II.—THE HAUNT OF THE REBEL.
And where was Washington?
Retreating from the forces of Sir William Howe, along the Schuylkill;
retreating with brave men under his command, men who had dared death in
a thousand shapes, and crimsoned their hands with the carnage of Brandywine;
retreating because his powder and ammunition were exhausted; because
his soldiers wanted the necessary apparel, while their hands grasped
muskets without lock or flint.
The man of the American army retreated, but his soul was firm. The
American Congress had deserted Philadelphia, but Washington did not
despair. The British occupied the surrounding country, their arms shone
on every hill; their banners toyed in every breeze; yet had George Washington
resolved to strike another blow for the freedom of this fair land.
The calm sunlight of an autumnal afternoon was falling over the quiet
valleys, the green plains, and the rich and rolling woodland of an undulating
tract of country, spreading from the broad bosom of the Delaware to the
hilly shores of the Schuylkill, about seven miles from Philadelphia.
The roofs of an ancient village, extending in one unbroken line along the
great northern road, arose grey and massive in the sunlight, as each corniced
gable and substantial chimney looked forth from the shelter of the surrounding
trees. There was an air of quaint and rustic beauty about this village.
Its plan was plain and simple, burdened with no intricate crossings of streets,
no labyrinthine pathways, no complicated arrangement of houses. The
fabrics of the village were all situated on the line of the great northern road,
reaching from the fifth mile stone to the eighth, while a line of smaller villages
extended this “Indian file of houses” to the tenth milestone from
the city.
The houses were all stamped with marks of the German origin of their
tenants. The high, sloping roof, the walls of dark grey stone, the porch
before the door, and the garden in the rear, blooming with all the freshness
of careful culture, marked the tenements of the village, while the heavy
gable-ends and the massive cornices of every roof, gave every house an appearance
of rustic antiquity.
Around the village, on either side, spread fertile farms, each cultivated
like a garden, varied by orchards heavy with golden fruit, fields burdened
with the massive shocks of corn, or whitened with the ripe buckwheat, or
embrowned by the upturning plough.
The village looked calm and peaceful in the sunlight, but its plain and
simple people went not forth to the field to work on that calm autumnal
afternoon. The oxen stood idly in the barn-yard, cropping the fragrant hay,
the teams stood unused by the farmer, and the flail was silent within the
barn. A sudden spell seemed to have come strangely down upon the
peaceful denizens of Germantown, and that spell was the shadow of the
British banner flung over her fields of white buckwheat, surmounting the
dream-like steeps of the Wissakikon, waving from Mount Airy, and floating
in the freshning breeze of Chesnut Hill.
Had you ascended Chesnut Hill on that calm autumnal afternoon, and
gazed over the tract of country opened to your view, your eye would have
beheld a strange and stirring sight.
Above your head the clear and boundless sky, its calm azure giving no
tokens of the strife of the morrow; declining in the west, the gorgeous sun
pouring his golden light over the land; his beams of welcome having no
omen of the battle-smoke and mist that shall cloud their light on the morrow
morn.
Gaze on the valley below. Germantown, with its dark grey tenements,
sweeps away to the south, in one unbroken line; farther on you behold the
glitter of steeples, and the roofs of a large city—they are the steeples and
roofs of Philadelphia. Yon belt of blue is the broad Delaware, and yon
dim, dark object beyond the city, blackening the bosom of the waters, is
Fort Mifflin, recently erected by General Washington.
Gaze over the fields of Germantown near the centre of the village. In
every field there is the gleam of arms, on every hill-top there waves a royal
banner, and over hill and plain, toward the Schuylkill on the one side, and
the Delaware on the other, sweep the white tents of the British army.
Now turn your gaze to the north, and to the northwest. The valley
opens before you, and fairer valley never smiled beneath the sun.
Away it sweeps to the northwest, an image of rustic beauty, here a rich
copse of green woodland, just tinged by autumn, there a brown field, yonder
the Wissahikon, marking its way of light, by a winding line of silver, in
one green spot a village peeping out from among the trees; a little farther
on, a farmer's dwelling with the massive barn and the dark grey hay-stack;
on every side life, and verdure, and cultivation, mingled and crowded together,
as though the hand of God, had flung his richest blessings over the
valley, and clothed the land in verdure and in beauty.
Yonder the valley sweeps away to the northwest; the sun shines over a
dense mass of woodland rolling away to the blue of the horizon. Mark
that woodland well, try and discern the outline of every tree, and count the
miles as you gaze upon the prospect.
The distance from Chesnut Hill, is sixteen weary miles, and under that
mass of woodland, beneath the shadows of those rolling forests, beside the
streams hidden from your eye, in distress and in want, in defeat and in
danger, rendevouz the bands of a desperate, though gallant army.
It is the Continental army, and they encamp on the banks of the Skippack.
Their encampment is sad and still, no peals of music break upon the
woodland air, no loud hurrahs, no shouts of arrogant victory. The morrow
has a different tale to tell, for by the first flush of the coming morn, a meteor
will burst over the British Hosts at Germantown, and fighting for life, for
liberty, will advance the starved soldiers of the Continental host.
