So we set forth, the sturdy wagon, the serviceable bays, with James
Grayden their driver, the gentle lady, whose serene patience bore up
through all delays and discomforts, the Chaplain, the Philanthropist, and
myself, the teller of this story.

And now, as we emerged from Frederick, we struck at once upon the trail
from the great battle-field. The road was filled with straggling and
wounded soldiers. All who could travel on foot,--multitudes with slight
wounds of the upper limbs, the head, or face,--were told to take up
their beds,--alight burden or none at all,--and walk. Just as the
battle-field sucks everything into its red vortex for the conflict, so
does it drive everything off in long, diverging rays after the fierce
centripetal forces have met and neutralized each other. For more than a
week there had been sharp fighting all along this road. Through the
streets of Frederick, through Crampton's Gap, over South Mountain,
sweeping at last the hills and the woods that skirt the windings of the
Antietam, the long battle had travelled, like one of those tornadoes
which tear their path through our fields and villages. The slain of
higher condition, "embalmed" and iron-cased, were sliding off on the
railways to their far homes; the dead of the rank and file were being
gathered up and committed hastily to the earth; the gravely wounded were
cared for hard by the scene of conflict, or pushed a little way along to
the neighboring villages; while those who could walk were meeting us, as
I have said, at every step in the road. It was a pitiable sight, truly
pitiable, yet so vast, so far beyond the possibility of relief, that many
single sorrows of small dimensions have wrought upon my feelings more
than the sight of this great caravan of maimed pilgrims. The
companionship of so many seemed to make a joint-stock of their suffering;
it was next to impossible to individualize it, and so bring it home, as
one can do with a single broken limb or aching wound. Then they were all