Beadle's Dime Novels No. 127: Bald Eagle — page 66: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

68 BALD. EAGLE. he sometimes assumed an extra appearance of cant, he may well be pardoned therefor, and the nasal twang, if not alto- gether natural to him, the better concealed his designs; he cared not for the contempt cast’ upon himself, so long as the cause of God and country were advanced. “ What does it matter,’ he murmured, “ amid our little host of heroes, that the turf is heaped upon one nameless grave ? My mother will weep;_ Katrina, even, ‘will yield me one sich, and then she will hum her Yankee Doodle over my grave.” ; ) The times and the places have changed since the period of our story; but there are those still living who point out the various routes of the agents of Washington in going to and fro from the different encampments of the army. The road is still in preservation which he caused to be constructed for their convenience, four or five miles to the north and west of the Valley of the Ramapo, which was at that time in posses- sion of the British, whose foraging parties greatly annoyed and distressed the inhabitants of the district. There are those who point out the path of Montagnie adown the valley, and show point after point which he passed, and how this and that position was under the protection of our own troops, and others were held by our foes. The walls of stone are yet visible where stood the forges sometimes worked. by our enemies, and sometimes by ourselves, in this region of iron, as the district changed hands in the chances of war. Still do these mighty engines of power belch forth their smoke and flame from a hundred forges, making the old woods to ring with the clank- ing of the metal, as they did more than a hundred years ago. The battlements of Ramapo no longer bristle with artillery, nor resound to the tramp of the sentinel; the weary traveler, as he descends the narrow defile, no longer trembles lest some outrage, justified by the tumult of the times, be perpetrated upon himself; but in place of its ancient solitude, disturbed only by the moccasined feet of warrior or hunter, and in place of the pomp and circumstance of war, the black and fiery locomotive, like some huge dragon, rushes with burning speed along the highway, and-plunges into the gloomy defile, leaving its thick vapors and breathings of flame to mark the path it has trodden. conmiclooolkks.comn