On coming near the brow of the hill, we met a party carrying picks and spades.  “How many?” “Only one.”  The dead were nearly all buried, then, in this region of the field of strife.  We stopped the wagon, and, getting out, began to look around us.  Hard by was a large pile of muskets, scores, if not hundreds, which had been picked up and were guarded for the Government.  A long ridge of fresh gravel rose before us.  A board stuck up in front of it bore this inscription, the first part of which was, I believe, not correct:—­“The Rebel General Anderson and 80 Rebels are buried in this hole.”  Other smaller ridges were marked with the number of dead lying under them.  The whole ground was strewed with fragments of clothing, haversacks, canteens, cap-boxes, bullets, cartridge-boxes, cartridges, scraps of paper, portions of bread and meat.  I saw two soldiers’ caps that looked as though their owners had been shot through the head.  In several places I noticed dark red patches where a pool of blood had curdled and caked, as some poor fellow poured his life out on the sod.  I then wandered about in the cornfield.  It surprised me to notice, that, though there was every mark of hard fighting having taken place here, the Indian-corn was not generally trodden down.  One of our cornfields is a kind of forest, and even when fighting, men avoid the tall stalks as if they were trees.  At the edge of this cornfield lay a gray horse, said to have belonged to a Rebel colonel, who was killed near the same place.  Not far off were two dead artillery-horses in their harness.  Another had been attended to by a burying-party, who had thrown some earth over him; but his last bed-clothes were too short, and his legs stuck out stark and stiff from beneath the gravel coverlet.  It was a great pity that we had no intelligent guide to explain to us the position of that portion of the two armies which fought over this ground.  There was a shallow trench before we came to the cornfield, too narrow for a road, as I should think, too elevated for a water-course, and which seemed to have been used as a rifle-pit; at any rate, there had been hard fighting in and about it.  This and the cornfield may serve to identify the part of the ground we visited, if any who fought there should ever look over this paper.  The opposing tides of battle must have blended their waves at this point, for portions of gray uniform were mingled with the “garments rolled in blood” torn from our own dead and wounded soldiers.  I picked up a Rebel canteen, and one of our own,—­but there was something repulsive about the trodden and stained relics of the stale battle-field.  It was like the table of some hideous orgy left uncleared, and one turned away disgusted from its broken fragments and muddy heel-taps.  A bullet or two, a button, a brass plate from a soldier’s belt, served well enough for mementos of my visit, with a letter which I picked up, directed to Richmond, Virginia, its seal unbroken.  “N.C.  Cleaveland