Our correspondence.
Fairfax C. H., Sept. 5th, 1861.
The insolent villains at Washington sent up a balloon several days ago to reconnoiter our fortifications and forces at Munson's Heights.
I was a witness both of its going up and coming down, but accidentally omitted to make you a report.
From the great distance at which it sailed from our position, we inferred that the æronant and his companions had lost either their courage or curiosity very soon after the ascent commenced.
But if any of either was retained, it very rapidly evaporated after a shot from one of the Washington Artillery's rifled cannon, which is capable, it was said, of shooting four miles, and was immediately fired at the speck in the sky, when suddenly its course was turned towards the spot of its ascension.
Two shots quickly followed the first, and the captain of the artillery declared with great confidence that he had ‘"grazed the thing,"’ and if the trail of the cannon could have been sunk deeply enough in the ground when the first shot was fired to have given it a perpendicular position, the voyagers would have been precipitated into an observation of another world.
The recent advances against the enemy, which have been carried so far as to afford us now a sight of their Capitol; the capturing, killing and pursuit of their scouts, and the hourly invitations to battle — so pressing in their character as to remind one of the cruel ‘"bull fights"’ among the Spaniards, when the poor brute, after undergoing the greatest torture and almost exhausted, is infuriated for the last time by having flaunted in his face a blood-red flag, at which he rushes furiously upon his tormentors, and is stabbed to death — all prove that the ‘"Grand Army"’ will not again give us battle, or even combat, until pressed to the very wall.
Notwithstanding the important advantage of a much closer proximity to their main body, by which their engaged forces could be more rapidly swollen than our's, they have been driven from all their outposts and forced to take shelter under the cannon of Arlington and Alexandria.
Nor will the terror- stricken brute allow himself to be made mad, although the ‘"red flag"’ is daily flung in his face.
Ithuriel. 