Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/135

132 very pretty present to Wellington, along with his title of "Prince of Waterloo," of 1000 acres of this forest-land, which is extremely valuable for its timber. Waterloo itself is a straggling, mean little village, in which, as we were going to the burial-place of thousands of brave men, we did not stop to weep over the grave of the Marquis of Anglesea's leg, which, with its monument, epitaph, and seeping willow, is one of the regular Waterloo lions. At MontMountain [sic] St. Jean, on the edge of the field of battle, we took our guide Martin, a peasant with a most humane physiognomy, indicating him fitter to show a battle-field than to fight on it

Now do not fear that I am about to commit the fplly of describing "the field of Waterloo." I shall merely tell you that we have seen the places whose names are magic words in the memories of those who remember 1815. As we left Mont St. Jean we came upon an unenclosed country, and at the large farmhouse called Ferme de Mont St. JeanThe Farm of Mountain St. Jean [sic] we first saw a mound, surmounted by the Belgic lion. This mound is two hundred feet high, and covers the common burying-place of friends and foes. The lion is placed over the very spot where the Prince of Orange was wounded, and is cast from the cannon taken in the field of battle. To those cavillers who see no good reason why, amid such a mass of valiant sufferers, a wound of the Prince of Orange would be illustrated, or why the Belgic lion would crown the scene, and who lament that the face of the field has beat changed by the elevation of the