Although our road is more or less indifferent, we are passing through beautiful country. Around Keswick the fields are beautifully kept, and the entrances to estates are marked by ivy-covered posts of yellow stone, rough hewn. Some of the houses are red brick with white pillars, others are of stucco. There are plenty of turkeys and chickens, and hounds, as everywhere else in Virginia. We begin to see clumps of pine trees from time to time. The oak trees of the forest are very large, many of them of noble height. The juniper trees are in blossom, their blue-green berries making them look as if they wore an exquisite blue-green veil. In Virginia, one is everywhere impressed by the richness and luxuriance of the foliage. All along the roadside banks are clumps of hazel bushes, heavy with clusters of nuts in their furry green coats. The chestnut trees are full of fruit. About a mile north of Gordonsville we pass a plain shaft of light pinkish-grey granite on the roadside bank at the left. The name Waddel is on the shaft and the following inscription: Near this spot while yet primeval forest stood the church of the blind preacher James Waddel. A devout man of God and a faithful minister of the Presbyterian Church. Born 1739--died 1805. Socrates died like a philosopher, but Jesus Christ like a God. From his sermon as narrated by William Wirt. This country has just the charm that I should expect it to have from my reading about Virginia. Here are late-blooming honeysuckles in the hedges. Here are men drawing wagon loads of produce along the rather heavy clay highways to market. Sometimes they drive two horses tandem. The rear horse is saddled, and the driver rides him and so guides the team. Sometimes a heavy wagon is drawn by four horses, the driver astride the near horse in the rear. Sometimes we see farmers ploughing with three horses or mules, flocks of turkeys or chickens following in the wake of the plough and picking up the luscious morsels thrown up by the ploughshare. Sometimes we see fine Hereford cattle grazing in the fields. Then come the reddest of red pigs feeding contentedly in big fields of alfalfa. Once we pass a farmhouse with late-blooming yellow roses climbing over the stone posts at the farm entrance. Once we see a man ploughing in the fields with a mare, her mule baby running by her side as she plods along. Near Madison Mills we cross the Rapidan river, a rushing, yellow stream. As we near Culpeper the wooded country opens out into a beautiful grazing region, the land rising and falling in long undulations. Here and there in the great fields are clumps of trees giving a park-like effect to the country. All this is very beautiful, and one's joy would be undimmed were it not for the traces of the great conflict of fifty years ago. We are coming now to the region of Cedar Mountain which is locally known as Slaughter Mountain. Here is the site of a bloody battle.