaffs base and then rounding the curve by the band stand Just here is the two-story office of the commandant and staff; building dark brown in color, of slight Spanish sugges- tion in arch and arcade
 The barracks for the men are the most picturesque of all the Fort Myer build ings.
 They are the oldest in point of years, as the most in need of repairs. Long, low, one-storied, with sloping shingle roofs, they step onto the quadrangle from the rear of the post.
 One of the quaintest spots about the garrison is the rustic bridge over one of the old stockaded gorges; now, how ever, fragrant with honeysuckle, Instead of gunpowder smell.
 The entire Arlington estate was origi- nally 11OO acres, and was occupied by the government during the civil war for mili- tary purposes and subsequently purchased by them. In the spring of 1861 United States troops began the erection of de- fensive works designed to protect the debouches from the Long Bridge and the Auueduct as well as to secure foothold preparatory to the occupation of a perma- nent fortified position on southern heights.
 Every bluff every spur. every plateau of rising ground was fortified, and the entire group, Cass, Tillinghast, Corcoran and later Myer, then Whipple, was known as "the Arlington lines.'
 Fort Whipple was but one of a cordon of earthworks erected there for the de- fense of the city. and it was not con- structed until 1865 when the board of officers appointed to report upon the de- lenses of Washington, recommended that "a work be erected on the spur behind Forts Cass and Tillinghas, which shall see into the gorges of these works, give an important fire upon the high ground in front of the line and flank that line from Forts Woodbury to De Kalb. This work will give great additional strength to Fort Corcoran, rendering practicable the temporary holding of 1t, even should the two works in it's front fall, and en- abling us to main a tete-de-pont at the