With the World's Great Travellers Volume I Part 3

EDWARD A. POLLARD.

[The Old Dominion--to give Virginia its home t.i.tle--is full of natural wonders, some of them unsurpa.s.sed in beauty and attractiveness elsewhere in the world. In number and variety of mineral springs it stands unequalled; its caverns, Luray and Weyer's, are rich in charms of subterranean scenery; and its two remarkable examples of nature's grandeur, the Natural Bridge and Natural Tunnel, are unique in their peculiar characteristics. Edward A. Pollard, in his "Virginia Tourist,"

has ably described the various attractions of the Old Dominion, and we select from this work his word picture of the Natural Bridge. He made his way thither from Lynchburg, _via_ the James River Ca.n.a.l.]

As the traveller enters the gap of the Blue Ridge from the east, the winding courses of the stage-coach carry him up the mountain's side until he has gained an elevation of hundreds of feet above the James River, over the waters of which the zigzag and rotten road hangs fearfully. On every side are gigantic mountains hemming him in; there are black ravines in the great prison-house; and the lengthened arms of the winds smite the strained ear with the sounds of the rapids below.

While he looks at the distance, a mountain rivulet, slight and glittering from amid the primeval forest, dashes across his path, and, leaping from rock to rock, goes joyously on its way.

On the North River the scenes are quieter. Emerging here, the traveller sees a beautiful and fertile country opening before him, while still westward the blue outlines of distant mountains in Rockbridge bound his vision. The water landscape is beautiful. Lovely valleys debouch upon the stream; there are peaceful shadows in the steel-blue waters, and on the broad shoulders of the cattle on the banks we see the drapery of the shadows of the trees beneath which they rest. The fisherman standing leg-deep in the water can see his face as in a mirror.

But at present our way does not lie through these scenes. The ca.n.a.l-boat is taking us along the James in the moonlit night, and by the time the day has broken we are within two miles of the Natural Bridge. A rickety team awaits us at the lock-house where we disembark. Through an air filled with golden vapor, and with the mists of the morning yet hanging in the trees by the wayside, we proceed on our journey. The old stage-coach lumbers along under the thick, overhanging boughs of the forest pines, which ever and anon sc.r.a.pe its top or strike in through the windows, scattering the dew-drops in the very faces of the pa.s.sengers, or perhaps smiting their cheeks with their sharp-pointed leaves.

The first view of the bridge is obtained half a mile from it at a turn on the stage-road. It is revealed with the suddenness of an apparition.

Raised a hundred feet above the highest trees of the forest, and relieved against the purple side of a distant mountain, a whitish-gray arch is seen, in the effect of distance as perfect and clean-cut an arch as its Egyptian inventor could have defined. The tops of trees are waving in the interval, the upper half of which we only see, and the stupendous arch that spans the upper air is relieved from the first impression that it is man's masonry, the work of art, by the fifteen or twenty feet of soil that it supports, in which trees and shrubbery are firmly embedded,--the verdant crown and testimony of nature's great work. And here we are divested of an imagination which we believe is popular, that the bridge is merely a huge slab of rock thrown across a chasm, or some such hasty and violent arrangement. It is no such thing.

The arch and whole interval are contained in one solid rock; the average width of that which makes the bridge is eighty feet, and beyond this the rock extends for a hundred feet or so in mural precipices, divided by only a single fissure, that makes a natural pier on the upper side of the bridge, and up which climb the hardy firs, ascending step by step on the n.o.ble rock-work till they overshadow you.

This mighty rock, a single ma.s.s sunk in the earth's side, of which even what appears is stupendous, is of the same geological character,--of limestone covered to the depth of from four to six feet with alluvial and clayey earth. The span of the arch runs from forty-five to sixty feet wide, and its height to the under line is one hundred and ninety-six feet, and to the head two hundred and fifteen feet. The form of the arch approaches to the elliptical; the stage-road which pa.s.ses over the bridge runs from north to south, with an acclivity of thirty-five degrees, and the arch is carried over on a diagonal line,--the very line of all others the most difficult for the architect to realize, and the one best calculated for picturesque effects. It is the proportions of art in this wild, strange work of nature, its adjustment in the very perfection of mechanical skill, its apparently deliberate purpose, that create an interest the most curious and thoughtful. The deep ravine over which it sweeps, and through which traverses the beautiful Cedar Creek, is not otherwise easily pa.s.sed for several miles, either above or below the bridge. It is needful to the spot, and yet so little likely to have survived the great fracture, the evidences of which are visible around, and which has made a fissure of about ninety feet through the breadth of a rock-ribbed hill, that we are at first disposed to reflect upon it as the work of man. It is only when we contemplate its full measure of grandeur that we are a.s.sured it is the work of G.o.d. We have the pier, the arch, the studied angle of ascent; and that nothing might be wanted in the evidences of design, the bridge is guarded by a parapet of rocks, so covered with fine shrubs and trees that a person travelling the stage-road running over it would, if not informed of the curiosity, pa.s.s it unnoticed.

But let him approach through the foliage to the side. More than two hundred feet below is the creek, apparently motionless, except where it flashes with light as it breaks on an obstruction in the channel; there are trees, attaining to grander heights as they ascend the face of the pier; and far below this bed of verdure the majestic rock rises with the decision of a wall, and the spectator shrinks from contemplating the grand but cruel depths, and turns away with dizzy sensations. But the most effective view is from the base of the bridge, where you descend by a circuitous and romantic path. Even to escape from the hot sun into these verdant and cool bottoms is of itself a luxury, and it prepares you for the deliberate enjoyment of the scene. Everything reposes in the most delightful shade, set off by the streaming rays of the sun, which shoot across the head of the picture far above you, and sweeten with softer touches the solitude below.

Standing by the rippling, gus.h.i.+ng waters of the creek, and raising your eyes to the arch, ma.s.sive and yet light and beautiful from its height, its elevation apparently increased by the narrowness of its piers and by its projection on the blue sky, you gaze on the great work of nature in wonder and astonishment. Yet a hundred beauties beckon you from the severe emotion of the sublime. When you have sustained this view of the arch raised against the sky, its black patches here and there shaped by imagination into grand and weird figures,--among them the eagle, the lion's head, and the heroic countenance of Was.h.i.+ngton; when you have taken in the proportions and circ.u.mstances of this elevated and wide span of rock,--so wide that the skies seem to slope from it to the horizon,--you are called to investigate other parts of the scene which strain the emotions less, and are distributed around in almost endless variety.

Looking through the arch, the eye is engaged with a various vista. Just beyond rises the frayed, unseamed wall of rock; the purple mountains stand out in the background; beneath them is a rank of hills and matted woods enclosing the dell below, while the creek coursing away from them appears to have been fed in their recesses. A few feet above the bridge the stream deflects, and invites to a point of view of the most curious effect. Taking a few steps backward, moving diagonally on the course of the stream, we see the interval of sky between the great abutments gradually shut out; thus apparently joined or lapped over, they give the effect of the face of a rock, with a straight seam running down it, and the imagination seizes the picture as of mighty gates closed upon us. We are shut in a wild and perturbed scene by these gates of h.e.l.l; behind and around us is the contracted and high boundary of mountains and hills, and in this close and vexed scene we are for a moment prisoners.

Now let us move across, step by step, to a position fronting where these gates apparently close. Slowly they seem to swing open on unseen and noiseless hinges; wider and wider grows the happy interval of sky, until at last wide open stands the gate-way raised above the forest, resting as it were on the brow of heaven,--a world lying beyond it, its rivers and its hills expanding themselves to the light and splendor of the unshadowed day.

To an observer of both places a comparison is naturally suggested between the Natural Bridge and Niagara Falls in respect of the sublime and the beautiful; and, indeed, as in this respect the two greatest works of nature on this continent, they may well be used as ill.u.s.trations in our American schools of aesthetics. The first is unique in its aspects of nature like art; it is nature with the proportions of art. In its expressions of power, in its concentration of emotion, as when we look at it distinct or complete, it is truly sublime; and its effect is alleviated (for it is a maxim in aesthetics that the sublime cannot be long sustained) by the picturesque scenery which surrounds it.

It is a greater natural curiosity and more wonderful than Niagara, although it lacks the elements of sublimity which the other has in sound, and of the visible, actual struggle in which it displays the powers of nature. Niagara is a living thing, while the Natural Bridge is _monumental_. The first represents the sublime as allied to the terrific,--in contemplating it we are overwhelmed with a sense of our insignificance; while the Natural Bridge a.s.sociates the sublime with the pleasing and curious, and, not transporting us as violently as Niagara, entertains us more equably, and dismisses us, we think, with more distinct and fruitful perceptions of the grandeur and beneficence and variety of nature which have been distributed in the picture.

[Was.h.i.+ngton, a century and a half ago, carved his name at a high elevation on the rock walls of the abyss. In 1818 these walls were climbed to the top by James H. Piper, a student of Was.h.i.+ngton College, Virginia. The narrative here given of this daring feat is from the pen of William A. Caruthers.]

Mr. Piper, the hero of the occasion, commenced climbing on the opposite side of the creek from the one by which the pathway ascends the ravine.

He began down on the banks of the brook so far that we did not know where he had gone, and were only apprised of his whereabouts by his shouting above our heads. When we looked up, he was standing apparently right under the arch, I suppose a hundred feet from the bottom, and that on the smooth side, which is generally considered inaccessible without a ladder. He was standing far above the spot where General Was.h.i.+ngton is said to have inscribed his name when a youth. The ledge of the rock by which he ascended to this perilous height does not appear from below to be three inches wide, and runs almost at right angles to the abutment of the bridge....

The ledge of rock on which he was standing appeared so narrow to us below as to make us believe his position a very perilous one, and we earnestly entreated him to come down. He answered us with loud shouts of derision....

He soon after descended from that side, crossed the brook, and commenced climbing on the side by which all visitors ascend the ravine. He first mounted the rocks on this side, as he had done on the other, far down the abutment, but not so far as on the opposite side. The projecting ledge may be distinctly seen by any visitor. It commences four or five feet from the pathway on the lower side, and winds round, gradually ascending, until it meets the cleft of rock over which the celebrated cedar stump hangs. Following this ledge to its termination, it brought him thirty or forty feet from the ground, and placed him between two deep fissures, one on each side of the gigantic column of rock on which the aforementioned cedar stump stands.

This column stands out from the bridge, as separate and distinct as if placed there by nature on purpose for an observatory to the wonderful arch and ravine which it overlooks. A huge crack or fissure extends from its base to the summit; indeed, it is cracked on both sides, but much more perceptibly on one side than the other. Both of these fissures are thickly overgrown with bushes, and numerous roots project into them from trees growing on the precipice. It was between these that the aforementioned ledge conducted him. Here he stopped, pulled off his coat and shoes and threw them down to me. And this, in my opinion, is a sufficient refutation of the story so often told, that he went up to inscribe his name, and ascended so high that he found it more difficult to return than to go forward. He could have returned easily from the point where he disenc.u.mbered himself, but the fact that he did thus prepare so early, and so near the ground, and after he had ascended more than double that height on the other side, is clear proof that to inscribe his name was not, and to climb the bridge was, his object. He had already inscribed his name above Was.h.i.+ngton himself more than fifty feet.

Around the face of this huge column, and between the clefts, he now moved backward and forward, still ascending as he found convenient foothold. When he had ascended about one hundred and seventy feet from the earth, and had reached the point where the pillar overhangs the ravine, his heart seemed to fail him. He stopped, and seemed to us to be balancing midway between heaven and earth. We were in dread suspense, expecting every moment to see him dashed in atoms at our feet. We had already exhausted our powers of entreaty in persuading him to return, but all to no purpose. Now it was perilous even to speak to him, and very difficult to carry on conversation at all, from the immense height to which he had ascended, and the noise made by the bubbling of the little brook as it tumbled in tiny cascades over its rocky bed at our feet. At length he seemed to discover that one of the clefts before mentioned retreated backward from the overhanging position of the pillar. Into this he sprang at once, and was soon out of sight and out of danger.

There is not a word of truth in all that story about our hauling him up with ropes, and his fainting away so soon as he landed on the summit.

Those acquainted with the localities will at once perceive its absurdity; for we were beneath the arch, and it is half a mile round to the top, and for the most part up a rugged mountain. Instead of fainting away, Mr. Piper proceeded down the hill to meet us and obtain his hat and shoes. We met about half-way, and then he lay down for a few moments to recover himself of his fatigue.

[Virginia possesses another marvel of nature's handiwork of the same general character as the Natural Bridge, and of which Mr. Pollard's description may here fitly be given.]

After progressing about three miles from the ford of the Clinch River, and after having repeatedly crossed its crooked tributary, Stock Creek, we come to a small mountain or globular hill which is our wondrous destination, for here is the Natural Tunnel. There is nothing which advertises in advance this great wonder, or in any way excites the expectations of the traveller. There is a common road, from which we depart a few hundred yards to make a half circuit of the base of the mountain, that goes clean over the ridge, leading to a settlement some miles farther, called Rye Cove, and which was once the abode of a fierce Indian tribe. This main road goes over the arch of the tunnel, furnis.h.i.+ng a curious convenience to the traveller, of which he would be unaware, seeing nothing through the foliage but glimpses of the mural rocks that guard and sustain the termination of the secret pa.s.sage-way many hundred feet below him. It is from this convenience that the neighboring people name the gigantic work of nature we are proceeding to explore a natural bridge. But this name is certainly insufficient and paltry for a rock-work that on one flank at least extends some eight hundred feet, and which, if regarded with reference to the breadth of the interval it spans, is, in fact, a complication of bridges, arranged, as we shall presently see, in one single ma.s.sive spectacle.

The western face of the tunnel, near which we dismount, continues partly concealed from view, or is imperfectly exposed, until we nearly approach it, the immense rock which is perforated being here dressed with the thick foliage of the spruce-pine, and the harsh surface adorned with a beautiful tracery of vines and creepers. At last is seen the entrance of what appears to be a huge subterraneous cavern or grotto, into which the stream disappears; a towering rock rising here about two hundred feet above the surface of the stream, and a rude entrance gouged into it, varying in width, as far as the eye can reach, from one hundred to one hundred and fifty feet, and rising in a clear vault from seventy to eighty feet above the floor. The view here terminates in the very blackness of darkness; it is broken on the first curve of the tunnel.

The bed of the stream, from which the water has disappeared on account of the drouth, the reduced currents sinking to lower subterranean channels, is piled with great irregular rocks, on the sharp points of which we stumble and cut our hands: there is no foothold but on rocks, and it is only when we have struggled through the awful, cruel darkness, holding up some feeble lights in it, and issued into the broad suns.h.i.+ne, that we find we have travelled nearly two hundred yards (or say, more exactly, five hundred feet) through one solid rock, in which there is not an inch of soil, not a seam, not a cleft, and which, even beyond the debouchure of the tunnel, yet runs away a hundred yards in a wall five hundred feet high, as clean and whetted as the work of the mason.

But we must not antic.i.p.ate this majestical scene, "wonderful beyond all wondrous measure." Happily, in entering the tunnel from the western side we have adopted the course of exploration which affords a gradual ascent of the emotions, until at last they tower to the standard of a perfect sublimity. The course of the tunnel may be described as a continuous curve: it resembles, indeed, a prostrate S. For a distance of twenty yards midway of this course we are excluded from a view of either entrance, and the darkness is about that of a night with one quarter of the moon. The vault becomes lower here--in some places scarcely more than thirty feet high--and springs immediately from the floor.

The situation is awful and oppressive: the voice sounds unnatural, and rumbles strangely and fearfully along the arch of stone. We are encoffined in the solid rock: there is a strange pang in the beating heart in its imprisonment, so _impenetrable_, black, hopeless, and we hurry to meet the light of day. In that light we are disentombed: we cast off the confinements of the black s.p.a.ce through which we have pa.s.sed, and we are instantly introduced to a scene so luminous and majestic that in a moment our trembling eyes are captivated and our hearts lifted in unutterable wors.h.i.+p of the Creator's works.

It is that sheer wall of rock which we have already mentioned, where the arch and other side of the tunnel break away into the mountain slope; a high wall, slightly impending; an amphitheatre, extending one hundred yards, of awful precipices; a clean battlement, without a joint in it, five hundred feet high. And this splendid height and breadth of stone, that a thousand storms have polished, leaving not a cleft of soil in it,--this huge, unjointed masonry raised against the sky, gray and weather-stained, with glittering patches of light on it,--is yet part of the same huge rock which towered at the farther end of the tunnel, and through whose seamless cavity we have travelled two hundred yards. It is in this view that the mystery of the scene seizes the mind, and the last element of sublimity is added to it. It is in this view that the Natural Tunnel we had come to see as a mere "curiosity" takes rank among the greatest wonders of the world. What power, what possible imaginable agency of nature, could have worked out this stupendous scene?...

Turning our eyes away from the battlement of rock to the opposite side of the ravine, a new revelation of the grand and picturesque awaits us.

Here a gigantic cliff, but one broken with rock and soil, and threaded to its summit by a sapling growth of the buckeye, the linden, and the pine, rises almost perpendicularly from the water's edge to a height almost equal to that of the opposite wall of rock. A natural platform is seen to project over it, and yet a few yards farther there is an insulated cliff, a cyclopean _chimney_, so to speak, scarcely more than a foot square at its top, rising in the form of a turret at least sixty feet above its bas.e.m.e.nt, which is a portion of the imposing cliff we have mentioned. It is at once perceived that here are two points of view that will give us new and perhaps the most imposing aspects of the scene. To attain these points, however, it is necessary to make a circuit of half a mile; and the sinking sun admonishes us to defer this new interest of the scene until to-morrow....

We remounted for the tunnel in the early morning, and were soon to find that the rising sun was to give a new and unexpected glory to the scene.

This time we ascend the mountain instead of deflecting as before. The road is easy; there are no difficulties of access to the points of view from the top of the tunnel, and they are undoubtedly the grandest. We pa.s.s to the platform before described by a few steps from the main road.

It is a slab of rock projecting from an open patch of ground; a dead cedar-tree is standing at its edge, throwing its gnarled and twisted arms, as in wild and widowed sorrow, over the awful scene below. We now see the great opposite amphitheatre of rock in added grandeur, for we see it from above,--we see it across a chasm nine hundred feet wide and five hundred feet deep, and the exposure being almost exactly eastern, the long spears of the rising sun are being shattered on it. The effect is inexpressibly grand. But there is one more circ.u.mstance to be added to the scene; we do not see from this observatory the arch, the entrance of the tunnel. A few yards farther the fearful chimney-shaped rock invites to a more commanding view, but the ascent is dangerous; the stone on top is loose, and so narrow that two persons can scarcely stand on it. A single misstep, a moment's loss of balance, and we would fall into eternity. But now the sense of peril is lost, or is rather mingled, in the grandeur of the scene. It is a panoramic view. We have now the whole sweep of the mural precipice opposite; the sun's glitter is incessant on the polished stone; the trees which fringe the bottom appear now scarcely more than shrubs; the entrance of the tunnel has now come into view, and that which yesterday we thought so high and wide, now appears, from our amazing height, as a stooped door-way. We imagine the gloomy entrance into a cave of Erebus and Death, the broken rocks lying within which look like black and mangled entrails. It is a fearful picture,--it is that of a supernatural abode.

[This marvel of nature is not without its tradition,--one of Indian origin,--in which is repeated, with suitable variations, the familiar Lover's Leap narrative. A more prosaic and modern interest attaches to it, in its having been chosen as the route of a railroad, nature's contribution of a pa.s.sage through a difficult mountain wall.]

PLANTATION LIFE IN WAR TIMES.

WILLIAM HOWARD RUSSELL.

[Russell, of former celebrity as war correspondent of _The Times_, visited the seceded States during the early period of the American Civil War. His letters thence, published later as "Pictures of Southern Life," are full of graphic descriptions of scenes and feelings in the Confederate States during the era of enthusiasm and hopefulness, before the war had borne its harvest of doubt and misery. It is not our purpose, however, to give his experiences in this special field. It is travel, not war, with which we are concerned, and we confine ourself to an account of a visit to a plantation in the vicinity of Charleston. A short preliminary sketch of the ebb and flow of rumor in war times, however, may be of interest.]

The rolling fire of the revolution is fast sweeping over the prairie, and one must fly before it or burn. I am obliged to see all that can be seen of the South at once, and then, armed with such safeguards as I can procure, to make an effort to recover my communications. Bridges broken, rails torn up, telegraphs pulled down,--I am quite in the air, and air charged with powder and fire. One of the most extraordinary books in the world could be made out of the cuttings and parings of the newspapers which have been published within the last few days. The judgments, statements, a.s.severations of the press, everywhere necessarily hasty, ill-sifted, and off-hand, do not aspire to even an ephemeral existence here. They are of use if they serve the purpose of the moment, and of the little boys who commence their childhood in deceit, and continue to adolescence in iniquity, by giving vocal utterance to the "sensation"

headings of the journals they retail so sharply and so curtly.

Talk of the superst.i.tion of the Middle Ages, or of the credulity of the more advanced period of rural life; laugh at the Holy Coat of Treves, or groan over the Lady of Salette; deplore the faith in winking pictures, or in a _communique_ of the _Moniteur_; moralize on the superst.i.tion which discovers more in the liquefaction of the ichor of St. Gennaro than a chemical trick; but if you desire to understand how far faith can see and trust among the people who consider themselves the most civilized and intelligent in the world, you will study the American journals, and read the telegrams which appear in them.

One day the Seventh New York Regiment is destroyed for the edification of the South, and is cut up into such small pieces that none of it is ever seen afterwards. The next day it marches into Was.h.i.+ngton or Annapolis, all the better for the process. Another, in order to encourage the North, it is said that hecatombs of dead were carried out of Fort Moultrie, packed up, for easy travelling, in boxes. Again, to irritate both, it is credibly stated that Lord Lyons is going to interfere, or that an Anglo-French fleet is coming to watch the ports; and so on, through a wild play of fancy, inexact in line, as though the batteries were charged with the aurora borealis or summer lightning, instead of the respectable, steady, manageable offspring of acid and metal....

I am now, however, dealing with South Carolina, which has been the _fons et origo_ of the secession doctrines and their development into the full life of the Confederate States. The whole foundation on which South Carolina rests is cotton and a certain amount of rice; or rather she bases her whole fabric on the necessity which exists in Europe for those products of her soil, believing and a.s.serting, as she does, that England and France cannot and will not do without them. Cotton, without a market, is so much flocculent matter enc.u.mbering the ground. Rice, without demand for it, is unsalable grain in store and on the field.

Cotton at ten cents a pound is boundless prosperity, empire, and superiority, and rice and grain need no longer be regarded.

In the matter of slave labor, South Carolina argues pretty much in this way: England and France require our products. In order to meet their wants we must cultivate our soil. There is only one way of doing so. The white man cannot live on our land at certain seasons of the year; he cannot work in the manner required by the crops. He must, therefore, employ a race suited to the labor, and that is a race which will only work when it is obliged to do so.

[And so on throughout the old argument, which, fortunately, the logic of time has in great measure disproved. But, leaving this phase of the subject, we shall accompany our traveller on a visit to the land of rice and slave labor.]

Early one morning I started in a steamer to visit a plantation in the Pedee and Maccamaw district, in the island coast of the State, north of Charleston. Pa.s.sing Sumter, on which men are busily engaged, under the Confederate flag, in making good damages and mounting guns, we put out a few miles to sea, and with the low sandy sh.o.r.e, dotted with soldiers and guard-houses and clumps of trees, on our left, in a few hours pa.s.s the Santee River, and enter an estuary into which the Pedee and Maccamaw run a few miles farther to the northwest.

The steamer ran alongside a jetty and pier, which was crowded by men in uniform, waiting for the news and for supplies of creature comforts.

Ladies were cantering along the fine hard beach, and some gigs and tax-carts, fully laden, rolled along very much as one sees them at Scarborough. The soldiers on the pier were all gentlemen of the county.

Some, dressed in gray tunics and yellow facings, in high felt-hats and plumes and jack-boots, would have done no discredit in face, figure, and bearing to the gayest cavaliers who ever thundered at the heels of Prince Rupert. Their horses, full of Carolinian fire and mettle, stood picketed under the trees along the margin of the beach. Among these men, who had been doing the duty of common troopers in patrolling the sea-coast, were gentlemen possessed of large estates and princely fortunes; and one who stood among them was pointed out to me as captain of a company, for whose use his liberality provided unbounded daily libations of champagne, and the best luxuries which French ingenuity can safely imprison in those well-known caskets with which Crimean warriors were not unacquainted at the close of the campaign.

They were eager for news, which was shouted out to them by their friends in the steamer, and one was struck by the intimate personal cordiality and familiar acquaintance which existed among them. Three heavy guns, mounted in an earthwork defended by palisades, covered the beach and the landing-place, and the garrison was to have been reinforced by a regiment from Charleston, which, however, had not got in readiness to go up on our steamer, owing to some little difficulties between the volunteers, their officers, and the quartermaster-general's department.