On an eminence immediately overlooking Harper’s Ferry, and some four hundred feet thereabove, is the enormous turtle-shaped rock, curiously blocked up over a fissure, on which Jefferson once inscribed his name.  Chimney Rock, a detached column on the Shenandoah near by, is a sixty-foot high natural tower, described by Jefferson in his Notes on Virginia.  Upon the precipice across the river, on the Maryland side, the fancy of the tourist has discovered a figure of Napoleon:  it forms a bas-relief of stupendous proportions, having the broad cliff for background, and clearly defining the hair, the Corsican profile and the bust, with an epaulette on the shoulder.  The Blue Ridge, as it traverses from this point the breadth of Virginia, breaks into various natural eccentricities—­the Peaks of Otter, rising a mile above the sea, the Natural Bridge, Weyer’s Cave, Madison’s Cave—­and gives issue to those rich heated and mineralized springs for which the State is famous.

[Illustration:  SCENE AMONG THE MARYLAND ALLEGHANIES.]

The tinge of regret with which we leave Harper’s Ferry is mitigated by the hope that greater wonders may lie beyond.  In two miles the railroad, as if willing to carve out a picture-frame in which the heroic river may be viewed, excavates the “Potomac Tunnel,” as it is named, through which the water is seen like a design in repousse silver, with two or three emerald islands in it for jewel-work.  The perforation is eighty feet through, but in contrast with its rocky breadth our picture-frame is not too deep:  whenever we shift our position, the view seems to increase in art-beauty, and as a final comprehensive picture it recedes and crowds under the spandrels of the arch the whole mountain-pass, with the confluence of the two rivers in the finest imaginable aspect.

Poor Martinsburg! during the rebellion a mere sieve, through which the tide of war poured back and forth in the various fluctuations of our fortune!  It is said to have been occupied by both armies, alternately, fifteen times.  The passenger sees it as a mere foreground of big restaurant and platform, with a conglomeration of village houses in the rear—­featureless as the sheep which the painter of Wakefield put in for nothing.  One incident, however, supervenes.  An old man, with positive voice and manners, and altogether a curious specimen in looks, gait and outfit, comes through the train with a pannier of apples and groundnuts.  He is pointed out as one of the men of importance in Martinsburg, owning a row of flourishing houses.  With the anxious servility which wealth always commands, we purchase an apple of this capitalist, blandly choosing a knotty and unsalable specimen.