Yet, at that time, who had ever thought of, or who, except the farmers and townsmen and students in the vicinity, had ever seen Gettysburg? At first Carleton supposed that Harper's Ferry might be the scene of the coming battle. Again he imagined it possible for Lee to move down the Kanawha, and fall upon defenceless Ohio. He wrote from Harrisburg, from Washington, from Baltimore, from Washington again, from Baltimore once more, from Frederick, where he learned that Hooker had been superseded, and Meade, the Pennsylvanian, put in command. On June 30th, writing from Westminster, Md., he described the rapid marching of the footsore and hungry Confederates, and the equally rapid pedestrianism of the Federals. He revels in the splendors of nature in Southern Pennsylvania, which the Germans once hailed as a holy land of comfort and liberty, and which, by their industry, they had made "fair as the garden of the Lord." As Carleton rode with the second corps from Frederick to Union Town, and thence to Westminster, he penned prose poems in description of the glorious sight, so different from his native and stony New Hampshire. "The march yesterday was almost like passing through paradise. Such broad acres of grain rustling in the breeze; the hills and valleys, bathed in alternate sunlight and shade; the trees so green; the air so scented with clover-blossoms and new-made hay; the cherry-trees ruby with ripened fruit, lining the roadway; the hospitality of the people, made it pleasant marching." Thus like the great forces of the universe, which make the ocean's breast heave to and fro, and send the tides in ebb and flood, were the great energies which were now to bring two hundred thousand men in arms, on the field of Gettysburg, in Adams County, Pennsylvania. Forty years before, as it is said, a British officer surveying the great plain with the ranges of hills confronting each other from opposite sides, with many highroads converging at this point, declared with admiration that this would be a superb site for a great battle. Now the vision of possibility was to become reality, and Carleton was to be witness of it all. Since mid-June he had been on the rail or in the saddle. He was now to spend sleepless nights and laborious days that were to tax his physical resources to their utmost.