From an elm tree, an oriole answers
his bold challenge in his rich voice, while a band of chickadees
indulge in their querulous calls as they inspect each leaf and
twig for larva and eggs. Up in a linden tree, a blue jay is
crying "Salute me, salute me." Like a second lieutenant just
commissioned. He wears his close-fitting uniform and overseas
cap with a dignity that becomes one of that most enviable rank.
The bold bugle of the Carolina wren sounds through the leafy
encampment and like the colors ascending for retreat, the red,
white and blue of the red-headed woodpecker is seen rising
diagonally to a dead oak stub. Like a fine accompaniment the
music of the fluttering leaves blends with that of the rippling
stream and the many woodland voices mellow and supplement them
until the symphony rises a soothing and harmonious whole which
can never be forgotten.
>From Little Round Top a night hawk screams and comes booming
down to earth where squadrons of insects are manoeuvering; by
the Devil's Den a red squirrel is berating an unseen enemy,
hurling all sorts of abusive epithets at him in his wheezy,
irate manner.
Rising in strong relief at the southern edge of Cemetery Ridge
are the picturesque hills known as Little and Great Round Top.
They are wooded from base to summit. What mighty forces have
been at work here! Crevasses of broken ledges, immense boulders
cropping out on the slopes or lying here and there all show that
a battle royal has been here waged by Nature. Here, thrust out
from little Round Top, is a heap of "ripped up" ledges and
massive rocks where a great fissure leads back to a place where
the Southern sharpshooters hid while picking off the Union
officers on Little Round Top. It seemed that some great mass had
slipped from Little Round Top and had been hurled still farther
by some unknown force - a vast heap of stone deeply seamed by
rents and scars thick set with boulders and filled with holes
providing excellent hiding places for the men.
"All through that moonlight night while Buford kept watch the
roads leading to Gettysburg were lighted up by gleaming
campfires. How peacefully lay the little village slumbering in
the quiet moonlight, with never a thought of the coming battle
on the morrow. Soon the lovely valley of Willoughby Run with its
emerald meadows, flashing brooks and green woods would be
deformed by shot and shell."
It seems difficult even to imagine the terrible price that was
paid at Gettysburg - while wandering here in this charming spot,
where stretches a beautiful world of woodlands with their feast
of varying shades of green whose rare vistas open up to fields
of hay and grain.
