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not. On their right lay the great Federal fleet; ten miles to their rear was their nearest support in Mobile - and a waste of marshes and water lay between. At last came to them the long looked-for order: "Open all your guns upon the enemy, keep up an active fire, and hold your position until you receive orders to retire." And so they did, until late on Tuesday night I sent Major Cummins of my staff to inform them the evacuation of Mobile was complete, their whole duty was performed, and they might retire. The first steamer I sent for them grounded, and I had (about 2 A. M.) to dispatch another. Every man was brought safely off, with his small arms and ammunition they dismantled their batteries before they abandoned them and it was nine o'clock Wednesday morning before they left the wharf of Mobile for Demopolis.

These garrisons fired the last cannon in the last great battle of the war for the freedom of the Southern States. I believe the enemy's loss during all these operations was not less than 7000 killed and wounded. Two of his ironclads were sunk on Apalachie bar by torpedoes; four other armed vessels and five transports were sunk during and after the siege: making, with the Tecumseh, twelve hostile vessels destroyed in Mobile bay by the torpedoes.

Our own little fleet did all they could to aid the defence, but there was little opportunity for them. On the morning of the evacuation, the two floating batteries were sunk in the river by their own crews. The other vessels were moved up the Tombigbee river to Demopolis, in convoy of the fleet of transports.

I reflect with satisfaction that it was my privilege to command Confederate troops in our last great battle, and that those troops behaved to the last with so much courage and dignity.

With highest respect, I remain truly yours,

DABNEY H. MAURY.

Maj.-Gen. late Confederate Army, Prisoner-of-War on Parole.

REMARKS, &c.

During the siege of Spanish Fort the expenditure of small-arm ammunition was very great. The garrison at first fired 36,000 rounds per day; the young reserves spent it freely. The old Texans and veterans from North Carolina and Alabama, who replaced the brigade of boys, were more deliberate and careful of their ammunition, and we reduced its expenditure to 12,000 rounds per day.

The torpedoes were the most striking and effective of the new contrivances for defence which were used during these operations. Every avenue of approach to the outworks or to the city of Mobile was guarded by submarine torpedoes, so that it was impossible for any vessel drawing three feet of water to get within effective cannon range of any part of our defences. Two ironclads attempted to get near enough to Spanish Fort to take part in the bombardment. They both suddenly struck the bottom on Apalachie bar, and thenceforward the fleet made no further attempt to encounter the almost certain destruction which they saw awaited any vessel which might

attempt to enter our torpedo-guarded waters. But many were sunk when least expecting it. Some went down long after the Confederate forces had evacuated Mobile. The Tecumseh was probably sunk on her own torpedo. While steaming in lead of Farragut's fleet she carried a torpedo affixed to a spar which projected some twenty feet from her bows; she proposed to use this torpedo against the Tennessee, our only formidable ship; but while passing Fort Morgan a shot from that fort cut away the stays by which the Tecumseh's torpedo was secured; it then doubled under her, and exploding fairly under the bottom of the ill-fated ship, she careened and sunk instantly in ten fathoms of water. Only six or eight of her crew of one hundred and fifty officers and men were saved - the others still lie in their iron coffin at the bottom of the bay. Besides the Tecumseh, eleven other Federal vessels, men-of-war and transports, were sunk by torpedoes in Mobile bay; and their effectiveness as a means of defence of harbors was clearly established by the results of this siege. Had we understood their power in the beginning of the war as we came to do before its end, we could have effectually defended every harbor, channel or river throughout the Confederate States against all sorts of naval attacks. It is noteworthy that the Confederate ironclad Virginia, by her fearful destruction of the Federal war-ships in Hampton Roads early in the war, caused all the maritime powers of the world to remodel their navies and build ironclads at enormous expense, only to learn by the Confederate lessons of Mobile that ironclads cannot avail against torpedoes. For as the Federal naval captain who had been engaged in clearing Mobile bay of the torpedoes and of the wrecks they had made, after the close of the war remarked to the writer: "It makes no difference whether a ship is of wood, or is tin-clad, or is iron clad, if she gets over a torpedo it blows the same sized hole in the bottom of all alike, which I found on an average to be just twelve feet by eight square.' He furthermore stated that he had ascertained that in every instance but one, of the wrecks in Mobile bay, the vessel had been sunk while backing-only one exploded a torpedo while going ahead.

During the fight in Spanish Fort our cannoniers found effectual protection from the extraordinarily heavy fire of sharpshooters in mantlets or screens, made by plates of steel about two feet by three square, and about half-an-inch thick; they were so secured to the inner faces of the embrasures that they were quickly lowered and raised as the gun ran into battery or recoiled. General Beauregard, before the battle began, gave me the model of a capital sort of wooden embrasure, to be used by our own sharpshooters; they were to be covered over by sand-bags as soon as the rifleman should establish himself in his pit. The old veterans of the Army of Tennessee at once acknowledged their superiority over "head logs," or any other contrivance for covering sharpshooters, and the demand for them was soon greater than I could supply.

The Brooke guns, of which I had a large number, of calibres ranging from six and a fourteenth up to eleven inches, were more formidable and serviceable than any which the Federals used against

me.

These guns were cast at Selma of the iron about Briarfield in North Alabama. It must be the best gun-metal in the world. Some of our Brooke guns were subjected to extraordinarily severe tests, yet not one of them burst or was in any degree injured; at the same time they out-ranged the enemy's best and heaviest Parrotts, which not unfrequently burst by overcharging and over-elevation.

By a capital invention of Col. William E. Burnett, of Texas, our gun-carriages were much simplified; we were enabled to dispense with eccentrics entirely, and our heaviest cannon could be run into battery with one hand.

D. H. M.

The following farewell order was published to the troops who remained with me after the battle of Mobile :

HEADQUARTERS, MAURY'S DIVISION,

Camp six miles cast of Meridian, Miss, May 7, 1865. } SOLDIERS: Our last march is almost ended. To-morrow we shall lay down the arms we have borne for four years to defend our rights, to win our liberties.

We know that we have borne them with honor. And we only now surrender to the overwhelming power of the enemy, which has rendered further resistance hopeless and mischievous to our own people and cause. But we shall never forget the noble comrades who have stood shoulder to shoulder with us until now; the noble dead who have been martyred; the noble Southern women who have been wronged and are unavenged; or the noble principles for which we have fought. Conscious that we have played our part like men, confident of the righteousness of our cause, without regret for our past action, and without despair of the future, let us to morrow, with the dignity of the veterans who are the last to surrender, perform the sad duty which has been assigned to us.

Your friend and comrade,

DABNEY H. MAURY, Maj. Gen. Confederate Army.

THE LAND OF GOSHEN IN THE OLD DOMINION.

THH

HE pride of the Virginian in his native State is proverbial. He delights in recalling the former glory of the Commonwealth, the time when her sons filled in succession the Presidential chair and guided the deliberations of the National Congress. He

contemplates her extensive domain, her fortunate geographical position, her shores washed by the waters of the Chesapeake and Ohio for as yet he fails to appreciate the separate existence of West Virginia; he beholds with pride and pleasure her mountains, "beautiful for situation," enclosing in their ample bosoms veins of iron and other ores of incalculable value; he gazes with everincreasing delight upon her valleys, rare in beauty and fertility, and anticipates the full development of her vast resources, which, as he believes, rival those of Pennsylvania or New York, and are destined to cause Virginia's voice once more to sound with authority in the halls of Congress and in the marts of trade. These Virginians of the old school have come down to us from a former generation. They fitly and nobly represent l'ancien régime. During the past six or eight years they have lived not in the present at all, but in the past and future. They decline to consider the present condition of the old Commonwealth, her territory divided by ruthless hands abroad, her fair name well-nigh dishonored by traitors and imbeciles at home. They rejoice in the glory that was and anticipate the prosperity that shall be. Fortunately for the old State, these eager longings of her sons are neither vague nor uncertain. The hopes of Virginians, so often idly indulged, are now after so long a time to be fully realised; the vast resources of the Commonwealth, which hitherto have been buried under masses of lime and sandstone, are to be developed surely and speedily, resulting, as may confidently be predicted, in an increase of wealth which is simply incalculable.

The lesson taught by the old man of the fable to his sons by the bundle of sticks, has a thousand applications: none is more apparent than that in the union of iron and coal there is prosperity and strength. Iron ore without fuel is a mass of dirt, fit for nothing. Coal without iron has, it is true, many important uses, but its advantages as an element of material wealth are limited until brought into connection with the most useful of metals; coal and iron combined form the foundation for the assured prosperity of an empire. Very recently the iron of Virginia has been united in marriage with the coal of West Virginia; the progeny of these happy nuptials will be both numerous and promising. From this union will spring a thousand flourishing industries to enrich the people of both States. Washington in his time saw the importance of it, and in the earliest days of the Commonweath conceived and promulgated a plan to secure it. The result of his deliberations is the James River and Kanawha Canal, an enterprise which reaches the iron belt, but has failed as yet to effect the desired union with coal. Later a railroad was started from Richmond which was designed ultimately to secure this end. As the Virginia Central, the State expended many millions of dollars in pushing it through the Blue Ridge, across the great Valley, over the Alleghanies, where it caught sight of the Kanawha coal-fields. The year 1865 found Virginia prostrate, the Central Railroad Company impoverished, and unable to extend the road beyond the Greenbrier White Sulphur Springs. At this juncture the Legislatures of Virginia and West Virginia determined to consolidate the Virginia Central and Covington and Ohio roads, to grant a

This new

charter with extended franchises to a new company. company with ample resources and indefatigable industry have at length completed their road to the Ohio, and even now as high priests are celebrating a triple marriage. The waters of the Chesapeake Bay and the Ohio River are united by bands of iron; the divorced States, Virginia and West Virginia, are again joined together by industrial and commercial ties which no man can put asunder; coal and iron, grim but potent representatives of a nation's wealth, are brought together for the benefit of the whole country.

It is proposed in the present paper to give some account of that section of Virginia which, of her three iron belts, contains the largest and most persistent veins of ore. This section, about forty miles long, but varying in breadth, we have ventured to call the "Land of Goshen," from the depôt situated about half-way between its eastern and western boundaries. It is in the same range as the celebrated "Cornwall Bank" of Pennsylvania, and is destined to be for Virginia what the fertile fields of Egypt were to the descendants of the son of Isaac.

In order to see its boundaries as well as to enjoy the beauty and grandeur of the scenery, the reader is invited to ascend to the top of Elliott's Knob, a mountain, the highest in the State, which stands on the northeastern corner, guarding like a mighty sentinel the approaches to the Land of Promise. The summit of Elliott is about sixteen miles west of Staunton, and one hundred and fifty by the railroad from Richmond. It rises forty-five hundred feet above mean tide, and two thousand four hundred above the railroad where it crosses the spur below. This spur is a connecting link between the Great and Little North Mountains, and forms a part of the "divide " between the waters of the Potomac and James. Here is the summit of the railroad between Richmond and Huntington, the western terminus.

The view from Elliott's Knob for extent, variety, and beauty is unsurpassed in Virginia. On the east, the great Valley spreads out far to the right and left like a rich garden. In the distance, the Blue Mountains, with the sky, which they seem to touch, form an enclosure. Close at hand is the Little North Mountain, above which Elliott towers like a giant. In the centre of the Valley is the county of Augusta, rejoicing in rich farms, abounding in churches and schools. At Staunton, a flourishing inland city, are situated the Western Lunatic Asylum, the Institution for the Deaf and Dumb and the Blind, besides several first-class female schools. Here the Chesapeake and Ohio is crossed by the Valley Railroad, which is destined sooner or later to extend throughout the entire length of the Valley from the Potomac to the Roanoke. Southwest of Augusta is Rockbridge county. Far away is Lexington, the present terminus of one branch of the James River and Kanawha Canal. Washington and Lee University and the Virginia Military Institute, two of the largest and best equipped educational institutions in the South, are situated in this town.

Rockingham county lies northeast of Augusta. It is almost unrivalled in the fertility of its soil and the thrift of an industrious