streams, enough of them in any fifty miles of our journey to furnish water power for all the factories of New England.  Their amazing opulence of mechanical energy has lain unutilized, almost unnoticed; in the two and one-half centuries that the white man has dwelt near them, while in Massachusetts and her near neighbors every rill that can turn a wheel has been put into harness and forced to do its share of labor for the benefit of the men who have made themselves its masters.

Here is one of the differences between the two sections:  In the North man was set free, and the elements made to do his work.  In the South man was the degraded slave, and the elements wantoned on in undisturbed freedom.

As we went on, the Valleys of the James and the Appomattox, down which our way lay, broadened into an expanse of arable acres, and the faces of those streams were frequently flecked by gem-like little islands.

CHAPTER VII.

Entering Richmond—­disappointment at its appearance—­everybody in uniform—­curled darlings of the capital—­the rebel flag—­Libby prison —­Dick Turner—­searching the new comers.

Early on the tenth morning after our capture we were told that we were about to enter Richmond.  Instantly all were keenly observant of every detail in the surroundings of a City that was then the object of the hopes and fears of thirty-five millions of people—­a City assailing which seventy-five thousand brave men had already laid down their lives, defending which an equal number had died, and which, before it fell, was to cost the life blood of another one hundred and fifty thousand valiant assailants and defenders.

So much had been said and written about Richmond that our boyish minds had wrought up the most extravagant expectations of it and its defenses.  We anticipated seeing a City differing widely from anything ever seen before; some anomaly of nature displayed in its site, itself guarded by imposing and impregnable fortifications, with powerful forts and heavy guns, perhaps even walls, castles, postern gates, moats and ditches, and all the other panoply of defensive warfare, with which romantic history had made us familiar.

We were disappointed—­badly disappointed—­in seeing nothing of this as we slowly rolled along.  The spires and the tall chimneys of the factories rose in the distance very much as they had in other Cities we had visited.  We passed a single line of breastworks of bare yellow sand, but the scrubby pines in front were not cut away, and there were no signs that there had ever been any immediate expectation of use for the works.  A redoubt or two—­without guns—­could be made out, and this was all.  Grim-visaged war had few wrinkles on his front in that neighborhood.  They were then seaming his brow on the Rappahannock, seventy miles away, where the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac lay confronting each other.