Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania, stands upon the sloping eastern bank of the river in the grandest scenery. Just above, the Susquehanna breaks through the Kittatinny at the Dauphin Gap, giving a superb display of the rending asunder of the towering mountain chain. Opposite are the forest-clad hills of York and Cumberland bordering the fertile Cumberland Valley spreading off to the southwest, while behind the city this great Appalachian Valley continues between its enclosing ridges as the Lebanon Valley northeast to the Schuylkill River at Reading. Market Street is the chief Harrisburg highway, and the Pennsylvania Railroad is the back border of the town. The State Capitol, set on a hill, was burnt, and is being rebuilt. A pleasant park encloses the site, and from the front a wide street leads down to the river, making a pretty view, with a Soldiers' Monument in the centre, which is an enlarged reproduction of Cleopatra's Needle. The Front Street of the city, along the river bank, is the popular promenade, and is adorned with the Executive Mansion and other fine residences, which have a grand outlook across the broad expanse of river and islands. Bridges cross over, among them the old "camel's back," a mile long, and having its shelving stone ice-breakers jutting up stream. This is the old wooden covered bridge that Charles Dickens wrote about in his _American Notes_. On his first American visit he came into Harrisburg from York County on a stage-coach through this bridge, and he wrote: "We crossed the river by a wooden bridge, roofed and covered on all sides, and nearly a mile in length. It was profoundly dark, perplexed with great beams, crossing and re-crossing it at every possible angle, and through the broad chinks and crevices in the floor the river gleamed far down below, like a legion of eyes. We had no lamps, and as the horses stumbled and floundered through this place towards the distant speck of dying light, it seemed interminable. I really could not persuade myself at first as we rumbled heavily on, filling the bridge with hollow noises--and I held down my head to save it from the rafters--but that I was in a painful dream, and that this could not be reality." The old bridge is much the same to-day as when Dickens crossed it. Harrisburg was named for John Harris, who established a ferry here, and alongside the river bank is the little "Harris Park" which contains his grave. The stump of the tree at the foot of which he was buried is carefully preserved. A drunken band of Conestoga Indians came this way in 1718, and, capturing the faithful ferryman, tied him to the tree to be tortured and burnt, when the timely interposition of some Indians from the opposite shore, who knew him and were friendly, saved him. His son succeeded him and ran the ferry, and an enclosure in the park preserves this spot of historic memory. LINCOLN'S MIDNIGHT RIDE.