America. What thrilling marching and counter-marching the lower
valley might tell! What a history those villages must have had
from 1861 to 1865! Perhaps at dawn they sheltered an army of
"Yanks," at noon they may have been swarming with men from the
South, while night, with her ever-watchful stars, looked down
and saw them sleeping beneath the Stars and Stripes! In fact, it
was traversed so often that the men from both armies called it,
the "Race Course." So many were their journeys over the famous
"Valley Pike" that they knew the various springs, houses, and in
many instances, the citizens who lived there.

Alas! How many brave sons in the North said farewell to scenes
and friends to enter the Union Army in the valley, never to
return. How often, too, the gallant sons of the "Sunny South"
gazed with tear dimmed eyes for the last time on those purple
hills they knew from childhood. How many were the battles fought
here! How terrible the scenes of devastation and the toll of
life! Waste were the golden fields of grain upon which we gaze
with such rapt admiration. Waste, too, were these mills with
their whir of industry. The fury of war fell on those sunny
acres like a great pestilence, and their usefulness and beauty
became desolation. The only grist mill not burned by Sheridan
and his men when they went through is still pointed out to the
traveler. But Nature has again asserted her right and on this
delightful morning the valley smiles beneath its veil of dreamy
blue like the peaceful glow that spreads over the countenance of
some great and beneficent soul.

The high range of the Blue Ridge was seen stretching along the
sky like a vast purple wall, while, nearer, the lower hills rose