selected. The spot was a judicious position for the purpose of carrying out the orders of the commander-in-chief; but the very reverse, for holding in check, an advancing hostile force; a contingency which the English general seems never to have contemplated. It proved a trap to Cornwallis, from which no ingenuity of his could save him. It was now that the masterly tactics of Washington began to develope themselves; he had no sooner seen Cornwallis in position at Yorktown, than, under various pretexts, he commenced preparing at the head of Chesapeake Bay a large number of transports; and keeping up the show of a siege on New York, he set about quietly sending off detachments through New Jersey, at the same time so disposing of them as to continue the threat on New York, until near the end of July, when every thing being in readiness, he suddenly concentrated his forces at Philadelphia, made rapid marches towards his transports, and having reached them was well on his way to attack Cornwallis, before the English commanderin-chief had the least suspicion of his design. For the purpose of comprehending the sagacity and beauty of this movement, the reader would do well to take the map and trace the course of Washington down the Chesapeake Bay into James River, and up that river to Williamsburg, twenty-five miles from Yorktown, and see how effectually he placed himself in Cornwallis's rear. In passing, it is as well to say, that it was these combinations and movements, which placed Washington among the very ablest military commanders of the age.

On the 27th Sept., 1781, the American army encamped within a mile of Cornwallis's lines; and the next day the French portion of the army having taken up its position on the left of the Americans, at about the same distance from the enemy, a cannonade from the British entrenchments ushered in the siege. During the night of the 29th, the British evacuated several of their redoubts, and retired within their lines; on the next day, 30th, these redoubts were occupied by the investing forces. On the 1st October, ground was broken by the Americans on their first parallel of approaches, under a furious cannonade from the enemy. the 9th, several of the American redoubts being completed, General Washington himself pointed and fired the first gun, which was succeeded by a terrific cannonade by both armies, from over three hundred pieces of artillery. This was kept up nearly without cessation, for six days.

On

On the 15th, a couple of British redoubts were stormed: one by the French, and the other by the Americans. On the 17th Cornwallis sent in a flag of truce, which, as all know, resulted in his capitulation on the 19th. Thus much for the progress of the siege.

The morning following our arrival at Yorktown, broke sullenly, portending a storm, which set in furiously before twelve o'clock; but while it was threatening, we availed ourselves of the opportunity of walking over the battle-field. The American breastworks are nearly obliterated; but the more permanent entrenchments of the British are still comparatively perfect. We resolved to take the incidents of the siege, as far as possible, in chronological order, and of course our first care was to hunt up the outworks evacuated by the English on the night of the 29th September. They lie on the western outskirts of the town, and are still in good preservation. They were strong positions, and their abandonment must have left the portion of the town in which they were situated in a very exposed condition, and our officers, when they took possession of them, expressed much surprise at their being voluntarily given up. We next looked for the two redoubts stormed by the allied forces on the 15th October. The first, or most eastern of these, (that stormed by the Americans.) being near the river, has nearly been washed away; that taken by the French portion of the allied army, may still be traced. The capture of these redoubts brought the antagonists, as it were, within speaking distance; and it became too apparent to Cornwallis, that unless succor arrived, (of which there was no reasonable hope,) or unless he could escape by a stealthy night retreat, his destruction or surrender was inevitable. On the succeeding night, therefore (the 16th), he attempted an escape across the river to Gloucester Point, where a small French force was stationed for the purpose of watching Tarleton, entrenched there; this force it was determined to overpower and destroy, when the entire British army, after abandoning their artillery, ammunition and baggagetrains, were to have moved off in full retreat, through a portion of Virginia, through Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, all occupied by the American troops, until a Junction could havb been formed with Sir Henry Cinton in New York. In pursuance of this determination, a portion of the besieged army had actually crossed the river, and another considerable detachment were em

barked in boats, and part of the way over, when a violent storm of wind and rain sprung up, nearly engulfing the whole party, and sent the boats with their passengers, so far down the river, that it was a late hour the next day before they could rejoin the main body of their army. It was regarded as a very rash attempt, and demonstrated the desperate straits to which Cornwallis was reduced. On the 17th he solicited a truce.

We then entered the main works, situated on the eastern edge of the town; these are still in excellent keeping, and must have been truly formidable when bristling with cannon and filled with soldiers. What first attracted our attention was their brevity; but this was probably considered an excusable military fault, if it was one, as all military commanders prefer compact works, with as few assailable points as possible. But, perhaps our ideas had imperceptibly become exaggerated, from the reflection that there was an army of about eight thousand men stationed for their defence; and, if it were desirable, these men were capable of occupying defences much more extended than those before us. But there they were, with banks too broad to be perforated by a cannon-shot, and too steep to be easily scaled by an assailant. In a conspicuous angle of these works may be seen the foundation and ruins of the costly mansion of the patriotic Governor Nelson who commanded the Virginia militia at the siege. Justly supposing that his house would be the most convenient spot for Cornwallis's headquarters, the Governor, with rare disinterestedness, offered the American gunners a guinea a-piece for every shot which should hit his own house-a promise which it is said he scrupulously redeemed. Under such incentives it was, of course, soon a heap of ruins; and Cornwallis, after seeing his servant killed, was driven farther into the town, to another mansion belonging to the Nelsons, although the American shot still pursued him. The house is of bricks, and the marks of several balls are still to be seen; one shot penetrated the southeast corner, went through the wall, entered the dining-room, tore off a couple of panels of the wainscoting, and spent its force against the marble mantel, which it shattered to pieces. Three other cannon shot have left their marks, all on the eastern gable end. Two of them went through the wall, the hole made by one of these is still open; a third struck half way. This

house is now occupied by the estimable widow of the grandson of Governor Nel

son.

Attached to the personal staff of General Washington, during the siege, was a clergyman by the name of Evans. One day, in the midst of a severe cannonade, the general and his staff were occupying an exposed position within the American lines, when a shot struck the ground so near the spot where the general and his staff were standing, that it threw the earth on to the clergyman's_hat, which gave him great alarm. cing his terror in his countenance, he took off his hat, saying, "see this, General!" to which Washington replied, "you had better show your hat, sir, to your wife and children!"

Evin

After traversing the entrenchments, we sought the field where the formalities of the surrender took place. It is at present a respectable inclosure of some hundred acres, and it was about the same in 1781. It joins the town on the south. The precise spot where General O'Harra is said to have delivered up his sword and apologized for the absence of his commander, is now marked by a couple of poplar trees, which were planted by some one in commemoration of the event. field itself is nearly a plain, and is admirably adapted to the purposes for which it had been chosen.

The

Next in order was the "Moore house," in the eastern parlor of which Cornwallis signed the articles of capitulation. The place is now called the "Temple Farm," and the house, which is of wood, appears much as it did when occupied by Cornwallis. It is outside of the entrenchments, and within musket shot of them on the east. A lawn of some three hundred yards in extent slopes from the house to the banks of the river; and although the place shows some evidences of dilapidation, it has a pleasant aspect. On the farm there is an ancient inclosure of bricks, which the tradition of the country says was formerly a tower, and built as a defence against the savages. We saw no traces of a tower; but from the extent of the ground walled in, and the number of tombs which it is said to have contained, it seems most probable that it was intended originally as a burial-place. Only one of the tombs is now to be seen, and it bears an inscription of a date only forty-seven years after the first settlement of Virginia by Europeans at Jamestown. The inscription, which is still very perfect, is preceded by an elaborate heraldic device, which of course is unintelligible to

"Within this tomb, there doth interred lie,
No shape, but substance, true nobility:
Itself, though young, in years but twenty-nine,
Yet graced with nature's morall and divine.
The church from him did good participate,
In counsell rare, fit to adorn a state."

Before taking a survey of the battlefield, we were advised to pay our respects to an aged inhabitant of the place, by the name of Robert Anderson. Being at the same time assured, that although utter strangers, and under the necessity of introducing ourselves, we would meet not only with a polite, but a cordial reception: this was all verified; but Mr. Anderson, on account of his age and the threatening state of the weather, was compelled to excuse himself from walking over the grounds with us, yet he gave us such information as was of great assistance to us in our subsequent researches; and after we had been over the field, he addressed us a polite note, saying that if the inspection of an authentic plot of the works with the positions of the opposing forces correctly noted down, would be of any assistance to us, he had one in his possession which it would afford him pleasure to exhibit. The plot was made by an officer, who was present at the siege, and while the forces were still in position: and if our recollection is correct, the survey was made, while the terms of the capitulation were under dis

cussion. It is probably the only contemporaneous plot of the field now extant. We, of course, very gladly availed ourselves of the invitation, and were much gratified by an inspection of the map, which enabled us to verify some of our notes. Mr. Anderson, who was born during the siege, and of course is over seventy years of age, has resided nearly all his life in Yorktown; consequently, it has been in his power to gather many interesting incidents connected with the siege, from those who were active participators in it. These may be denominated its unwritten history, and are highly interesting. Besides the incidents, he has collected numerous relics at different times from the field; among those which he showed us was a small belt-plate, bearing the inscription of "A. Gordon, Guards," and several others, one with a date as far back as 1755. He also exhibited part of a wax-candle, which is said to have belonged to Cornwallis. There was also a heavy dragoon's sabre, and a cart load of cannon-shot and bomb-shells.

An excavation in the marl banks of the river, fancifully called "Cornwallis's Cave," is exhibited as the place where the British commander took refuge during the bombardment. This, of course, is improbable, as no military man of reputation could behave in this way, without suffering disgrace. The place, as it is comparatively dry and secure from shot from the town side, was probably used as a magazine of some kind. Its extent is scarcely sufficient to suppose it was a store for provisions; hence the inference seems natural, that it was occupied as a powder magazine.

"Argosies of magic sails,

sunset, and watch the steamers, crowded with passengers, bound for the pleasant places along the coast where people pass the hot months. Sea-side lodgings are not very comfortable, I am told, but who would not be a little pinched in his chamber, if his windows looked upon the sea? In such praises of the ocean do I indulge

Tennyson.

at such times, and so respectfully do I regard the sailors who may chance to pass, that Prue often says, with her shrewd smile, that my mind is a kind of Chelsea Hospital, full of abortive marine hopes and wishes, broken-legged intentions, blind regrets, and desires, whose hands have been shot away in some hard battle of experience, so that they cannot grasp the results towards which they

reach. She is right, as usual. Such hopes and intentions do lie, ruined and hopeless now, strewn about the placid contentment of my mental life, as the old pensioners sit about the grounds at Chelsea, maimed and musing in the quiet morning sunshine. Many a one among them thinks what a Nelson he would have been if both his legs had not been prematurely carried away; or in what a Trafalgar of triumph he would have ended, if, unfortunately, he had not happened to have been blown blind by the explosion of that unlucky magazine. So I dream, sometimes, of a straight scarlet collar, stiff with gold lace, around my neck, instead of this limp white cravat; and I have even brandished my quill at the office so cutlass-wise, that Titbottom has paused in his additions and looked at me as if he doubted whether I should come out quite square in my petty cash. Yet he understands it. Titbottom was born in Nantucket.

That is the secret of my fondness for the sea: I was born by it. Not more surely do Savoyards pine for the mountains, or Cockneys for the sound of Bow bells, than those who are born within sight and sound of the ocean, to return to it and renew their fealty. In dreams the children of the sea hear its voice. I have read in some book of travels that certain tribes of Arabs have no name for the ocean, and that when they came to the shore for the first time, they asked with cager sadness, as if penetrated by the conviction of a superior beauty, "what is that desert of water more beautiful than the land?" And in the translations of German stories which Adoniram and the other children read, and into which I occasionally look in the evening when they are gone to bed,-for I like to know what interests my children,-I find that the Germans, who do not live near the sea, love the fairy lore of water, and tell the sweet stories of Undine and Melusina, as if they had especial charm for them, because their country is inland.

We who know the sea have less fairy feeling about it, but our realities are romance. My earliest remembrances are of a long range of old, half dilapidated stores; red brick stores with steep wooden roofs and stone window frames and door frames, which stood upon docks built as if for immense trade with all quarters of the globe. Generally there were only a few sloops moored to the tremendous posts, which I fancied could easily hold fast a Spanish Armada in a tropical hurricane. But sometimes a great ship, an

East Indiaman, came sailing up the harbor, slowly, lazily, with rusty, seamed, blistered sides, and dingy sails, with an air of indolent self-importance and consciousness of superiority, which inspired me with profound respect. If the ship had ever chanced to run down a rowboat or a sloop, or any specimen of smaller craft, I should only have wondered at the temerity of any floating thing in crossing the path of such supreme majesty. The ship was chained and cabled to the old dock, and then came the disembowelling.

How the stately monster had been fattening upon foreign spoils! How it had gorged itself (such galleons did never seem to me of the feminine gender) with the luscious treasures of the tropics! It had lain its lazy length along the shores of China, and sucked in whole flowery harvests of tea. The equatorial sun flashed through the strong wicker prisons, bursting with bananas and nectarean fruits that eschew the temperate zone. Steams of camphor, of sandal wood, arose from the hold. Sailors chanting cabalistic strains, that had to my ear, a shrill and monotonous pathos, like the uniform rising and falling of an autumn wind, turned cranks that lifted the bales, and boxes, and crates, and swung them ashore. But to my mind the spell of their singing raised the fragrant freight, and not the crank. Madagascar and Ceylon appeared at the mystic bidding of the song. The placid sunshine of the docks was perfumed with India. The universal calm of southern seas poured from the bosom of the ship, over the quiet, half decaying old northern port. Long after the confusion of unloading was over, and the ship lay as if all voyages were ended, I dared to creep timorously along the edge of the dock, and at great risk of falling in the black water of its huge shadow, I placed my hand upon the hot hulk, and so established a mystic and exquisite connection with Pacific islands, with palm groves and all the passionate beauties they embower, with jungles, Bengal tigers, pepper, and the crushed feet of Chinese fairies. touched Asia, the Cape of Good Hope, and the Happy Islands. I would not believe that the heat I felt was of our northern sun; to my finer sympathy it burned with equatorial fervors.

I

The freight was piled in the old stores. I believe that many of them remain, but they have lost their character. When I knew them, not only was I younger, but partial decay had overtaken the town; at least the bulk of its India trade had shifted to New York and Boston. But

the appliances remained. There was no throng of busy traffickers, but after school, in the afternoon, I strolled by and gazed into the solemn interiors. Silence reigned within, silence, dimness, and piles of foreign treasure. Vast coils of cable, like tame boa-constrictors, served as seats for men with large stomachs, and heavy watch seals, and nankeen trousers, who sat looking out of the door toward the ships, with little other sign of life than an occasional low talking as if in their sleep. Huge hogsheads perspiring brown sugar and oozing slow molasses, as if nothing tropical could be kept within bounds, but must continually expand, and exude, and overflow, stood against the walls, and had an architectural significance, for they darkly reminded me of Egyptian prints, and in the duskiness of the low vaulted store seemed cyclopean columns incomplete. Strange festoons and heaps of bags, square piles of square boxes cased in mats, bales of airy summer stuffs, which, even in winter, scoffed at cold, and shamed it by audacious assumption of eternal sun, little specimen boxes of precious dyes that even now shine through my memory, like whole Venetian schools unpainted, these were all there in rich confusion. The stores had a twilight of dimness, the air was spicy with scores of mingled odors. I liked to look suddenly in from the glare of sunlight outside, and then the cool sweet dimness was like the palpable breath of the far off islandgroves; and if only some parrot or macaw, hung within, would flaunt with glistening plumage in his cage, and as the gay hue flashed in a chance sunbeam, call in his hard, shrill voice, as if thrusting sharp sounds upon a glistening wire from out that grateful gloom, then the enchantment was complete, and without moving, I was circumnavigating the globe.

From the old stores and the docks slowly crumbling, touched, I know not why nor how, by the pensive air of past prosperity, I rambled out of the town on those well remembered afternoons, to the fields that lay upon hill-sides over the harbor, and there sat looking out to sea, fancying some distant sail proceeding to the glorious ends of the earth, to be my type and image, who would so sail stately and successful to all the glorious ports of the Future. Going home, I returned by the stores, which black porters were closing. But I stood long, looking in, saturating my imagination, and as it appeared, my clothes, with the spicy suggestion. For when I reached home my

thrifty mother, another Prue,―came snuffing and smelling about me.

"Why! my son, (snuff, snuff) where have you been? (Snuff, snuff.) Has the baker been making (snuff) gingerbread? You smell as if you'd been in (snuff, snuff) a bag of cinnamon." "I've only been on the wharves, mother."

Well, my dear, I hope you haven't stuck up your clothes with molasses. Wharves are dirty places, and dangerous. You must take care of yourself, my son. Really this smell is (snuff, snuff,) very strong."

But I departed from the maternal presence, proud and happy. I was aromatic. I bore about with me the true foreign air. Whoever smelt me smelt distant countries. I had nutmeg, spices, cinnamon, and cloves, without the jolly red-nose. I pleased myself with being the representative of the Indies. I was in good odor with myself, and all the world.

I do not know how it is, but surely Nature makes kindly provision. An imagination so easily excited as mine could not have escaped disappointment if it had had ample opportunity and experience of the lands it so longed to see. Therefore, although I made the India voyage, I have never been a traveller, and saving the little time I was ashore in India, I did not lose the sense of novelty and romance, which the first sight of foreign lands inspires. That little time was all my foreign travel. I am glad of it. I see now that I should never have found the country from which that East Indiaman of my early days arrived. The palm groves do not grow with which that hand laid upon the ship placed me in magic connection. And as for the lovely Indian maid whom the palmy arches bowered, she has long since clasped some native lover to her bosom, and, ripened into mild maternity, how should I know her now?

"You would find her quite as easily. now as then," says my Prue, when I speak of it.

She is right again, as usual, that precious woman, and it is therefore I feel that if the chances of life have moored me fast to a bookkeeper's desk, they have left all the lands I longed to see fairer and fresher in my mind than they could ever be in my memory. Upon my only voyage I used to climb into the top and search the horizon for the shore. But now in a moment of calm thought I see a more Indian India than ever mariner discerned, and do not envy the youths who go there and make fortunes, who wear grass