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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Virginia: The Old Dominion, by Frank W.
+Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Virginia: The Old Dominion
+
+Author: Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
+
+Release Date: March 27, 2004  [eBook #11731]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIRGINIA: THE OLD DOMINION***
+
+
+E-text prepared by I M Me, Beth Trapaga, and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+VIRGINIA: THE OLD DOMINION
+
+As seen from its Colonial waterway, the Historic River James, whose
+every succeeding turn reveals country replete with monuments and
+scenes recalling the march of history and its figures from the days
+of Captain John Smith to the present time.
+
+By
+
+FRANK AND CORTELLE HUTCHINS
+
+With a map, and fifty-four plates, of which six are in full color,
+from photographs by the authors.
+
+1910
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: The Portico of Brandon, from the Garden.
+(See page 119)]
+
+
+
+TO
+THE HONOURABLE FRANCIS E. HUTCHINS, THE FATHER OF ONE AUTHOR,
+THE MORE THAN FATHER-IN-LAW OF THE OTHER, AND THE EVER-STAUNCH
+FRIEND OF GADABOUT, THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED.
+
+
+This volume was formerly published under the title, "Houseboating on a
+Colonial Waterway"; but its appropriateness for inclusion in the "See
+America First Series" to represent the State of Virginia is so obvious
+that the publishers have, in this new edition, changed the title to
+"Virginia: The Old Dominion," and reissued the book in a new dress,
+generally uniform with the other volumes in the series.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER
+
+
+I.     ALL ABOUT GADABOUT
+
+II.    OUR FIRST RUN AND A COZY HARBOUR
+
+III.   LAND, HO! OUR COUNTRY'S BIRTHPLACE
+
+IV.    A RUN AROUND JAMESTOWN ISLAND
+
+V.     FANCIES AFLOAT AND RUINS ASHORE
+
+VI.    IN THE OLD CHURCHYARD
+
+VII.   SEEING WHERE THINGS HAPPENED
+
+VIII.  PIONEER VILLAGE LIFE
+
+IX.    GOOD-BYE TO OLD JAMES TOWNE
+
+X.     A SHORT SAIL AND AN OLD ROMANCE
+
+XI.    AT THE PIER MARKED "BRANDON"
+
+XII.   HARBOUR DAYS AND A FOGGY NIGHT
+
+XIII.  OLD SILVER, OLD PAPERS, AND AN OLD COURT GOWN
+
+XIV.   A ONE-ENGINE RUN AND A FOREST TOMB
+
+XV.    NAVIGATING AN UNNAVIGABLE STREAM
+
+XVI.   IN WHICH WE GET TO WEYANOKE
+
+XVII.  ACROSS RIVER TO FLEUR DE HUNDRED
+
+XVIII. GADABOUT GOES TO CHURCH
+
+XIX.   WESTOVER, THE HOME OF A COLONIAL BELLE
+
+XX.    AN OLD COURTYARD AND A SUN-DIAL
+
+XXI.   AN UNDERGROUND MYSTERY AND A DUCKING-STOOL
+
+XXII.  A BAD START AND A VIEW OF BERKELEY
+
+XXIII. THE RIGHT WAY TO GO TO SHIRLEY
+
+XXIV.  FROM CREEK HARBOUR TO COLONIAL RECEPTION
+
+XXV.   AN INCONGRUOUS BIT OF HOUSEBOATING.
+
+XXVI.  THE END OF THE VOYAGE
+
+INDEX
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+THE PORTICO OF BRANDON, FROM THE GARDEN (In full color)
+(See page 119) Frontispiece
+
+MAP OF THE JAMES RIVER FROM RICHMOND TO ITS MOUTH
+
+THE HOUSEBOAT GADABOUT
+
+IN THE FORWARD CABIN.--LOOKING AFT FROM THE FORWARD CABIN
+
+ALONG THE SHORE OF CHUCKATUCK CREEK (In full color)
+
+"JUST THE WILD BEAUTY OF THE SHORES, THE NOBLE EXPANSE OF THE
+STREAM, ... AND GADABOUT"
+
+JAMESTOWN ISLAND FROM THE RIVER (In full color)
+
+IN BACK RIVER.--THE BEACH AT JAMESTOWN ISLAND
+
+WHARF SIGN AT JAMESTOWN ISLAND.--THE "LONE CYPRESS"
+
+THE BRIDGE ACROSS BACK RIVER.--THE ROAD ACROSS THE ISLAND
+
+THE RUINED TOWER OF THE OLD VILLAGE CHURCH
+
+A CORNER IN THE OLD GRAVEYARD (In full color)
+
+VIEW FROM THE CONFEDERATE FORT.--LOOKING TOWARD THE FIRST LANDING-PLACE
+
+LOCATING WHAT IS LEFT OF THE SITE OF THE FIRST SETTLEMENT
+
+AN EXCURSION DAY AT JAMESTOWN ISLAND
+
+GADABOUT LOOKING FOR THE LOST ISTHMUS.--A VISIT TO THE "LONE CYPRESS"
+
+ONE OF THE EARLIEST EXCAVATIONS.--HUNTING FOR THE FIRST STATE HOUSE
+
+ENTRANCE TO CHIPPOAK CREEK.--COVE IN CHIPPOAK CREEK
+
+RIVERWARD FRONT OF BRANDON (In full color)
+
+A SIDE PATH TO THE MANOR-HOUSE.--THE WOODSWAY TO BRANDON
+
+IN THE DRAWING-ROOM
+
+"VENERABLE FOUR-POSTERS, RICHLY CARVED AND DARK"
+
+A CORNER IN THE DINING-ROOM.--THE DRAWING-ROOM FIREPLACE
+
+TREASURED PARCHMENTS, INCLUDING THE ORIGINAL GRANT OF 1616
+
+THE ANCIENT GARRISON HOUSE
+
+MISS HARRISON IN THE COURT GOWN OF HER COLONIAL AUNT, EVELYN BYRD
+
+STURGEON POINT LANDING.--AT THE MOUTH OF KITTEWAN CREEK
+
+THE FOREST TOMB.--THE OLD KITTEWAN HOUSE
+
+HUNTING FOR THE CHANNEL.--APPROACHING A NARROW PLACE
+
+LOWER WEYANOKE
+
+AN ANCESTRESS OF WEYANOKE.--CHIEF-JUSTICE JOHN MARSHALL
+
+UPPER WEYANOKE.--AT ANCHOR OFF WEYANOKE
+
+PRESENT-DAY FLEUR DE HUNDRED
+
+A FISHING HAMLET.--A RIVER LANDING
+
+"LITTLE BOATS WERE NOSING INTO THE BANK HERE AND THERE"
+
+RIVERWARD FRONT OF WESTOVER
+
+THE HALL, WITH ITS CARVED MAHOGANY STAIRCASE
+
+THE HEPPLEWHITE SIDEBOARD WITH BUTLER'S DESK.--"FOUR-POSTERS AND THE
+THINGS OF FOUR-POSTER DAYS"
+
+THE ROMANTIC CENTRE OF WESTOVER; EVELYN BYRD'S OLD ROOM
+
+THE COLONIAL COURTYARD GATES.--TOMB OF COLONEL WILLIAM BYRD
+
+THE DRAWING-ROOM MANTELPIECE AT WESTOVER
+
+TOMBS IN THE OLD WESTOVER CHURCHYARD
+(In the foreground is the tomb of Evelyn Byrd)
+
+A TRAPPER'S HOME BY THE RIVER BANK.--"OFTEN ... THE WANDERING HOUSEBOAT
+COMES ALONG TO FIND ONLY AN EMPTY PIER"
+
+BERKELEY; THE ANCESTRAL HOME OF A SIGNER OF THE DECLARATION OF
+INDEPENDENCE AND OF TWO PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES
+
+THE FIELD ROAD AND THE QUARTERS
+
+RIVERWARD FRONT OF SHIRLEY (In full color)
+
+THE OLD "GREAT HALL"
+
+THE DRAWING-ROOM
+
+THE KITCHEN BUILDING, FIFTY YARDS FROM THE MANOR-HOUSE
+
+A BRICK OVEN IN THE BAKE-ROOM
+
+SOME NOTEWORTHY PIECES OF OLD SHIRLEY PLATE
+
+PEALE'S PORTRAIT OF GEORGE WASHINGTON
+
+VARINA
+
+DUTCH GAP CANAL.--FALLING CREEK
+
+THE VOYAGE ENDED, GADABOUT IN WINTER QUARTERS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+ALL ABOUT GADABOUT
+
+
+It was dark and still and four o'clock on a summer morning. The few
+cottages clustering about a landing upon a Virginia river were, for the
+most part, sleeping soundly, though here and there a flickering light
+told of some awakening home. Down close by the landing was one little
+house wide awake. Its windows were aglow; lights moved about; and busy
+figures passed from room to room and out upon the porch in front.
+
+Suddenly, with a series of quick, muffled explosions, the whole cottage
+seemed carried from its foundations. It slipped sidewise, turned almost
+end for end, then drifted slowly away from its neighbours, out into the
+darkness and the river. Its occupants seemed unconscious of danger.
+There was one of them standing on the porch quite unconcernedly turning
+a wheel, while two or three others were watching, with rather amused
+expressions, two little engines chugging away near the kitchen stove.
+
+And thus it was that the houseboat Gadabout left her moorings in the
+outskirts of old Norfolk, and went spluttering down the Elizabeth to
+find Hampton Roads and to start upon her cruise up the historic James
+River.
+
+But to tell the story we must begin before that summer morning. It was
+this way. We were three: the daughter-wife (who happened to see the
+magazine article that led to it all), her mother, and her husband. The
+head of the family, true to the spirit of the age, had achieved a
+nervous breakdown and was under instructions from his physician to
+betake himself upon a long, a very long, vacation.
+
+It was while we were in perplexed consideration as to where to go and
+what to do, that the magazine article appeared--devoted to
+houseboating. It was a most fetching production with a picture that
+appealed to every overwrought nerve. There was a charming bit of water
+with trees hanging over; a sky all soft and blue (you knew it was soft
+and blue just as you knew that the air was soft and cool; just as you
+knew that a drowsy peace and quiet was brooding over all); and there,
+in the midst, idly floated a houseboat with a woman idly swinging in a
+hammock and a man idly fishing from the back porch.
+
+That article opened a new field for our consideration. Landlubbers of
+the landlubbers though we were, its water-gypsy charm yet sank deep. We
+thirsted for more. We haunted the libraries until we had exhausted the
+literature of houseboating.
+
+And what a dangerously attractive literature we found! How the cares
+and responsibilities of life fell away when people went a-houseboating!
+What peace unutterable fell upon the worn and weary soul as it drifted
+lazily on, far from the noise and the toil and the reek of the world!
+All times were calm; all waters kind. The days rolled on in
+ever-changing scenes of beauty; the nights, star-gemmed and mystic,
+were filled with music and the witchery of the sea.
+
+It made good reading. It made altogether too good reading. We did not
+see that then. We did not know that most of the literature of
+houseboating is the work of people with plenty of imagination and no
+houseboats.
+
+We resolved to build a houseboat. There was excitement in the mere
+decision; there was more when our friends came to hear of it. Their
+marked disapproval made our new departure seem almost indecorous. It
+was too late; the tide had us; and disapproval only gave zest to the
+project.
+
+As a first step, we proceeded to rechristen ourselves from a nautical
+standpoint. The little mother was so hopelessly what the boatmen call a
+fair-weather sailor that her weakness named her, and she became Lady
+Fairweather. The daughter-wife, after immuring herself for half a day
+with nautical dictionaries and chocolate creams, could not tell whether
+she was Rudderina or Maratima; she finally concluded that she was
+Nautica. It required neither time nor confectionery to enable these two
+members of the family to rename the third. They viewed the strut of
+plain Mr. So-and-So at the prospect of commanding a vessel, and
+promptly dubbed him Commodore.
+
+An earnest quest was next made for anybody and everybody who had ever
+used, seen, or heard of a houseboat; and the Commodore made journeys to
+various waters where specimens of this queer craft were to be found.
+All the time, three lead pencils were kept busy, and plans and
+specifications became as autumn leaves. We soon learned that there was
+little room for the artistic. Once Nautica had a charming creation, all
+verandas and overhanging roofs and things; but an old waterman came
+along and talked about wind and waves, and most of the overhanging art
+on that little houseboat disappeared under the eraser.
+
+"That's all good enough for one of those things you just tie to a bank
+and hang Chinese lanterns on," he said. "But it would never do for a
+boat that's going to get out in wide water and take what's coming to
+it."
+
+When we concluded that we had the plans to our satisfaction (or rather
+that we never should have, which amounted to the same thing), we turned
+over to a builder the task of making them into something that would
+float and hold people and go. The resulting craft, after passing
+through a wrecking and some rebuilding, we called Gadabout. She was
+about fifty feet long and twelve feet wide over all, as the watermen
+say; and was propelled by twin screws, driven by two small gasoline
+engines. Though not a thing of beauty, yet, as she swung lazily at her
+moorings with her wide, low windows and the little hooded cockpit that
+we tried hard not to call a porch, she looked cozy and comfortable. Her
+colouring was colonial yellow and white, with a contrast of dark olive
+on the side runways and the decks.
+
+Inside, Gadabout was arranged as house-like and, we thought, as homelike
+as boating requirements would permit. There were two cabins, one at
+either end of the craft. Between these, and at one side of the
+passageway connecting them, was what we always thought of as the
+kitchen, but always took care to speak of as the galley.
+
+At first glance, each of the cabins would be taken as a general
+living-room. Each was that; but also a little of everything else. At
+customary intervals, one compartment or the other would become a
+dining-cabin. Again, innocent looking bits of wall would give way, and
+there would appear beds, presses, lavatories, and a lamentable lack of
+room.
+
+Both cabins were finished in old oak, dark and dead; there is a
+superabundance of brightness on the water. The ceilings showed the
+uncovered, dark carlines or rafters. The walls had, along the top, a
+row of niches for books; and along the bottom, a deceptive sort of
+wainscoting, each panel of which was a locker door. Between book niches
+above and wainscoting below, the walls were paneled in green burlap
+with brown rope for molding. The furnishing was plain.
+
+[Illustration: THE HOUSEBOAT GADABOUT.]
+
+The kitchen or galley was rather small as kitchens go, and rather large
+as galleys go. It would not do to tell all the things that were in it;
+for anybody would see that they could not all be there. Perhaps it
+would be well to mention merely the gasoline stove, the refrigerator,
+the pump and sink, the wall-table, the cupboards for supplies, the
+closet for the man's serving coats and aprons, the racks of blue willow
+ware dishes, and the big sliding door.
+
+One has to mention the big sliding door; for it made such a difference.
+It worked up and down like a window-sash, and always suggested the
+conundrum, When is a galley not a galley? For when it was down, it
+disclosed nothing and the galley was a galley; but when it was up, it
+disclosed a recess in which two little gasoline motors sat side by
+side, and the galley was an engine-room.
+
+It was a very ingenious and inconvenient arrangement. Operating the
+stove and the engines at the same time was scarcely practicable; and we
+were often forced to the hard choice of lying still on a full stomach
+or travelling on an empty one.
+
+There yet remains to be described the crew's quarters. The crew
+consisted of two hands, both strong and sturdy, and both belonging to
+the same coloured man. Though our trusty tar, Henry, had doubtless
+never heard "The Yarn of the 'Nancy Bell'" and had never eaten a
+shipmate in his life, yet he had a whole crew within himself as truly
+as the "elderly naval man" who had eaten one. There was therefore no
+occasion for extensive quarters. Fortunately, an available space at the
+stern was ample for the crew's cabin and all appointments.
+
+All these interior arrangements were without the makeshifts so often
+found in houseboats. There were no curtains for partition walls nor
+crude bunks for beds. People aboard a houseboat must at best be living
+in close quarters. But, upon even the moderate priced craft, much of
+the comfort, privacy, and refinement of home life may be enjoyed by
+heading off an outlay that tends toward gilt and grill work and turning
+it into substantial partitions, real beds, baths, and lavatories.
+
+Gadabout was square at both ends; so that the uninitiated were not
+always sure which way she was going to go. Indeed, for a while, her
+closest associates were conservative in forecasting on that point. But
+that was for another reason. The boat was of extremely light draft.
+While such a feature enables the houseboater to navigate very shallow
+waters (where often he finds his most charming retreats), yet it also
+enables the houseboat, under certain conditions of wind and tide, to go
+sidewise with all the blundering facility of a crab.
+
+[Illustration: IN THE FORWARD CABIN.]
+
+[Illustration: LOOKING AFT FROM THE FORWARD CABIN.]
+
+At first, in making landings we were forced to leave it pretty much to
+Gadabout as to which side of the pier she was to come up on, and which
+end first, and with how much of a bump. But all such troubles soon
+disappeared; and, as there seemed no change in the craft herself, we
+were forced to believe that our own inexperience had had something to
+do with our difficulties.
+
+To Gadabout and her crew, add anchors, chains and ropes, small boats,
+poles and sweeps, parallel rulers, dividers and charts, anchor-lights,
+lanterns and side-lights, compasses, barometers and megaphones,
+fenders, grapnels and boathooks--until the landlubberly owners are
+almost frightened back to solid land; and then all is ready for a
+houseboat cruise.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+OUR FIRST RUN AND A COZY HARBOUR
+
+
+Daylight came while Gadabout was lumbering down the Elizabeth, and in
+the glory of the early morning she followed its waters out into Hampton
+Roads, the yawning estuarial mouth of the James emptying into
+Chesapeake Bay.
+
+She would probably have started in upon her cruise up the historic
+river without more ado if we had not bethought ourselves that she was
+carrying us into the undertaking breakfastless. The wheel was put over
+hard to port (we got that out of the books) and the craft was run in
+behind Craney Island and anchored.
+
+While our breakfast was preparing, we all gathered in the forward
+cockpit to enjoy the scene and the life about us. The houseboat was
+lying in a quiet lagoon bordered on the mainland side by a bit of
+Virginia's great truck garden. Here and there glimpses of chimneys and
+roof lines told of truckers' homes, while cultivated fields stretched
+far inland.
+
+The height of the trucking season was past, yet crates and barrels of
+vegetables were being hauled to the water's edge for shipment. The
+negroes sang as they drove, but often punctuated the melody with strong
+language designed to encourage the mules. One wailing voice came to our
+ears with the set refrain, "O feed me, white folks! White folks, feed
+me!" The crates and barrels were loaded on lighters and floated out to
+little sailing boats that went tacking past our bows on their way to
+Norfolk.
+
+It was a pretty scene, but there was one drawback to it all. Everything
+showed the season so far advanced, and served to remind us of the
+lateness of our start. We had intended to take our little voyage on the
+James in the springtime. It had been a good deal a matter of sentiment;
+but sentiment will have its way in houseboating. We had wished to begin
+in that gentle season when the history of the river itself began, and
+when the history of this country of ours began with it.
+
+For, whatever may have gone before, the real story of the James and of
+America too commences with the bloom of the dogwood some three hundred
+years ago, when from the wild waste of the Atlantic three puny,
+storm-worn vessels (scarcely more seaworthy than our tub of a
+houseboat) beat their way into the sheltering mouth of this unknown
+river.
+
+That was in the days when the nations of Europe were greedily
+contending for what Columbus had found on the other side of the world.
+In that struggle England was slow to get a foothold. Neglect,
+difficulty, and misfortune made her colonies few and short-lived. By the
+opening of the seventeenth century Spain and France, or perhaps Spain
+alone, seemed destined to possess the entire new hemisphere. In all the
+extent of the Americas, England was not then in possession of so much
+as a log fort. Apparently the struggle was ended and England defeated.
+No one then could have imagined what we now behold--English-speaking
+people possessing most and dominating all of that newfound Western
+World.
+
+This miracle was wrought by the coming of those three little old-time
+ships, the Sarah Constant, the Goodspeed, and the Discovery.
+
+It was in the year 1607 that the quaint, high-sterned caravels,
+representing the forlorn hope of England, crossed the ocean to found a
+colony on Roanoke Island. Storm-tossed and driven out of their
+reckoning, they turned for refuge one April day into a yawning break in
+the coast-line that we now call Chesapeake Bay. Following the
+sheltering, inviting waters inland, they took their way up a "Greate
+River," bringing to it practically the first touch of civilization and
+establishing upon its shore the first permanent English settlement in
+the New World--the birthplace of our country.
+
+The civilizers began their work promptly. Even as they sailed up the
+river looking for a place to found their colony, they robbed the stream
+of its Indian name, Powhatan, that so befitted the bold, tawny flow,
+bestowing instead the name of the puerile King of England. That was the
+first step toward writing in English the story of the James River, the
+"Greate River," the "King's River."
+
+It was later by three hundred years lacking one when our houseboat came
+along to gather up that story. But to our regret it was not springtime.
+The dogwood blossoms had come and gone when Gadabout lay behind Craney
+Island; and she would start upon her cruise up the James in the heart
+of the summertime.
+
+In some way that only those who know the laze of houseboating can
+understand, the hours slipped by in that tiny, tucked-away haven, and
+it was the middle of the afternoon when Gadabout slowly felt her way
+out from behind the island and started up the James in the wake of the
+Sarah Constant, the Goodspeed, and the Discovery. That historic wake we
+were to follow for the first thirty miles of our journey, when it would
+bring us to the spot on the bank of the river where those first
+colonists landed and built their little settlement which (still
+honouring an unworthy king) they called James Towne.
+
+As Gadabout sturdily headed her stubby bow up the wide, majestic
+waterway, we looked about us. After all, what had three centuries done
+to this gateway of American civilization? Surely not very much. Keeping
+one's eyes in the right direction it was easy to blot out three hundred
+years, and to feel that we were looking upon about the same scene that
+those first colonists beheld--just the primeval waste of rolling
+waters, lonely marsh, and wooded shore.
+
+But eyes are unruly things; and, to be sure, there were other
+directions in which to look. Glances northward took in a scene
+different enough from the one that met the eyes of those early
+voyagers.
+
+Upon the low point of land along which they at last found a channel
+into the James and which (in their relief) they named Point Comfort,
+now stood a huge modern hostelry.
+
+To the left of this, the ancient shore-line was now broken by a dull,
+square structure that reared its ugly bulk against the sky--a strangely
+grim marker of the progress of three centuries. For this was the grain
+elevator at Newport News, spouting its endless stream to feed the Old
+World, and standing almost on the spot where those first settlers in
+the New World, sick and starving, once begged and then fought the
+Indians for corn. Lying in the offing were great ships from overseas
+that had come to this land of the starving colonists for grain.
+
+Beyond all these could be seen something of the town of Newport News
+itself. Towers and spires and home smoke-wreaths we saw, where those
+beginners of our country saw only the spires of the lonely pines and
+the smoke from hostile fires.
+
+As our houseboat skirted the southern shore of the James in the sunny
+afternoon, our engines chugging merrily, our flags flying, and our two
+trailing rowboats dancing on the boiling surge kicked up astern, we
+felt that our cruise was well begun. Not that we were misled for a
+moment by that boiling surge astern into the belief that we were making
+much progress. We had early perceived that Gadabout made a great stir
+over small things, and that she went faster at the stern than anywhere
+else.
+
+Yet all that was well enough. So long as the sun shines and the water
+lies good and flat, dawdling along in such a craft is an ideal way to
+travel. If the houseboat is built with the accent on the first
+syllable, as it ought to be, the homey feeling comes quickly to the
+family group aboard. Day after day brings new scenes and places, yet
+the family life goes on unbroken. It is as though Aladdin had rubbed
+the wonderful lamp, and the old home had magically drifted away and
+started out to see what the world was like.
+
+Now, just ahead of us where the chart had a little asterisk, the river
+had a little lighthouse perched high over the water on its long
+spindling legs. Gadabout ran just inside the light and quite close to
+it. It is an old and a pretty custom by which a passing vessel "speaks"
+a lighthouse. In this instance perhaps we were a trifle tardy, for the
+kindly keeper greeted us first with three strokes of his deep-toned
+bell. Gadabout responded with three of her bravest blasts.
+
+It was not long before the sun got low, and with the late afternoon
+something of a wind whipped up from the bay, and the wide, low-shored
+river rolled dark and unfriendly. We found our thoughts outstripping
+Gadabout in the run toward a harbour for the night.
+
+That word "harbour" comes to mean a good deal to the houseboater who
+attempts to make a cruiser of his unseaworthy, lubberly craft. A little
+experience on even inland waters in their less friendly moods develops
+in him a remarkable aptitude for finding holes in the bank to stick his
+boat in.
+
+Sometimes the vessel is seaworthy enough to lie out and take whatever
+wind and waves may inflict; but that is usually where much of the charm
+and comfort of the houseboat has been sacrificed to make her so. Then
+too the houseboater is usually quite a landlubber after all; so that
+even if the boat is strong enough to meet an angry sea, the owner's
+stomach is not. And, over and above all this, is the fact that
+miserably pitching and rolling about in grim battle with the elements
+is not houseboating.
+
+It is easy then to see that snug harbours count for much when cruising
+in the true spirit of houseboating, and in the charming, awkward tubs
+that make the best and the most lovable of houseboats.
+
+So, as Gadabout was passing Barrel Point and the wind was freshening
+and the waves were slapping her square bow, we were thinking not
+unpleasantly of a small tributary stream that the chart indicated just
+ahead, and in which we should find quiet anchorage. There seemed
+something snug and cozy about the very name of the stream, Chuckatuck.
+In this case the pale-face has left undisturbed the red man's
+picturesque appellation; and we knew that we should like--Chuckatuck.
+
+Just before we reached the creek, two row-boats put out from the river
+shore filled with boys and curiosity. A cheery salute was given us as
+the houseboat passed close by the skiffs, and we thought no more of
+them. But after a while footsteps were heard overhead and we found that
+we had a full cargo of boys. They had made their boats fast to
+Gadabout's stern as she passed, and were now grouped in some
+uncertainty on the upper deck. A nod from Nautica put them at ease, and
+in a moment they were scattered all over the outside of the boat,
+calling to one another, peering into windows, and asking no end of
+questions.
+
+The boys proved helpful too. They were fisher-lads, well acquainted
+with those waters, and were better than the chart in guiding us among
+the shoals and into the channel of the creek.
+
+[Illustration: ALONG THE SHORE OF CHUCKATUCK CREEK.]
+
+A low headland prevented our getting a good view up the stream until
+Gadabout swung into the middle of it. We seemed to be entering a little
+lake bordered by tree-covered hills. At the far end of the blue basin
+was a break and a gleam of lighter water to show that this was not
+really a lake but a stream. There it made the last of its many turnings
+and spread its waters in this beautiful harbour before losing them in
+the James.
+
+On the hills to our right, houses showed among the trees, some with the
+ever-pleasing white-pillared porticoes; and on the hills to our left
+was a village that straggled down the slope to the wharf as if coming
+to greet the strangers. In this little harbour was quite a fleet,
+mostly fishing craft, and all bowing politely on the swell of the tide.
+
+There was such diversity of opinion among our self-constituted pilots
+as to the best place for us to drop anchor, that the Commodore turned a
+deaf ear to them all and attempted to run alongside a schooner to make
+inquiries. She was a good sized craft, and it did not seem as if he
+could miss her. He claimed that he did not. He explained that when we
+got up there, our ropes fell short and we drifted helplessly past
+because the blundering captain of the schooner had anchored her too far
+away from us.
+
+Kindly overlooking this error of a fellow navigator, the Commodore
+patiently spent considerable of the beautiful summer evening in getting
+Gadabout turned around; and then again bore down upon the schooner.
+This time her being in the wrong place did not seem to matter; for we
+reached her all right, and there probably was no place along that side
+where we did not remove more or less paint. The captain of the schooner
+gave us the needed information about the harbour; our lines were cast
+off, and the houseboat was soon anchored in a snug berth for the night.
+
+Then, sitting upon our canopied upper deck, enjoying the last of our
+city melons cooled with the last of our city ice, we looked out over
+what we supposed was but the first of many such beautiful creek-harbour
+scenes to be found along the river. We did not know that there was to
+be no other like Chuckatuck.
+
+After a while, a small steamer came in from the James, a boat plying
+regularly between Norfolk and landings along this creek.
+
+It was just the kind of steamer, any one would say, to be running on
+the Chuckatuck--a fat, wheezy side-wheeler that came up to its landing
+near us with three hearty whistles and such a jovial puffing as seemed
+to say, "Now, I'm certainly mighty glad to get back again to you all."
+Just the sort of steamer that wouldn't mind a bit if the pretty girls
+were "a right smart time" kissing goodbye; or if the Colonel had to
+finish his best story; or if old Maria had to "study a spell" because
+she had "done forgot" what Miss Clarissa wanted the steward to bring
+from the city next day.
+
+As the sun sank behind the hills (or rather some time after, for we
+never could be nautically prompt), our flags were run down and the
+anchor-light was hoisted on the forward flagstaff.
+
+The summer night closed in softly; the blue waters grew dark, and
+caught from the sky the rich lights that the setting sun had left
+behind. We could see figures sitting upon the white porticoes looking
+out over the miniature harbour. Somewhere were the music of a
+merry-go-round and the calls and laughter of children. In from the
+wider waters came more boats, their white sails folding down as they
+neared their haven. All the beautiful mystery of the deepening twilight
+touched water and masts, and shadowed the circling shore.
+
+Then came the long hours of darkness when, with all aboard asleep,
+Gadabout lay quietly at anchor, the riding-light upon her flagstaff
+gently swaying throughout the night. Silently, with none to heed and
+none to know, was enacted again in the gloom the play that is as old as
+the first ship upon tideway. With bow turned up-stream, Gadabout sank
+slowly lower and lower, as even little Chuckatuck heard the voice of
+the far-away ocean calling its waters home. Then, crossing slowly over
+her anchor and turning to head the other way, Gadabout rose once more
+higher and higher, as the night wore on and as the great recurring
+swell rolled landward again the waters of the sea.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+LAND, HO! OUR COUNTRY'S BIRTHPLACE
+
+
+When we hoisted our anchor next day, it came up reluctantly; and we
+sailed away with faces often turned backward toward the little harbour
+of Chuckatuck, with its blue of wave and sky, its white of cloud and
+beach, its green of circling hills, and the picturesque life on its
+waters.
+
+Out again in the James (still some four miles wide), we felt that
+Nature had almost overdone the matter of supplying us with a waterway
+for our voyage. We should willingly have dispensed with a mile or so on
+either side of our houseboat. There was a wind that kept steadily
+freshening, so that after rounding Day's Point we noticed that the
+river was getting rather rough; and we soon found that Gadabout was
+equally observing. She rolled and pitched; but with both engines and
+the tide to help her along she made good enough headway.
+
+And in navigating the broad stream what advantages we had over those
+early mariners upon the Sarah Constant, the Goodspeed, and the
+Discovery!
+
+Their passage up this river was upon unknown waters through an unknown
+land. We knew just where we were, and where we were going. They even
+fancied that they might be upon an arm of the ocean that would lead
+through the new-found world and open a direct route to the South Sea
+and to the Indies. Our maps showed us that even this wide waterway was
+but a river; and that while it flowed some four hundred miles from its
+source beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains, yet we could ascend it only
+about one hundred miles, as we should then come upon a line of falls
+and rapids that would prevent farther navigation.
+
+In the case of those early voyagers, savages lurked along the wooded
+shores and greater dangers lay in the unknown, treacherous currents and
+hidden bars of the stream itself. We should have to imagine all our
+savages; and there, on the table in Gadabout's little cockpit, close to
+the man (or, quite as likely, the woman) at the wheel, lay charts that
+told the hidden features of the river highway.
+
+Quaint old-time Sarah and her sister ships could not have sailed up
+this waterway very far before finding navigation difficult. Even small
+as they were, they must often have found scant water if the James of
+that time, like the James of to-day, had its top and bottom so close
+together every here and there. A majestic river several miles wide,
+often fifty to seventy-five feet deep, yet barred by such tangles of
+shoals as one would not expect to find in a respectable creek. And
+shoals too that the colour of the water hides from the keenest eyes.
+
+To be sure, for us it was all plain sailing. The charts told where the
+shoals were and how to avoid them. Our chief danger lay in presuming
+too much upon our light draft and in venturing too far from the
+indicated channels. But how about those deeper-draft, chartless sailing
+craft? Well, they managed to get along anyway, and our houseboat must
+on after them.
+
+One more straight reach of the river, one more great sweeping bend, and
+we should come upon the site of that old village of James Towne. Still
+the tawny Powhatan, like many another proud savage, showed small sign
+of succumbing to civilization. There seemed scarce any mark of human
+habitation. The life of the people, where there were people, must have
+been back from the banks. The river itself was empty. Nowhere was there
+wreath of smoke or shimmer of sail. Just the wild beauty of the shores,
+the noble expanse of the stream, the cloudless blue of the summer sky,
+and Gadabout.
+
+Yet, we were not seeing quite the James that those first English eyes
+beheld. For them the slopes and headlands were covered with far nobler
+forests and Nature wore her May-time gown. Life and colour were
+everywhere. In the clear atmosphere of the Virginia spring, the
+woodland was a wealth of living green radiantly starred with flowers.
+What a Canaan those weary, storm-tossed colonists must have thought it
+all!
+
+We can well imagine the little family groups gathered on the decks,
+eagerly planning for their new life. We can see the brightening in the
+tired eyes of women and of children as the ships tack near to the
+flowery shore; as schools of fish break the river into patches of
+flashing silver; as strange, brilliant birds go flaming in the
+sunlight; as beauty is added to beauty in this wondrous new home-land.
+
+No! We blunder in our history. There were no women and children on the
+Sarah Constant, nor on the Goodspeed, nor on the Discovery. The story
+of these ships is not like that later one of the Mayflower. The colour
+dies out of the picture; and there remains only the worn, motley band
+of men--men who have taken possession of the country by the sign of the
+cross, fit omen of the fate awaiting them.
+
+[Illustration: "JUST THE WILD BEAUTY OF THE SHORES, THE NOBLE EXPANSE
+OF THE STREAM ... AND GADABOUT."]
+
+At last our houseboat came about the bend in the river and before us
+along the northern shore lay Jamestown Island, the site of old James
+Towne. We could make out little yet but the low wooded shore and the
+wide opening that we knew was the mouth of Back River, the waterway
+that cuts off from the mainland that storied piece of soil. Now
+Gadabout's steering-wheel was counting spokes to starboard; she headed
+diagonally up the river toward the northern shore, and we were soon
+nearing the historic island.
+
+So, here was where those three little ships, that we had been following
+at the respectful distance of three centuries, terminated their voyage;
+here was where that handful of colonists founded the first permanent
+English settlement in the New World; here was the cradle of our
+country.
+
+However, the place in those old days was not exactly an island,
+although even the early colonists often called it so. There was a low
+isthmus (that has since been washed away) connecting with the mainland;
+so that the site of the settlement was in reality a peninsula. It was a
+low and marshy peninsula, an unhealthful place for the site of a
+colony. The settlers had a hard time from the beginning. They would
+have had a harder time but for the presence of a remarkable man among
+them. He was one of the best of men, or he was one of the
+worst--dependent upon which history you happen to pick up. At all
+events, he was the man for the hour. But for him the colony would have
+perished at the outset. This man of course was the schoolboy's hero,
+Captain John Smith.
+
+The chief hardships of the colonists at first were scarcity of food and
+frequent Indian attacks. To these were soon added a malarial epidemic
+caused by the unhealthful surroundings. As if there were yet not
+suffering enough, the "Supplies" (the ships that came over with
+reinforcements and food) brought bubonic plague and cholera from
+English ports. Often, if they had touched at the West Indies, they
+brought yellow fever too. The sufferings in that little pioneer
+settlement of our country have scarcely been equalled in modern
+colonization.
+
+Time went on; and the population waxed and waned as reinforcements
+built it up and as the terrible mortality cut it down again. All the
+while there seemed no outcome to the struggle. James Towne had in it
+not even the promise of a successful colony. The settlers did not find
+the gold and precious stones that were expected, nor did they find or
+produce in quantities any valuable commodities. They were not even
+self-supporting. The colony held on because constantly fed with men and
+provisions by the "Supplies." There was dissatisfaction in London; in
+James Towne misery and often despair. The climax of disappointment and
+suffering was reached in the spring of 1610, ever since known as the
+"Starving Time." In that season of horror, the settlement almost passed
+out of existence.
+
+After that matters improved, and chiefly because of a single
+development: James Towne learned to grow tobacco; Europe learned to use
+it. From that time the place took on new life and made great strides
+toward becoming self-supporting. More and better settlers arrived, and
+the colony even put out offshoots, so that soon there were several
+settlements up and down the river and upon other rivers. And of all,
+James Towne was the seat of government, the proud little capital of the
+Colony of Virginia.
+
+But trouble was still in store for this pioneer village, and this time
+final disaster. The very cause of prosperity became the chief cause of
+downfall. Tobacco and towns could not long flourish together. The
+famous weed rapidly exhausted the soil, and there was constant need for
+new lands to clear and cultivate. The leading Virginians turned their
+backs upon James Towne and upon the other struggling settlements too,
+and established vast individual estates along the river to which they
+drew the body of the people.
+
+To be sure there still had to be some place as the seat of government;
+and in that capacity the village hung on a good while longer, though
+with few inhabitants aside from colonial officials and some
+tavern-keepers. It was not to be allowed to keep even these. Despite
+every effort to force the growth of the town, it dwindled; and in 1699
+it received its deathblow upon the removal of the seat of government to
+Williamsburg.
+
+The rest is a matter of a few words. The pioneer village was gradually
+abandoned and fell to ruins. As though natural decay could not tear
+down and bury fast enough, the greedy river came to its aid. Besides
+eating away the ancient isthmus, the James attacked the upper end of
+the island, devouring part of the site of the old-time settlement.
+Between decay and the river, James Towne, the birthplace of our
+country, vanished from the face of the earth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+A RUN AROUND JAMESTOWN ISLAND
+
+
+Now Gadabout, her engines slowed down, drifted almost unguided among
+the shallows beside Jamestown Island; for our eyes were only for that
+close-lying shore and our thoughts for what it had to tell us.
+
+The end of the island toward us was well wooded though fringed with
+marsh. All of it that could be seen was just as we would have
+it--without a mark of civilization; wild, lonely, and still. In keeping
+with the whole sad story seemed the gloom of the forest, the loneness
+of the marsh, and the surge of the waves upon the desolate shore.
+
+When we took Gadabout in hand again, we did not keep along the front of
+the island to where the colonists "tied their ships to the trees" and
+made their landing; but, instead, we turned from the James and ran up
+Back River in behind the island. Our plan was to sail up this stream to
+a point where the chart showed a roadway and a bridge, and to tie up
+the houseboat there. That would be convenient for us and for Gadabout
+too. The roadway we should use in crossing the island to visit the
+chief points of interest, which were on the James River side; and
+Gadabout would have a more protected harbour than could be found for
+her in front.
+
+[Illustration: JAMESTOWN ISLAND FROM THE RIVER.]
+
+Though nothing serious came of the matter, we were not taking a good
+time to run up the little stream behind Jamestown Island, as the tide
+had long since turned and we were going in on a falling tide. We did
+not relish the idea of running aground perhaps, and of having the
+ebbing waters leave our craft to settle and wreck herself upon some
+hidden obstruction. So Gadabout took plenty of time to run up Back
+River, feeling her way cautiously with a sounding-pole, like some fat
+old lady with a walking-stick.
+
+There must once have been a better channel here; for in the early days
+of the colony, vessels did not always land at the front of the island,
+but sometimes ran up Back River as our houseboat was now doing. Indeed,
+we were expecting to come soon to the wooded rise of land once called
+"Pyping Point," where of old a boat in passing would sound "a musical
+note" to apprise the townspeople of its coming. And but a little way
+beyond that again, near the present-day bridge where we expected to
+stop, we should find the site of the ancient landing-place which was
+called "Friggett Landing."
+
+As Gadabout slowly moved along, she occasionally got out of the channel
+into the shallows, in spite of chart and sounding-pole; and more than
+once she struck bottom. But she always discovered the channel and
+scrabbled back into it before the soft mud, even aided by the falling
+tide, could get a good hold of her. No, not quite always was she so
+fortunate. For at last, in following a turn of the channel toward the
+island, she went too far; her stern swung about and grounded in the
+shallows; her propeller clogged in the mud, and she came to a stop.
+
+We accepted that stop as final. No attempt was made to put out a kedge
+anchor and to "haul off" with the windlass. We simply walked around the
+houseboat on the guard taking soundings. Finding that the boat was
+settling upon fairly level bottom, and feeling that the farther she
+went the worse she would fare, we took our chances as to what might be
+under her and made no further effort.
+
+[Illustration: IN BACK RIVER.]
+
+[Illustration: THE BEACH AT JAMESTOWN ISLAND.]
+
+Nautica had a good motto, which was, "When in trouble, eat." So the
+next thing was dinner. Then Nautica and the Commodore embarked in a
+shore-boat on a voyage of discovery, a search for the lost channel. By
+this time the water was but a few inches deep around the houseboat.
+Evidently, the explorers would not dare to go far or to be gone long
+for fear the ebbing tide would prevent their getting back. But it was
+not necessary to go far to find the channel. Indeed it was found
+unpleasantly near. The houseboat had stranded on a safe, level shoal,
+but almost on the edge of a steep declivity leading down into twelve
+feet of water. We felt that if Gadabout had to go aground, she at least
+might have done it a little farther away from precipitous channel
+banks.
+
+Sitting on the upper deck, we talked and read, and watched the water
+slowly drawing away from our houseboat until all about us was bare
+ground; to starboard a narrow strip of it between us and the channel,
+and to port a wide stretch of it between us and the shore.
+
+We thought most and talked most of the historic island on the edge of
+which we had become squatters. It was a small stage for the
+world-shaping drama that had been enacted upon it.
+
+Toward evening the tide turned again and the truant waters came back,
+lapping once more the sides of our boat. The Commodore had to see that
+anchors were run ahead and astern, and all made snug for the night.
+Then, in the enjoyment of one of the most charming features of
+houseboating, an evening meal served on the upper deck, we watched the
+sun dip down behind the island and the twilight shadows gather in.
+
+Still about us was no sight or sound of human life. The shadows
+deepened and darkness came. Then gradually a faint silvery light stole
+over water and marsh and wooded shore; and the stillness was broken by
+a burst of faint, high, tremulous tones, as though a host of unseen
+hands swept tiny invisible mandolins. The silvery light came from the
+rising moon; the rest was just mosquitoes.
+
+Next day, as soon as Gadabout was afloat, she started up stream again
+to find the bridge and a landing-place. There was no trouble about the
+channel this time. The waterway, as if taking pity upon indifferent
+navigators, suddenly contracted to a very narrow stream, deep almost
+from bank to bank, so that we could not well have got out of the
+channel if we had tried. In such a place, we were stout-hearted
+mariners and the good houseboat stemmed the waters gallantly. Already
+we were thinking of how we too, in passing "Pyping Point," should sound
+a blast most lustily. Perhaps it would not be exactly a "musical note"
+such as the townspeople were used to; but being two or three centuries
+dead, they probably would not notice the difference. However, we did
+not subject them to the experiment. Instead, we suddenly reversed our
+engine; Gadabout tried to stop in time; the ladies tried to look
+pleasant; the Commodore tried to shun over-expressive speech. There,
+just ahead, was a row of close-set pilings, blocking the stream from
+shore to shore.
+
+There was nothing to do but to turn back, run around the island, and
+attempt to get in behind it at the other end. We probably should have
+tried the upper entrance in the first place had it not been that our
+chart showed by dotted lines some sort of obstruction there, while it
+did not at all indicate the barrier we had just encountered.
+Fortunately, as the tide was now rising and as we had got some
+knowledge of the channel, Gadabout made good progress in returning down
+the stream, and was soon out in the wide James again, sailing along the
+front of the island.
+
+As we proceeded, the marshes gave way to a bank of good height edged
+with a gravel beach. Buildings were now in sight, and horses and cattle
+grazing. We passed a pier with a warehouse on it, bearing a sign which
+read, "Jamestown Island, Site of the First Permanent English Settlement
+in America, 1607."
+
+Now, a glimpse could be had of a relic of old James Towne, the ruined
+church tower, deep-set among the trees. Could our eyes have pierced the
+water under us, we might have seen more of the ruins of the ancient
+village. For Gadabout was holding in quite close to shore where no
+vessel could have gone in James Towne days, as the place was then solid
+land and a part of the settlement. Now, that part lay buried at the
+bottom of the river, and our boat was passing over it.
+
+Coasting around the end of the island, we came upon a tree standing out
+in the water a hundred yards from shore. It was the famous "Lone
+Cypress," once growing on the island, now spreading its green branches
+in the midst of a watery waste--silently attesting the sacrifice of
+historic soil to the greedy river. A little way beyond the tree was
+what we were seeking, the upper entrance into the waterway behind the
+island.
+
+[Illustration: WHARF SIGN AT JAMESTOWN ISLAND.]
+
+[Illustration: THE "LONE CYPRESS."]
+
+In the days of the old settlement, there was no such entrance at this
+end; for here the narrow isthmus extended across, connecting with the
+mainland. But the same resistless wash of waves that had carried part
+of James Towne into the bed of the river, had broken down and submerged
+the isthmus too; and our chart showed that there was water enough for
+our houseboat to sail over where the colonists used to walk dry-shod.
+
+As to the obstruction we had seen indicated on the chart, that proved
+to be the ruins of an old bridge extending out from the mainland along
+the submerged isthmus. But the island end of it had been carried away,
+and we readily passed through the opening left and got again into Back
+River behind the island. Following this for a few hundred yards, we
+found ourselves at last beside the bridge we long had sought. Standing
+on the upper deck, we could look down stream to the place where our
+houseboat had been stopped by the row of pilings. We had practically
+circumnavigated the island.
+
+While making Gadabout fast to some convenient pilings, we heard gay
+voices and the rumble of wheels on the bridge.
+
+"Look! Look!" cried one of a carriage-full of hatless girls in white
+muslins. "There's a houseboat. How in the world did it get in here?"
+
+And we rather wondered ourselves.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+FANCIES AFLOAT AND RUINS ASHORE
+
+
+It was midday when we tied Gadabout to the pilings beside the bridge,
+and the weather was hot and sultry. So, we deferred until evening the
+long walk across the island. But already, sitting under our own awning,
+we were in the thick of historic association.
+
+Where our houseboat lay, the early colonists used to find haven for
+their vessels, "lashed to one another and moor'd a shore secure from
+all Wind and Weather Whatsoever." As they found Back River at this
+point so we found it, a stream without banks; instead, on either hand
+stretched lonely marshes, jungles of reeds and rushes, now as then more
+than man high.
+
+But our thoughts, busy with scenes two or three centuries gone, kept
+stumbling over two features of the landscape that were out of keeping
+with those old times. Back of us, where an isthmus should be stretching
+from island to mainland, was the open water gateway through which we
+had come; and in front of us, where there should be nothing but river
+and marsh, that modern bridge reached from shore to shore.
+
+Our quickened fancy made short work of such anachronisms. We promptly
+raised the submerged isthmus, tying the island to the mainland once
+more. Then we attacked the bridge; and, as the pilings to which our
+boat was fastened did not have any connection with that structure, we
+felt no misgivings as the troublesome modernism faded away.
+
+The bridge disposed of, we bethought us that the road with which it had
+connected was also a latter-day feature. To be sure, our maps showed us
+that in colonial times too a road had crossed the island, and along
+much the same lines; but it had come out a little farther down Back
+River, at the point already referred to as "Friggett Landing."
+
+To put the roadway right, then, we had first to locate the site of the
+old landing. And in this important matter what painstaking
+archeologists we were! Not by guesswork, but by a long string, did we
+locate "Friggett Landing." After reading all that our authorities had
+to say on the subject (and understanding part of it), we sent our man
+down stream in a rowboat, confident that he would find the landing at
+the end of the measured string. When the string ran out, the rowboat
+was opposite a point on the marshy edge of the island about one hundred
+feet below the present-day road.
+
+The correctness of our work was at once evident. All the indications
+pointed to that; for the place showed not the slightest sign of ever
+having been used as a landing-place--which is just what you would
+expect after the lapse of two or three centuries.
+
+After that, it was but the work of a moment to crook the end of the
+modern road, where it approached the river through a bit of elevated
+woodland (the only piece of solid land anywhere near us), and so make
+it come out, like the road of old, at the "landing." Now, our man held
+aloft a stick with the houseboat's burgee on it, and a photograph was
+taken that we might not forget where our diverted road came out and
+where to go to meet the "friggetts" that might be coming in almost any
+time.
+
+Our trifling bits of restoration made all satisfactory: an isthmus
+more, a bridge less, a crook in the end of a road--and the scene went
+back, as our thoughts went back, to those old James Towne days. To be
+sure, the village itself was still clear across the island on the
+"Maine River" side, and we could not catch a glimpse of the colonists
+in their little streets nor even of the English colours flying over the
+fort.
+
+However, there was enough taking place on our own side of the island.
+We had no sooner got the isthmus up out of the water than figures began
+to move across it. But such figures! Was there a mistake somewhere?
+These were not Englishmen, and they were not Indians. Behold, crossing
+our isthmus, Dutchmen, Italians, and Poles! Suddenly, from the midst of
+the group, came a glint and a flash of blue. Then we understood. These
+were the "skilful workmen from foreign parts" early sent over to the
+colony to make glass beads, preferably blue ones, for barter with the
+Indians.
+
+Now, there were only two people on our isthmus--an Indian and a
+red-headed man. The Indian was tall and "a most strong stout Salvage";
+the red-headed man was short but a most strong, stout Englishman. The
+Indian was Wowinchopunk, chief of the Paspaheghs; the red-headed man
+was Captain John Smith. A desperate hand-to-hand struggle ensued. We
+remembered that fight in the school-books, but we had never expected to
+really see it. Our sympathies were of course largely with the Captain,
+but more with the isthmus. We had raised it out of the water for
+temporary purposes only, and with no idea of its being subjected to a
+strain like this. It was a relief when the two fighters rolled off into
+the water. By the time they had struggled out again, the white man was
+victor. As dripping captor and captive set off toward James Towne, we
+saw Fame stick another laurel leaf in the wet, red hair in
+commemoration of the single combat in which Captain John Smith defeated
+the "strong, stout Salvage," Wowinchopunk, on the James Towne isthmus.
+
+For a while after that, nothing much happened over our way. Indians
+occasionally passed and repassed; now striding openly across to the
+island on friendly visit, now skulking over to pick off unwary
+settlers. Once we caught, in a hazy way, the most touching picture
+associated with the old isthmus--the little savage maiden, Pocahontas,
+with heart divided between her own people and the pale-faces, crossing
+over at the head of her train of Indians bearing venison and corn for
+the half-famished settlers. Pathetic little figure! Often all that
+seemed to stand between the colonists and destruction.
+
+It was the sound of voices that now made us turn and look the other
+way. Many people were following the crook in our road, passing through
+the bit of woodland and coming out at "Friggett Landing." We had heard
+no "musical note," but evidently the townspeople had; and there, surely
+enough, was a queer little vessel stopping right where we had marked
+the spot. It was a pleasure to see that she so readily took our
+measurements for it. But how she got there perplexed us not a little,
+as we remembered the row of pilings across the stream that had stopped
+the houseboat, and which, even in our ardour to restore the colonial
+setting, we had not once thought to remove.
+
+Back and forth across our isthmus played the old-time life of the
+colony. Rather sombre figures for a while, and all afoot. Then colour
+came, and colour on horseback too. They were seeing more prosperous
+times in the little village across the island. Prancing by went the
+"qualitye" in flaming silks, and high dignitaries in glittering gold
+lace. There was even a coach or two. That one attended by soldiers in
+queer "coats of mail" must belong to Sir William Berkeley, governor of
+the colony. However, we watched and waited long before anything of
+importance happened--probably several years.
+
+But time does not count for much in house-boating.
+
+At last, some soldiers marched across the island from the James Towne
+side to ours, and built a fort near the isthmus. Some more soldiers
+appeared on the mainland and began to build a fort on their side, near
+the isthmus. Then we knew that James Towne was seeing its most stirring
+days. Stubborn old Governor Berkeley and hot-headed young Nathaniel
+Bacon had fallen out over the Indian question. The people were divided;
+and here were the preparations for the trial of arms. While the Bacon
+fort, the one on the mainland, was yet incomplete, we beheld a strange
+line of white objects fluttering from the top of it. With the aid of
+field-glasses and some historical works, we at last made out that it
+was a row of women in white aprons. As our eyes became accustomed to
+the trying perspective of over two hundred years, we were able to
+recognize the charming wives of some of the most prominent men in the
+other fort. The ungallant Bacon had sent out and captured these
+excellent ladies, and now placed them in plain sight of their husbands,
+thus preventing the other fort from opening fire upon him until he had
+his fortification completed.
+
+After the ladies had been helped down from the rough earthworks and had
+spoken their minds and taken off their white aprons and gone home, the
+battle began. Soldiers from the island fort made a sally across our
+isthmus, were repulsed, and later abandoned their works and fled
+pell-mell toward James Towne.
+
+At the height of our interest, the flow of life across the historic
+isthmus lost colour, then died away. No more painted savages; no more
+soldiers; no more gay groups of mounted men and women in bright London
+dress; no more worshipful personages in rich velvet and gold lace.
+Instead, a slow sombre train crossing heavily over and disappearing
+along the forest road on the mainland leading to Williamsburg. Here,
+colonial records going by, telling that the brave little capital is a
+capital no more; there, a quaint church service, bespeaking abandoned
+holy walls and sacred doors flapping in the idle wind; and all along,
+those shapeless loads, telling of forsaken firesides, empty streets, a
+village deserted. After that, came only an occasional ox-cart, a load
+of hay, or (from the other direction) a carryall filled with strangers
+curious to visit the site of a little village that was once called
+James Towne.
+
+Sadly we let our isthmus sink back beneath the waters; we straightened
+the old roadway, and rebuilt the bridge. Then we went ashore to visit
+the island, knowing that we should find only a few ruins and one of the
+best truck farms on the river.
+
+Landing from our shore-boat near the end of the bridge at a little cove
+that made in through a greenery of fox grape and woodbine, we reached
+the road and started off through the woodland. It was a pleasant walk
+among the fragrant pine trees and in the soft light and the lengthening
+shadows of the waning summer day. Abruptly the grove ended, and
+thereafter the road led across a succession of marshy hollows and
+cleared ridges on its way to the other side of the island. About midway
+in its course it divided; one branch passing into a large enclosure,
+the other making a detour around it.
+
+The enclosed land, twenty-three acres at the southwest corner of the
+island, belongs to the Association for the Preservation of Virginia
+Antiquities. It was given to that society by the present owner of the
+island, Mrs. Edward E. Barney.
+
+[Illustration: THE BRIDGE ACROSS BACK RIVER.]
+
+[Illustration: THE ROAD ACROSS THE ISLAND.]
+
+Passing within the enclosure and following the caretaker, we approached
+with interest, and something of reverence too, a grove near the river
+bank. It was a grove in whose shadowy depths is all of James Towne that
+remains above ground--a ruined church tower and some crumbling tombs.
+As we walked along the curving road, we caught glimpses now and then of
+the venerable tower; and gradually it emerged as out of the shadows of
+the past, and we stood facing it. Silently we gazed at the ancient
+pile, the most impressive ruin of English colonization. A hollow shaft
+of brick, with two high arched openings, a crumbling top, and a hold on
+the heart of every American.
+
+How fitting that the four little broken walls alone remaining of all
+that the colonists built, should be not the walls of house or tavern or
+fort, but of the tower of the village church! Almost with the solemn
+significance of a tomb above the ashes of the dead, stands the sacred
+pile over the buried remains of old James Towne.
+
+The ruin is about thirty-six feet high, though doubtless originally
+several feet higher. Near the top are loopholes that perhaps suggest
+the reason why the tower is of such massive build; in those days the
+red man influenced even church architecture.
+
+Excavations to the east of the tower have disclosed the foundation
+walls of the remainder of the church, and have helped to fix the date
+of erection as about 1639. Within these foundations, the ruins of a yet
+older building have been unearthed. They are doubtless the remains of a
+wooden church with brick foundations that was built about 1617. So, in
+the contemplation of these little ruins within ruins, the mind is
+carried back to the very beginnings of our country, to within ten years
+perhaps of the day when those first settlers landed.
+
+What this old wooden church looked like probably nobody can tell; but
+much has been determined as to the general appearance of the brick
+church, that to which the venerable tower belonged.
+
+The visitor will not be far wrong if, as he stands in the presence of
+these ruins, he sees in fancy a picture like this: the old tower with
+several feet of lost height regained, and with a roof sloping up from
+each of the four sides to a peak in the middle surmounted by a cross;
+behind the tower, those crumbling church foundations built up into
+strong walls, bearing a high-pitched roof; each side of the church with
+four flying buttresses and three lancet windows; the entrance, a pair
+of arched doorways, one in the front and one in the back of the tower;
+above the doorway in the front, a large arched window; and, yet higher,
+the six ominous loopholes; all the walls of the structure composed of
+brick in mingled red and black, and the roofs of slate.
+
+Now, if the visitor will enter the quaint old church that his fancy has
+thus restored--moving softly, for truly he is on holy ground and every
+step is over unknown dead--he may see in vague vision a very little of
+the ancient interior: the nave lighted by diamond-paned windows, not
+stained; the aisles between the rows of pews paved with brick; the
+chancel paved with tile; a gallery at the end next the tower; and, over
+all, the heavy timbers of the high-pitched roof. Perhaps beyond this
+fancy can not safely go.
+
+Pilgrims to this broken shrine will be of two opinions as to a work of
+preservation that the Society owning this part of the island has
+entered into. About and within the church ruins, we saw evidences of
+building in progress, and learned that preparation was being made for a
+memorial structure or chapel, to be erected not on but over the old
+church foundation walls, to preserve them from the elements. It was to
+be a gift to the Association for the Preservation of Virginia
+Antiquities from the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America.
+Within the building, the ancient church foundations were to be left
+visible. Though the broken tower was to be untouched, yet this building
+was to be placed practically against it--to be, in fact, a restoration
+of the main body of the church.
+
+From what we learned then and later, it was evident that the work was
+undertaken after the most careful study and in the most painstaking
+spirit. The structure has since been completed, and is doubtless as
+desirable a one as could be erected for the preservation of the church
+foundations. Still, there will be the difference of opinion as to the
+wisdom of placing a building of any kind close to the old tower. And
+this, even though the hard alternative should be to preserve the
+foundations with a cement covering merely, and to place some
+inconspicuous protection over the chancel.
+
+[Illustration: THE RUINED TOWER OF THE OLD VILLAGE CHURCH.]
+
+To the unimaginative visitor, the plan that has been adopted will
+appeal. To him the ancient broken tower, standing alone, would have
+little charm in comparison with this faithful restoration of the old
+church, that enables him to see what he never could have seen but for
+its being shown to him in brick and mortar. But to the pilgrim of the
+other sort--day-dreamer, if you will--there must come a sense not of
+gain but of loss. He will feel that, for a questionable combination of
+a restoration with a ruin, there has been sacrificed the most
+impressive spectacle on the island--the ancient church tower of
+vanished James Towne, standing in the shadow of the little grove by the
+river, broken, desolate, alone.
+
+As we stood amidst ruins and building stuff, we tried to bear in mind
+that, of the two pilgrims, the unimaginative one is much the bigger;
+but we were so hopelessly a part of the other fellow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+IN THE OLD CHURCHYARD
+
+
+For two or three days after our visit to the church ruins, rain kept us
+prisoners within the houseboat. Such times are good tests to determine
+how much one possesses of the houseboating spirit. All the charms
+usually associated with such a life are blotted out by the lowering
+clouds, washed away by the falling water. And how the houseboat shrinks
+when it gets so wet! With decks unavailable, what a little thing the
+floating home suddenly becomes! Then there is the ceaseless patter
+overhead, and so close overhead that one almost feels like raising an
+umbrella.
+
+But to the true houseboater there is a charm in it all. With water
+above, below, and all around, the little craft is yet tight and snug.
+There is plenty of food for the mind on the book-shelves above and
+plenty for the body in the lockers below. Lady Fairweather found a
+diversion of her own. She sat for a good part of one wet afternoon,
+with a short pole thrust out of a window, a baited hook in the water,
+and an expectant look on her face. But we had an omelet for supper.
+
+On the first bright morning we made preparations to visit the island
+again. As we were about to start, the sailor rushed into the forward
+cabin with story enough in his eyes, but only one word on his lips--"
+Fire!"
+
+Then there was commotion. Nautica ran into the galley and Lady
+Fairweather ran for the Commodore, who was out on deck. He reached the
+galley to find one end of it in flames and himself half buried under a
+shower of boxes, cans, paper bags, and packages of breakfast food.
+Nautica, suddenly remembering one of the best things for extinguishing
+burning gasoline, was making everything fly as she frantically sought
+to reach a stowed-away bag of flour. The bag and the Commodore appeared
+about the same time, and together they made toward the gasoline stove
+from which the blaze was flaming across the galley. In an instant all
+of the flour was cast into the flames. It proved wholly insufficient,
+though warranted on the bag to go farther than any other brand.
+
+Already the blaze was about the gasoline font. All knew that there was
+over a barrelful of the inflammable liquid in the tank on the upper
+deck. Calling to the sailor to get the shore-boat ready, the Commodore
+scooped up the fallen flour and cast it again on the fire. Distracted
+Lady Fairweather suddenly rushed to her cabin and back again, and she
+too wildly cast a shower of something white into the blaze. Then she
+stood pale and speechless, all unconscious of the dainty, empty pink
+box clasped in both hands, and of her own heroism in sacrificing her
+complexion to save the houseboat. As it turned out, we had no need to
+row ashore. With little or nothing to account for it, except the
+perversity of gasoline, or perhaps the contents of the little pink box,
+the flames with a final flare went out.
+
+Then we took account of the situation. Flour was everywhere. Nautica
+had eyebrows and hair singed, though she found that out only when she
+got the flour off. It was hard to tell what was the matter with the
+Commodore, or to take his troubles seriously. He had slightly scorched
+hands of course. But then one forgot them in looking at his expressive
+face made out of flour and soot, and in watching him spill breakfast
+food and tapioca when he walked.
+
+We never knew how the fire came to start, any more than how it came to
+go out. When fairly presentable again, we went up on the upper deck to
+find a cool place under the awning.
+
+Evidently, we were adapting ourselves promptly to the ways of the
+country. Having fires seems to have been one of the chief diversions in
+old James Towne, and we had no sooner got to the island than we fell in
+with the custom. It was not a good custom. Even with the fire out we
+were in trouble; for Gadabout hadn't a piece of bread to her name, and
+we had thrown on the fire the last bit of flour aboard. We were falling
+in with more than one of the ways of the colonists--it was fire and
+famine too.
+
+The Commodore suggested that we send a message to the owner of the
+island praying that a "Supply" be despatched to the starving new
+colonists. But Nautica held that such an appeal should be made in
+person; that the Commodore, like a true Captain John Smith, should
+start out himself to get food for his famishing little colony.
+
+Thus put upon his mettle, the Commodore, trailed by the sailor with his
+basket, soon set off along the island road. Upon reaching the
+neighbourhood of the church ruins he met an old negro.
+
+"Mornin', suh." And the shapeless hat came off in a way that told that
+this was a survival of the old school.
+
+"Good morning, uncle. Can you tell me which way to go to find the big
+house?"
+
+"Yas, suh. I don' b'long heah myse'f, suh; but you see dat brick house
+down de road yondah, what's done been burn down? Well, dat was de big
+house, yas, suh. But it ain' no good to stop dere now, no, suh. You go
+right on by, and de big house now is de firs' little house you comes
+to."
+
+According to these directions, the way was now along a road leading
+down the island. It ran not far from the river bank and through grounds
+having a border of trees skirting the water's edge. At last the "little
+big" house was reached. All the members of the family were away for the
+summer except one daughter who, with a friend from Richmond for
+company, was in charge of the servants and managing the island.
+
+The Commodore introduced himself and his sad story of fire and famine.
+He explained that it would be two or three days before supplies could
+be got from Norfolk, and darkly hinted at a new chapter of suffering
+that might be added to the woeful history of the island unless
+something were done at once. The gloomy picture did not seem to impress
+the young woman very painfully, for her reply was a laughing one; but a
+sack of flour went into the basket and a big loaf of bread besides.
+Upon its coming out in the conversation that we wished to remain at our
+anchorage for some time and should like to know of any limitations
+placed upon visitors, the freedom of the island was most kindly
+extended to us. The Commodore proudly returned with his supplies to the
+houseboat.
+
+"Saved by the Daughter of the Island!" exclaimed Lady Fairweather. And
+by that name we came to speak of our benefactress.
+
+After we had broken bread, borrowed bread and good too, another and
+more successful attempt was made to go on the island. Our object was to
+visit the old graveyard. Crossing again to the grove on the James River
+side, we entered in among the shadows that enwrap the ruined church and
+the crumbling tombs of the village dead. The graveyard, or what remains
+of it, is coextensive with the grove. When most of the deserted church
+crumbled and fell a hundred years ago, some of the bricks were used to
+build a wall around the old burying-ground. Parts of it are standing
+yet in picturesque, moss-covered ruins.
+
+This time we found workmen engaged on the foundations for the memorial
+building. So we were prevented from seeing satisfactorily some of the
+tombs, as they were boxed over to protect them while this work was in
+progress. However, the caretaker did all that he could for us.
+
+Pitifully few are the stones remaining to mark the graves of that
+vanguard of English colonization. For most who lie here, the last
+record has crumbled away. Proud knight, proud lady, gentlemen,
+gentlewomen, and unknown humble folk, in common brotherhood at last,
+"dust to dust" and unmarked level ground above them.
+
+One of the most notable of the remaining tombs is that of Lady Frances
+Berkeley, who rests beneath the shadow of the great hackberry tree that
+is said to have been brought over, a slender sapling, from England. But
+a few parts of words remain on the broken stone, and the date is gone.
+Though after the death of her husband, Sir William Berkeley, this lady
+became Mrs. Philip Ludwell, yet she clung to the greater name and
+insisted that her long sleep should be under its carven pomp.
+
+[Illustration. A CORNER IN THE OLD GRAVEYARD.]
+
+Peeping into a shed that temporarily covered the old chancel floor, we
+caught a glimpse of the mysterious tomb of the island. It is an
+ironstone tablet, once doubtless inlaid with brass, as the channellings
+for the metal are yet clearly defined. They show a draped figure and
+some smaller designs that have been taken as indications of knighthood,
+and have led to the conjecture that this is the tomb of Sir George
+Yeardley, governor of the Colony of Virginia, who died here in 1627. It
+is said to be the only tomb of the kind in America. Evidently, the
+stone has become somewhat displaced; for instead of being orientated as
+it must once have been, it now lies almost north and south.
+
+We were not able to see the grave of William Sherwood, that humble but
+hopeful wrong-doer who lies under the chiselled words, "A Great sinner
+Waiting for a joyfull Resurrection."
+
+The old graveyard, like the hoary tower, awes the mind and touches the
+heart. And this partly because of its pitiful littleness. A handful of
+cracked and broken stones to tell of all that terrible harvest that
+Death reaped in the ruined village! But perhaps they tell it all as
+hosts of tombs could not do. One reads between the stones, then far out
+beyond them where mouldering bones are feeding the smiling fields; and
+there is borne in upon him the thought that our country had life
+through so much of death that this whole island is a graveyard.
+
+After leaving the old tombs, we crossed a roadway and entered a ruined
+fort. In those few steps we made a long plunge down the years of
+history, and passed far away from old James Towne. None of the
+colonists ever saw those walls of earth. They are the remains of a
+Confederate fort. But, modern as they are, they have done what they
+could to put themselves in harmony with the ancientness all about. The
+slopes are grass-grown and even tree-grown. Within the walls is the
+caretaker's cottage in the midst of such a wealth of trees, flowering
+shrubs, and vines as makes a greenwood retreat. The grass-grown
+embrasures and the drooping branches over them form frames for river
+views that seem set there in place of the rusty cannon pieces.
+
+It was toward evening when we started back across the island,
+houseboatward. We sauntered slowly at first, turning for a backward
+glance at the old church tower and pausing again to look out over the
+water at the island's outer sentinel, the "Lone Cypress." We paused yet
+another time down where the marsh reeds lined the way. Grasping
+handfuls of the coarse grass, the Commodore started to illustrate how
+the colonists bound thatch, doubtless from that very marsh, to make
+roofs for their flimsy cabins. But the marsh furnished something
+besides grasses; and before the Commodore's explanation had gone far,
+his auditors had gone farther. He valiantly slew the snake, the whole
+six inches of it, and hastening forward found those more progressive
+houseboaters safely ensconced in the shore-boat.
+
+As the little skiff moved out upon the river, a carriage rattled across
+the bridge. Sightseers who had driven over from Williamsburg were
+returning. However satisfied they may have felt with their short visit,
+we could only pity them. Yet such a visit, of a few hours at most, is
+all that is possible here except for one who brings his home with him,
+for there is no public house on the island. Stepping aboard Gadabout,
+we congratulated ourselves that she enabled us to live indefinitely
+right in the suburbs of old James Towne.
+
+However, as days went on, Lady Fairweather became somewhat daunted by
+the dire predictions of chills and fever as a result of our long lying
+in the marshes; and one day she deserted the ship and sailed away on a
+bigger one. We thought she was to be gone only a little while, but she
+proved a real deserter and Gadabout saw no more of her to the end of
+the cruise.
+
+But chills and fever never came to Gadabout's household, though the
+dog-day sun beat upon the waste of reeds and rushes about us and though
+striped-legged mosquitoes were our nearest and most attentive
+neighbours. Fortunately, the mosquitoes did not feel that hospitality
+required them to call upon the strangers or to show them any attention
+except in the evening. Even then they were more or less distant, rarely
+coming into the houseboat, but lingering in a neighbourly way about
+doors and windows, and whispering assurances of their regard through
+some crossed wires that we happened to have there.
+
+One of the chief causes of illness among the colonists, impure water,
+we did not have to contend with. In the early days of James Towne, the
+river was the only water supply; later, shallow wells were dug; both
+the river and the wells furnished impure, brackish water. To-day, two
+artesian wells are flowing on the island. As we got our supply from
+them, we often thought of how those first settlers suffered and died
+for want of pure water, when all the while this inexhaustible supply
+lay imprisoned beneath their cornfields. But even the water from the
+artesian wells we took the precaution to boil. So, pitting screens
+against mosquitoes and the teakettle against water germs, we lived on,
+chill-less and fever-less in the marshes of Back River.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+SEEING WHERE THINGS HAPPENED
+
+
+We were fortunate in visiting Jamestown Island after considerable had
+been accomplished in the way of lessening the number of its historic
+sites. For a long while, almost every important event in its story had
+occurred at so many different places that it was scarcely possible for
+the pilgrim to do justice to them all.
+
+But, some time before our visit to the island, an era of scientific
+investigation set in; researches were made among old musty records; and
+even the soil was turned up in order to determine the place where this
+or that event really did happen. The reduction in the number of places
+of interest was astonishing. In every instance, it was found that the
+historic event in question had happened at but a single place; and
+consequently all its other time-honoured sites suddenly became
+unhistoric soil.
+
+An instance or two will serve to illustrate.
+
+Upon our visit to James Towne, we found that the site of the colonists'
+first fort (long variously fixed at several points along the river
+front) was now limited to a single spot near the caretaker's cottage;
+so that all the brave fighting that had been going on at those other
+sites, had been for nothing.
+
+In like manner, it had long been well established that Pocahontas and
+John Rolfe were married in the church whose tower is yet standing; also
+in the brick and wood church that just preceded this one; also in a
+rough timber church that just preceded that one. Each of these edifices
+was the true, genuine scene of the romantic event.
+
+But, under the new arrangement, we found only one church where Rolfe
+and Pocahontas were married--just the old timber one. Indeed, in this
+instance, the work of elimination seemed almost unduly rigorous. The
+other churches were set aside upon circumstantial evidence merely;
+there being nothing against them except that they were found to have
+been built some years after the ceremony.
+
+On the whole, however, the work of fixing sites authoritatively was
+doubtless just. In any event, there was no opportunity for us to
+protest; for by the time we got to the island, they had everything down
+on a map in a book. We bought a copy of the book, and resolved to stage
+by it the events of the James Towne story. We resolved also to be most
+methodical from now on; and to "do" things as nearly as possible in the
+same order as the colonists had done them.
+
+So one morning we gathered up our authorities and started out to see
+where the settlers first landed and where they first lived. According
+to the map, that historic, first landing-place would be anything but a
+landing-place to-day; for figure "25" (that was it) stood well out in
+the river. The loss by erosion had been great along that part of the
+shore since those first settlers arrived. But even though the
+landing-place could not be seen, one could look out on the waters
+anyway and see where it used to be.
+
+At first we feared that there might be some trouble in telling where
+the "25" on the map would be on the water. But it was a very simple
+thing to do, largely owing to the thoughtfulness of the settlers in
+landing almost opposite a jetty that runs out from the shore a little
+above the Confederate fort.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW FROM THE CONFEDERATE FORT.]
+
+[Illustration: LOOKING TOWARD THE FIRST LANDING-PLACE.]
+
+Upon reaching the river front of the island, we took our bearings from
+the map and walked slowly toward the water's edge, being careful not to
+walk too far as the water's edge is so much closer in now than it used
+to be. Going to the uppermost of the several jetties, we sighted along
+it straight out over the water and kept on looking, in accordance with
+the measurements on the map, until we had looked one hundred and
+thirty-five yards; then, turned our eyes sharply to the right and
+looked thirty-three and one third yards more. We then had the
+satisfaction of feeling that the spot our eyes rested upon was, in
+1607, on the shore of the island, and was the place where the original
+settlers first landed. Nor was our satisfaction at all dampened by the
+discovery that the spot was two spots--Nautica gazing spellbound at one
+place, and the Commodore at another.
+
+After all, it made very little difference, for the settlers did not
+stay where they landed anyway.
+
+They seem to have built their fort and their little settlement within
+it about five hundred feet farther down stream and some distance back
+from the shore. It was in the form of a triangle and had an area of
+about an acre. Its entire site has been generally supposed to be washed
+away, but the recent researches show that such is not the case. A
+considerable part of it is left and is now safe behind a protecting
+sea-wall. As, at the time of our visit, nothing marked this remnant of
+the historic acre, we undertook to locate it. Fortunately, the
+Confederate fort stands in such position as to help in running the
+boundaries by the map. For a rough approximation, all we had to do was
+to get Mr. Leal, the caretaker, to stand at the most westerly angle of
+the fort, and his son on the sea-wall at the lower end of the fort, and
+Henry on the sea-wall a hundred yards farther up stream; then, straight
+lines connecting these three men enclosed all that is left of that
+first little fortified settlement where Anglo-Saxon America began.
+While the three men stood at the three corners, we took a photograph of
+the historic bit of land; and long after they had gone we lingered
+reflectively about it.
+
+Here, in that spring of 1607, within the strong palisade, the settlers
+built their first cabins. Here, Captain Newport left them, and sailed
+back to England. Here, too, he found them again--a pitiful few of
+them--when he returned the next winter with reinforcements for the
+colony. By another winter, the palisaded village had extended somewhat,
+mostly eastward. It then included, so far as we could make out, all the
+land now within the Confederate fort and probably also the site of the
+present ruined church and graveyard. Upon this little four-acre
+settlement hung the destiny of a hemisphere for the next few years.
+
+[Illustration: LOCATING WHAT IS LEFT OF THE SITE OF THE FIRST
+SETTLEMENT.]
+
+We trudged about within the old town limits and tried to picture the
+chief events of those years; but we could not remember what they were;
+so we sat down on the grassy fort, regardless of ticks and redbugs, to
+read up some more. For a while there was no sound but the twitter of
+the birds and the murmur of the river. Then the Commodore found
+something in his book, and he began very solemnly to tell of how on
+that very spot the colonists endured the horrors of the "Starving
+Time." At this there was such a genuine exclamation of pleasure from
+Nautica that the Commodore knew he was too late; she had not even
+heard. She had found something in her book too, and was already
+announcing that it was right there that John Rolfe and Pocahontas were
+married.
+
+But the Commodore insisted that his story came first, as Nautica's
+romantic event was not until 1614, while his famine was in 1609-10.
+Nautica sighed resignedly as she agreed that we should starve first and
+get married afterward.
+
+After all, we found that we could not speak lightly, sitting there in
+the midst of the scene of the "Starving Time." By the winter of 1609-10
+there were perhaps five hundred persons in this little settlement by
+the river, including now, unfortunately, some women and children. When
+there was no more corn, the people managed for a while to keep alive on
+roots and herbs; then, half-crazed by starvation, they fell to
+cannibalism. Gaunt, desperate, de-humanized, they crouched about the
+kettle that held their own dead. A Bible fed the flames, cast in by a
+poor wretch as he cried, "Alas! there is no God!"
+
+The succeeding spring brought two ships, a belated portion of one of
+the "Supplies." But sixty of the five hundred colonists were found
+alive--sixty haggard men, women, and children, hunger-crazed, huddled
+behind the broken palisades. Sadly suggestive must have seemed the
+names of the two vessels that appeared upon that awful scene--Patience
+and Deliverance. But the deliverance that they brought was of a poor
+sort. They had not on board provisions enough to last a month.
+
+It was decided that it was vain for the colony to try to hold out
+longer. James Towne, upon which so much blood and treasure had been
+spent and that had seemed at last to give England a hold in the New
+World, must be abandoned. To the roll of drums, the remnant of the
+colony boarded the vessels, sails were set, and the little ships
+dropped down the river bound for far-away England.
+
+The last sail passed around the bend in the stream, and only a desolate
+blotch in the wilderness was left to tell of England's attempt to
+colonize America; only a great gash in the forest, there in the quiet
+and the sunlight, at the edge of the river. Within it were the
+shapeless ruins of those queer things the pale-faces had made--broken
+palisades, yawning houses, the tottering thing they called a church;
+and, all about, the hideous, ghastly traces of living and of dying. The
+sun went down; and, in the gloom of the summer night, from the forest
+and the marsh wild things came creeping to the edge of the clearing,
+sat peering there, then ventured nearer--curious, suspicious, greedy.
+Soft, noiseless, and ghost-like was the flight of the great owl through
+the desolation, and his uncanny cry and the wail of the whippoorwill
+filled the night as with mockery and mourning.
+
+Quick, startling, and almost miraculous was the next change in the
+scene: a change from the emptiness of desolation to the bustling
+fulness of life and colour--the harbour dotted with ships, the little
+village crowded with people, James Towne alive again. For even in the
+dark hour of abandonment, it was not destined that the settlement
+should perish. Even as the colonists sailed down the James, a fleet
+bearing reinforcements and stores of supplies was entering the mouth of
+the river. The settlers were turned back; and following them came the
+fleet, bringing to deserted James Towne not only new colonists, but
+pomp, ceremony, and the stately, capable new governor, Lord Delaware.
+
+"He was the one who went to church with so much show and flourish,
+wasn't he?" asked Nautica.
+
+"Yes," answered the Commodore confidently, as he happened to have his
+book open at the right page. "Lord Delaware attended the little church
+in the wilderness in all state, accompanied by his council and guarded
+by fifty halberd bearers wearing crimson cloaks. He sat in a green
+velvet chair and--"
+
+"Where do you think that church was?" interrupted Nautica.
+
+"Right near here. They say it stood about a hundred yards above the
+later one whose ruins are over there in the graveyard. And in that
+church Lord Delaware and his council--"
+
+"Yes," Nautica broke in again. "That was the church that they were
+married in--John Rolfe and Pocahontas."
+
+"To be sure," said the Commodore. "Let the wedding bells ring. It is
+time now for the ceremony."
+
+And a strange ceremony it must have been that the little timber church
+saw that April day in the year 1614, when the young colonist of good
+English family linked his fate with that of the dark-skinned girl of
+the tepee. It was the first marriage of Englishman and Indian in the
+colony, and meant much to the struggling settlers in furthering
+peaceful relations with the savages. Speaking in the society-column
+vernacular of a later day, the occasion was marred by the absence of
+the bride's father. The wary old chieftain was not willing to place
+himself within the power of the English. But the bride's family was
+represented by two of her brothers and by her old uncle, Opachisco, who
+gave her away. Other red men were present. Doubtless the governor of
+the colony, Sir Thomas Dale, who much approved the marriage, added a
+touch of official dignity by attending the ceremony resplendent in
+uniform and accompanied by colonial officials.
+
+It was a strange wedding, party. While the minister (Was it the
+Reverend Richard Buck or the good Alexander Whittaker?) read the
+marriage service of the Church of England, the eyes of haughty cavalier
+and of impassive savage met above the kneeling pair and sought to read
+each other. And a strange fate hung over the pale-face groom and the
+dusky bride--that in her land and by her people he should be slain;
+that in his land and among his people she should die and find a lonely
+grave beside an English river.
+
+"That is just one marriage that you have been so interested in, isn't
+it?" The Commodore's tone was one to provoke inquiry.
+
+"Just one?" repeated Nautica, "Why, to be sure, unless it takes two
+weddings to marry two people."
+
+"Just one wedding," persisted the Commodore. "Now, I am interested in
+dozens and dozens of weddings that happened right here, and all in one
+day."
+
+There were several things the matter with James Towne from the outset.
+Prominent among them was the absence of women and children. After a
+while a few colonists with families arrived; but, to introduce the home
+element more generally into the colony, "young women to make wives
+ninety" came from England in 1619. The scene upon their arrival must
+have been one of the most unique in the annals of matrimony. The
+streets of James Towne were undoubtedly crowded. The little capital had
+bachelors enough of her own, but now she held also those that came
+flocking in from the other settlements of the colony. The maids were
+not to be compelled to marry against their choice; and they were so
+outnumbered by their suitors that they could do a good deal of picking
+and choosing. With rusty finery and rusty wooing, the bachelor
+colonists strove for the fair hands that were all too few, and there
+was many a rejected swain that day.
+
+We might have forgotten the other important events that had happened
+round about where we were sitting, in that first little town by the
+river, if a coloured man had not wandered our way. He had driven some
+sightseers over from Williamsburg, and while waiting for them to visit
+the graveyard, he seemed to find relief in confiding to us some of his
+burden of colonial lore and that his name was Cornelius. We had over
+again the story of Rolfe and Pocahontas, but it seemed not at all
+wearisome, for the new version was such a vast improvement upon the one
+that we got out of the books. However, his next statement eclipsed the
+Pocahontas story.
+
+"De firs' time folks evah meek dey own laws for dey se'fs was right
+heah, suh, right in dat ole chu'ch."
+
+While again facts could not quite keep up with Cornelius, yet it was
+true that our little four-acre town had seen the beginnings of American
+self-government. So early did the spirit of home rule assert itself,
+that it bore fruit in 1619, when a local lawmaking body was created,
+called the General Assembly and consisting in part of a House of
+Burgesses chosen by the people. On July 30 of that year, the General
+Assembly met in the village church--the first representative
+legislature in America. The place of meeting was not, as is often
+stated, the church in which Rolfe and Pocahontas were married, but its
+successor--the earliest of the churches whose ruined foundations are
+yet to be seen behind the old tower.
+
+Perhaps our thoughts had wandered some from Cornelius, but he brought
+them back again.
+
+"Dey set in de chu'ch an' meek de laws wid dey hats on," he asserted.
+
+And as the House of Burgesses had indeed followed in this respect the
+custom of the English House of Commons, we were glad to see Cornelius
+for once in accord with other historians.
+
+Then, Nautica spoke of how the very year that saw the beginning of free
+government in America saw the beginning of slavery too; and she asked
+Cornelius if he knew that the first coloured people were brought to
+America in 1619 and landed there at James Towne.
+
+"Yas'm; ev'ybody tole me 'bout dat. Seem like we got heah 'bout as soon
+as de white folks."
+
+It was a comfortable view to take of the matter, and we would not
+disturb it.
+
+Cornelius told us other things.
+
+"Dis, now, is de off season for touris'," he explained. "We has two
+mos' reg'lar seasons, de spring an' de fall, yas, suh. I drives right
+many ovah heah from Willi'msburg. I's pretty sho to git hol' of de bes'
+an' de riches'. An' I reckon I knows 'bout all dere is to be knowed
+'bout dis firs' settlemen'. I's got it all so's I kin talk it off an'
+take in de extry change. I don' know is you evah notice, but folks is
+mighty diffrunt 'bout seem' dese ole things. Yas, suh, dey sut'n'y is.
+Some what I drives jes looks at de towah an' nuver gits out de ker'ige;
+an' den othahs jes peers into ev'ythin'. Foh myse'f, now, I nuver keers
+much 'bout dese ole sceneries; but den I reckon I would ef I was rich."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+PIONEER VILLAGE LIFE
+
+
+That first little four-acre James Towne, located in the neighbourhood
+of the present Confederate fort, soon outgrew its palisades. In what
+may be called its typical days, the village stretched in a straggling
+way for perhaps three quarters of a mile up and down the river front,
+and with outlying parts reaching across the island to Back River. It
+usually consisted of a church, a few public buildings, about a score of
+dwellings, and perhaps a hundred people.
+
+One of the principal streets (if James Towne's thoroughfares could be
+called streets) ran close along the water front. While it must once
+have had some shorter name, it has come down in the records as "the way
+along the Greate River." Here and there traces of this highway can
+still be found; and the mulberry trees now standing along the river
+bank are supposed to be descendants of those that bordered the old
+village highway. Next came Back Street upon which some prominent people
+seem to have lived. Apparently leading across the head of the island
+from the town toward the isthmus was the "old Greate Road." There still
+appear some signs of this also near the graveyard. Besides these
+highways there were several lanes and cart-paths.
+
+The eastward extension of the village, called New Towne, was the
+principal part. It was the fashionable and official quarter. Here lived
+many "people of qualitye." Royal governors and ex-governors, knights
+and members of the Council had their homes along the river front, where
+they lived in all the state that they could transplant from "London
+Towne."
+
+The buildings, in the early days of wood and later of brick, were
+plainly rectangular. The later ones were usually two stories high with
+steep-pitched roofs. Some of the dwellings, or dwellings and public
+buildings, were built together in rows to save in the cost of
+construction. Probably most of the homes had "hort yards" and gardens.
+The colonists were not content with having about them the native
+flowers and fruits and those that they brought from England; but they
+made persistent efforts for years to grow in their gardens oranges,
+lemons, pomegranates, and pineapples.
+
+Usually there was not much going on in old James Towne, but
+periodically the place was enlivened by the sessions of the General
+Assembly and of the Court. At such times the planters and their
+following gathered in; and then doubtless there were stirring days in
+the village capital of "His Majesty's Colony of Virginia." Barges of
+the river planters were tied alongshore, and about the "tavernes" were
+horses, carts and a very few more pretentious vehicles. Many of the
+people on the streets were in showy dress; though only the governor,
+councillors, and heads of "Hundreds" were allowed to wear gold on their
+clothes.
+
+James Towne, in her later days, seems to have had a "taverne" or two
+even when she had scarcely anything else; and doubtless these
+"alehouses" were the centres of life in those bustling court and
+assembly days. For not only was deep drinking a trait of the times, but
+many of the sessions both of the Assembly and of the Court were held in
+the "tavernes." Three or four State-houses were built; but with almost
+suspicious regularity they burned down, and homeless Assembly and Court
+betook themselves and the affairs of the colony to the inns. There, in
+the ruddy glow of the great fireplaces, the judges could sit
+comfortably and dispense justice tempered with spirits.
+
+So life in James Towne went on until the village had completed almost a
+hundred years of existence. But this was accomplished only by the most
+strenuous efforts. When at last, in 1699, the long struggle was given
+up and the seat of government was removed to Williamsburg, nothing but
+utter dissolution was left for James Towne.
+
+The fated little village had played its part. Through untold suffering
+and a woeful cost of human life, it had fought on until England
+obtained a firm hold in America--a hold that was to make the New World
+essentially Anglo-Saxon. Then this pioneer colony's mission was ended.
+It was not destined to have any place in the great nation that its
+struggle had made possible. One by one the lights in the poor little
+windows flickered and went out. The deserted hearthstones grew cold.
+Abandoned and forgotten, the pitiful hamlet crumbled away.
+
+James Towne dead, the island gradually fell into fewer hands until it
+became, as it is to-day, the property of a single owner; simply a
+plantation like any other. And yet, how unlike! Even were every vestige
+of that pioneer settlement gone forever, memory would hold this island
+a place apart. But all is not gone. Despite decay and the greedy river,
+there yet remains to us a handful of ruins of vanished James Towne.
+Despite a nation's shameful neglect, time has spared to her some relics
+of the community that gave her birth--a few broken tombs and the
+crumbling, tower of the old village church. Every year come many of our
+people to look upon these ancient ruins and to pause in the midst of
+hurried lives to recall again their story.
+
+[Illustration: AN EXCURSION DAY AT JAMESTOWN ISLAND.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+GOOD-BYE TO OLD JAMES TOWNE
+
+
+Two or three times we ran the houseboat around in front of the island.
+On one occasion we took the notion to stop at places of interest along
+the way. Upon coming out from Back River, we spent some time poking
+about in the water for the old-time isthmus. We were not successful at
+first and almost feared that, after raising it for our own selfish
+purposes some days before, we had let it go down again in the wrong
+place.
+
+This troubled us the more because we had hoped to settle a vexed
+question as to how wide an isthmus had once connected the island with
+the mainland. Nautica insisted that the width had been ten paces
+because a woman, Mrs. An. Cotton, who once lived near James Towne, had
+said so. But the Commodore pointed out that we had never seen Mrs.
+Cotton, and that we did not know whether she was a tall woman or a
+little dumpy woman; and so could not have the slightest idea of how far
+ten paces would carry her. On his part, he pinned his faith to the
+statement of Strachey, a man who had lived in James Towne and who had
+said that the isthmus was no broader than "a man will quaite a
+tileshard." But this Nautica refused to accept as satisfactory because
+we did not know what a "tileshard" was nor how far a man would "quaite"
+one. So we were naturally anxious to see which of us was right.
+
+[Illustration: GADABOUT LOOKING FOR THE LOST ISTHMUS.]
+
+[Illustration: A VISIT TO THE "LONE CYPRESS."]
+
+After a while we found traces of the isthmus. And the matter turned out
+just as most disputes will, if both parties patiently wait until the
+facts are all in--that is, both sides were right. The soundings showed
+the isthmus to shelve off so gradually at the sides that we found we
+could put the stakes, marking its edges, almost any distance apart. So,
+the width across the isthmus could very well be ten of Mrs. Cotton's
+paces, no matter what sort of a woman she was; and it could just as
+well be the distance that "a man will quaite a tileshard," be a
+tileshard what it may.
+
+Now, coasting along the end of the island, we had designs on the "Lone
+Cypress" for a sort of novel sensation. We approached the hoary old
+sentinel carefully, for it would be a sin to even bark its shaggy
+sides; and, dropping a rope over a projecting broken "knee," we enjoyed
+a striking object lesson on the effects of erosion. In several feet of
+water, and nearly three hundred feet from land, our houseboat was tied
+to a tree; tied to a tree that a hundred years before stood on the
+shore--a tree that likely, in the early days of the colony (for who
+knows the age of the "Lone Cypress"?), stood hundreds of yards back on
+the island. But it may never be farther from shore than we found it;
+for there, glistening in the sunshine, stood the sea-wall holding the
+hungry river at bay.
+
+Carefully slipping our rope from the tree, we let the tide carry us out
+a little way before starting an engine. Then, bidding goodbye to the
+old cypress, we moved on along the shore. We were aware from our map of
+ancient holdings that we were ruthlessly cutting across lots over the
+colonial acres of one Captain Edward Ross; but, seeing neither dogs nor
+trespass signs, we sailed right on. The Captain would not have to
+resort to irrigation on his lands to-day.
+
+While dawdling about this submerged portion of old James Towne, we
+thought we would make a stop at the spot where those first settlers
+landed. After consulting the map, we manoeuvred the houseboat so as to
+enable us to do some rough sort of triangulation with the compass, and
+finally dropped anchor, satisfied that we were at the historic spot,
+even though it was too wet to get out and look for the footprints. And
+there, well out on the yellow waters of the James, Gadabout lay lazily
+in the sunshine where Sarah Constant was once tied to the bank; where
+those first settlers stepped ashore; where America began.
+
+After following the island a little farther down stream, we cast anchor
+in a hollow of the shore-line near the steamboat pier. It was not much
+of a hollow after all and really formed no harbour. When the west wind
+came howling down the James, picking up the water for miles and hurling
+it at Gadabout, our only consolation lay in knowing that it could not
+have done that if we had only got there two or three centuries earlier.
+At that time, the point, or headland, upon which the colonists landed
+reached out and protected this shallow bay below. Doubtless, throughout
+James Towne days, the smaller vessels found fair harbour where Gadabout
+one night rolled many of her possessions into fragments, and her proud
+commander into something very weak and wan and unhappy.
+
+In the last few years, there has been an awakening of interest in
+long-forgotten James Towne. To Mrs. Edward E. Barney for her generous
+gift of the southwest corner of the island to the Association for the
+Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, and to that Society for its work
+in staying the course of decay and the hand of vandalism, our country
+is indebted.
+
+The recent researches of Mr. Samuel H. Yonge too have added new
+interest. It had long been supposed that almost the entire site of the
+ancient village was lost in the river. Mr. Yonge has shown that in fact
+but a small part of it is gone. He has even located on the island the
+exact sites of so many of the more important village buildings that, it
+is said, old James Towne could be practically reproduced in wood and
+brick from his map, based upon the ancient records.
+
+To verify his work, Mr. Yonge undertook (in 1903) to discover the
+buried ruins of a certain row of buildings that the records described
+as made up of a State-house, a "country house," and three dwellings.
+The search was begun with a steel probe, which struck the hidden
+foundations within twenty-five feet of their position as indicated on
+his plat. Then the Association began excavating; the foundations were
+uncovered, and are now among the things to see on the island.
+
+[Illustration: ONE OF THE EARLIEST EXCAVATIONS.]
+
+[Illustration: HUNTING FOR THE FIRST STATE HOUSE.]
+
+As Mr. Yonge's map shows the larger part of the site of James Towne to
+be lying to the east of the church tower and outside of the A.P.V.A.
+grounds, the Daughter of the Island was interested too in seeing what
+probe and pick and shovel could do.
+
+It was at one of James Towne's old homes that we next met her. The
+meeting, judging from our map of the village, was probably at Captain
+Roger Smith's, though one could not be sure. There was no name on the
+door, nor indeed any door to put a name on, nor indeed any house to put
+a door on--just an ancient basement that the Daughter of the Island had
+discovered and was having cleaned out. It badly needed it, nothing of
+the kind having been done perhaps for over two hundred years.
+
+"Come and see my find," she cried.
+
+The testing probe having struck something that indicated a buried
+foundation, there in the black pea field, this young antiquarian had
+put men at work and was being rewarded by finding the ruins of some
+ancient house. Portions of two rooms had been disclosed and the
+stairway leading down into one of them.
+
+"Come down the stairs," said the proud lady in the cellar.
+
+"Oh, what narrow steps!" Nautica exclaimed.
+
+"They used to build out those brick treads with wood to make them
+wider," explained our hostess. "You can see where the wooden parts have
+been burned away."
+
+The two rooms were paved with brick, and in one a chimney-place had
+come to light. Everywhere were bits of charred wood. Did no place in
+James Towne escape the scourge of fire? A kitten came springing over
+the mounds of excavated earth and began to prowl about the old
+fireplace. Except for a skittish pebble that she chased across the
+empty front, she found nothing of interest; no hint of savoury odours
+from the great spit over the blazing logs that may have caused a James
+Towne cat to sit and gaze and sniff some two centuries or more ago.
+
+But we suddenly left the frivolous kitten upon being told of what had
+been found in the other room just before we came. It was a heavy
+earthen pot sunk below the floor. We crouched about it with great
+interest, chiefly because we did not know what it was for. Perhaps it
+was merely to collect the drainage. Anyway it was not what the Daughter
+of the Island had fondly thought when it was first uncovered.
+
+"I was sure," she laughed, "that I had found a pot of money."
+
+Standing down there in the ruins we wondered what was the story of the
+old house. What feet had trod those paved floors? What had those walls
+seen and known of being and loving, of hopes and fears, of joys and
+griefs, of life and death? Of all this the uncovered ruin told nothing.
+
+While we were at the island, three or four excavations were made and we
+watched them all with interest. When the steel probe had located the
+ruin, the digging and the excitement began. Slowly the buried walls
+came to light. Within the walls was usually a mass of debris to be
+thrown out--bricks of various sizes, shapes, and colours; cakes of the
+ancient shell lime; pieces of charred wood, and relics of all sorts.
+Some of the bricks were quite imperfectly made and had a greenish hue.
+We supposed them to be the oldest ones and to have been baked or dried
+in the sun before the colonists had kilns. Some of them had
+indentations that were evidently finger imprints.
+
+"I wants to fin' dey ole papahs," said big John, digging heartily. "Dis
+hyer is a histoyacal ole place; an' I rathah fin' a box of dey ole
+papahs than three hunderd dollahs."
+
+Among the coloured people was an unquenchable hope of finding a pot
+full of money.
+
+It was a most interesting experience to sit in the brick rubbish and
+watch for the queer little relics that were thrown out now and then. No
+great finds were made, but the small ones did very well. There appeared
+an endless number of pieces of broken pottery; and the design of a blue
+dog chasing a blue fox was evidently a popular one for such ware in
+James Towne.
+
+But where was the blue dog's head? The question grew to be an absorbing
+one. Each handful of dirt began or ended with a wrong piece of the blue
+dog mixed with bits of brass and iron and pottery that brought vividly
+to mind the scenes and the folk of that vanished village. Handful after
+handful of dirt ran through our ringers like hourglass sands of ancient
+days, and the clicking relics were left in our hands in the quest of
+the blue dog's head.
+
+And this was the way things went. A piece of a bowl bearing most of the
+blue dog's tail; a woman's spur, gilt and broken, worn when merry eyes
+peeped through silken riding masks; a bit of Indian pottery with
+basketry marks upon it; a blue fox and the fore legs of the blue dog; a
+shoe-buckle, silver too--must have been people of "qualitye" here; a
+piece of a cream white cup that may have been a "lily pot" such as the
+colonist kept his pipe tobacco in; pieces and pieces of the blue dog,
+but never a bit of a head; a tiny red pipe and a piece of a white
+one--so that must have been a "lily pot"; a door key, some rusty
+scissors, and a blue head--of the fox; glass beads, blue beads, such as
+John Smith told Powhatan were worn by great kings, thus obtaining a
+hundred bushels of corn for a handful of the beads; a pewter spoon, a
+bent thimble, and a whole blue dog--no, his miserable head was off.
+
+We never became discouraged and are quite sure yet that we should have
+found the blue dog's head if we could have gone on searching. But by
+this time the summer was waning, and on up the river was much yet for
+Gadabout to see. It was a long visit that we had made at the island,
+yet one that had grown in interest as in days. Indeed only in the
+passing of many days could such interest come--could old James Towne so
+seem to live again.
+
+Lingeringly we had dreamed along its forgotten ways, by its ruined
+hearthstones, and among its nameless tombs; and so dreaming had seemed
+to draw close to the little old-time hamlet and to the scenes of hope
+and of fear, of joy and of despair, that had marked the planting of our
+race in America. Now, on the last evening of our stay at the island, we
+walked again the familiar paths; looked for the hundredth time down the
+great brown river that had borne our people to this place of beginning;
+stood once more beside the graveyard wall; then started toward the
+houseboat, turning for a last look at the broken church tower and to
+bid good night and good-bye to old James Towne.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+A SHORT SAIL AND AN OLD ROMANCE
+
+
+Next day, bustling about with making all things shipshape, we could
+scarcely realize that we were actually getting under way again. But
+when our mooring-lines were hauled in, Gadabout backed away from her
+old friend, the bridge, swung around in the narrow marsh-channel, and
+soon carried us from Back River out into the James.
+
+And by this time how impressed we had become with the significance of
+that wide, brown flood--that Nestor of American rivers! When is the
+James to find its rightful place in American song and story? Our oldest
+colonial waterway--upon whose banks the foundations of our country were
+laid, along whose shores our earliest homes and home-sites can still be
+pointed out--and yet almost without a place in our literature. Other
+rivers, historically lesser rivers, have had their stories told again
+and again, their beauties lauded, and their praises sung. But this
+great pioneer waterway, fit theme for an ode, is to-day our unsung
+river.
+
+Gadabout, with the wind in her favour and all the buoys leaning her
+way, made good progress. It was not long before we were looking back
+catching the last glimpses of the white sea-wall of Jamestown Island.
+
+We now were on our way to pick up other bits of the river story, and
+especially those concerning the peculiar colonial home life on the
+James. When tobacco culture, with its ceaseless demand for virgin soil,
+led many of the colonists to abandon James Towne and to build up great
+individual estates, each estate had to have its water front; and old
+Powhatan became lined on both sides with vast plantations. Later, the
+lands along other rivers were similarly occupied. So pronounced was the
+development of plantation life that it affected, even controlled, the
+character of the colony and determined the type of civilization in
+Virginia.
+
+The great estates became so many independent, self-sufficient
+communities--almost kingdoms. Each had its own permanent population
+including, besides slaves and common labourers, many mechanics,
+carpenters, coopers, and artisans of various kinds. An unbroken water
+highway stretched from each plantation wharf to the wharves of London.
+Directly from his own pier, each planter shipped his tobacco to
+England; and in return there was unloaded upon his own pier the
+commodities needed for his plantation community.
+
+Thus was established the peculiar type of Virginia society, the
+aristocracy of planters, that dotted the Old Dominion with lordly
+manor-houses and filled them with gay, ample life--a life almost feudal
+in its pride and power. In this day of our nation's tardy awakening to
+an appreciation of its colonial homes, a particular interest attaches
+to these old Virginia mansions, once the centres of those proud little
+principalities in the wilderness.
+
+And the particular interest of Gadabout's people, as Jamestown Island
+faded from sight, attached to a few of the earliest and most typical of
+those colonial homes that we knew yet stood on the banks of the "King's
+River." From kindly responses to our notes of inquiry, we also knew
+that long-suffering Virginia courtesy was not yet quite exhausted, and
+that it still swung wide the doors of those old manor-houses to even
+the passing stranger. Our next harbour was to be Chippoak Creek, which
+empties into the river about twelve miles above Jamestown Island. There
+we should be near two or three colonial homes including the well-known
+Brandon.
+
+It seemed good to be under way again. There was music in the chug of
+our engines and in the purl of the water about our homely bows. The
+touch of the wind in our faces was tonic, and we could almost persuade
+ourselves that there was fragrance in the occasional whiffs of
+gasoline.
+
+We soon came to an opening in the shore to starboard where the James
+receives one of its chief tributaries, the Chickahominy, memorable for
+its association with the first American romance. Though the tale is
+perhaps a trifle hackneyed, yet the duty of every good American is to
+listen whenever it is told. So here it is.
+
+Of course the hero was Captain John Smith. How that man does brighten
+up the record of those old times! Well, one day the Captain with a
+small party from James Towne was hunting in the marshes of the
+Chickahominy for food, or adventure, or the South Sea, or something,
+and some Indians were hunting there also; and the Indians captured the
+Captain. They took him before the great chief Powhatan; and as John lay
+there, with a large stone under his head and some clubs waving above
+him, the general impression was that he was going to die. But that was
+not John's way in those days; he was always in trouble but he never
+died. Suddenly, just as the clubs were about to descend, soft arms were
+about the Captain's head, and Pocahontas, the favourite daughter of the
+old chief, was pleading for the ever-lucky Smith. The dramatic
+requirements of the case were apparent to everybody. Powhatan spared
+the pale-face; and our country had its first romance.
+
+To be sure, some people say that all this never happened. Indeed the
+growing skepticism about this precious bit of our history, this
+international romance that began in the marshes of the Chickahominy, is
+our chief reason for repeating it here. It is time for the story to be
+told by those who can vouch for it--those who have actually seen the
+river that flows by the marshes that the Captain was captured in.
+
+On we went with tide, wind, and engines carrying us up the James.
+Dancing Point reached sharply out as if to intercept us. But the owner
+of those strong dark hands that happened to be at the wheel knew the
+story of Dancing Point--of how many an ebony Tam O'Shanter had seen
+ghostly revelry there; and Gadabout was held well out in the river.
+
+Again, how completely we had the James to ourselves! We thought of how,
+even back in those old colonial days, our little craft would have had
+more company. Here, with slender bows pushing down stream, the Indian
+canoes went on their way to trade with the settlers at James Towne;
+their cargoes varying with the seasons--fish from their weirs in the
+moon of blossoms, and, in the moon of cohonks, limp furred and
+feathered things and reed-woven baskets of golden maize. Returning, the
+red men would have the axes, hatchets, and strange articles that the
+pale-faces used, and the cherished "blew" beads that the Cape Merchant
+had given them in barter.
+
+Here sailed the little shallops of the colonists as they explored and
+charted this unknown land. A few years later and, with rhythmic sway of
+black bodies and dip of many oars, came the barges of the river
+planters. Right royally came the lords of the wilderness--members of
+the Council perhaps, and in brave gold-laced attire--dropping down with
+the ebb tide to the tiny capital in the island marshes. And up the
+stream came ships from "London Towne," spreading soft white clouds of
+canvas where sail was never seen before; and carrying past the naked
+Indian in his tepee the sweet-scented powders and the rose brocade that
+the weed of his peace-pipe had bought for the Lady of the Manor.
+
+Now, Gadabout began to sidle toward the port bank of the river as our
+next harbour, Chippoak Creek, was on that side. Here the shore grew
+steep; and at one point high up we caught glimpses of the little
+village of Claremont. At its pier lay a three-masted schooner and
+several barges and smaller boats. Along the water's edge were mills,
+their steam and smoke drifting lazily across the face of the bluffs.
+
+On a little farther, we came to the mouth of Chippoak Creek with the
+bluffs of Claremont on one hand, the sweeping, wooded shores of Brandon
+on the other, and, in between, a beautiful expanse of water, wide
+enough for a river and possibly deep enough for a heavy dew. We
+scurried for chart and sounding-pole. Following the narrow, crooked
+channel indicated on the chart, we worked our way well into the mouth
+of the stream and cast anchor near a point of woods. From the chart we
+could tell that somewhere beyond that forest wall, over near the bank
+of the river, was the old manor-house that we had come chiefly to
+see--Brandon, one of America's most noted colonial homes.
+
+Next morning we were ready for a visit to Brandon. But first, we had to
+let the sailor make a foraging trip to the village. One of the troubles
+about living in a home that wanders on the waters, is that each time
+you change anchorage you must hunt up new places for getting things and
+getting things done.
+
+While it is charming to drop anchor every now and then in a snug, new
+harbour, where Nature, as she tucks you in with woodland green, has
+smiles and graces that you never saw before, yet the houseboater soon
+learns that each delightful, new-found pocket in the watery world means
+necessity for several other new-found things. There must be a new-found
+washerwoman, and new-found somebodies who can supply meats, eggs,
+vegetables, ice, milk, and water--the last two separate if possible.
+True, the little harbour is beautiful; but as you lie there day after
+day watching waving trees and rippling water, the soiled-clothes bags
+are growing fatter; and then too, even in the midst of beauty, one
+wearies of a life fed wholly out of tin cans.
+
+[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO CHIPPOAK CREEK.]
+
+[Illustration: COVE IN CHIPPOAK CREEK.]
+
+Henry was a good forager; and we were confident, as his strong strokes
+carried him from the houseboat shoreward, that he would soon put us in
+touch with all the necessary sources of supply, so that in the
+afternoon we could make our visit to the old manor-house. And he did
+not fail us. His little boat came back well loaded, and he bore the
+welcome news that "Sally" (whoever she might be) would take the
+washing.
+
+But now, a matter of religion got in between us and Brandon. A launch
+came down the creek; and, as we were nearly out of gasoline, the
+Commodore hailed the craft and made inquiry as to where we could get
+some. One of the two men aboard proved to deal in gasoline, and
+appeared to be the only one about who did. He had some of it then on
+the pier at Claremont; and would sell it any day in the week except
+Saturday. The rather puzzling exception he explained by saying that he
+was a Seventh-day Adventist. To be sure, it was then only Thursday; but
+as it seemed making up for bad weather that might prevent our running
+down to the pier next day, we arranged to take on a barrel of the
+gasoline that afternoon.
+
+We started after a rather late dinner; and ran back down the river to
+where we had seen the schooner and the barges the day before. Just as
+the Commodore made a nice, soft-bump landing at the pier, a man
+informed him that the gasoline had been carried to the Adventist's mill
+by mistake. So, we cast off our ropes again, and went farther down to
+where the little mills steamed away at the foot of the bluffs.
+
+Off shore, several sloops and rowboats were tied to tall stakes in the
+water. We went as close to shore as we dared; and Gadabout crept
+cautiously up to one of the stakes, so as not to knock it over, and was
+tied to it. Then, the Commodore went ashore and arranged to have the
+gasoline brought out to us.
+
+Presently, two negroes rolled the barrel into a lighter. They poled
+their awkward craft out to Gadabout and made fast to a cleat. It took a
+long time to pump the gasoline into cans, and then to strain it into
+our tank on the upper deck. The day was about over. Relinquishing our
+plan of visiting Brandon, we ran back to our Chippoak harbour, and our
+anchor went to bed in the creek as the sun went down.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+AT THE PIER MARKED "BRANDON"
+
+
+It was late on the following afternoon when Gadabout was out of the
+creek, out in the river, and bound for the little pier marked
+_Brandon_.
+
+A belated steamboat was swashing down stream, and a schooner, having
+but little of wind and less of tide to help it along, was rocking
+listlessly in the long swell. In the shadow of the slack sails a man
+sprawled upon the schooner's deck, while against the old-fashioned
+tiller another leaned lazily.
+
+Gadabout had to make quite a detour to get around some shad-net poles
+before she could head in toward the Brandon wharf; and her roundabout
+course gave time for a thought or two upon the famous old river
+plantation.
+
+Starting but a few years after those first colonists landed at
+Jamestown Island, the story of Brandon is naturally a long one. But,
+working on the scale of a few words to a century, we may get the gist
+of it in here.
+
+Among those first settlers was one Captain John Martin, a considerable
+figure of those days and a member of the Council appointed by the King
+for the government of the colony. He seems to have been the only man
+who believed in holding on at James Towne after the horrors of the
+"Starving Time." He made vigorous protest when the settlers took to the
+ships and abandoned the settlement.
+
+About 1616, he secured a grant of several thousand acres of land in the
+neighbourhood of this creek that we were now lying in, and the estate
+became known as Brandon--Martin's Brandon. The terms of the grant were
+so unusually favourable that they came near making the Captain a little
+lord in the wilderness. He was to "enjoye his landes in as large and
+ample manner to all intentes and purposes as any Lord of any Manours in
+England dothe holde his grounde." And he certainly started out to do
+it.
+
+But soon the General Assembly attacked the lordly prerogatives of the
+owner of Martin's Brandon. It did not relish the idea of making laws
+for everybody in the colony except John Martin, and he was requested to
+relinquish certain of his high privileges. This he refused to do,
+saying, "I hold my patente for my service don, which noe newe or late
+comers can meritt or challenge." After a while, however, he was induced
+to surrender the objectionable "parte of his patente," and manorial
+Brandon became like any other great estate in the colony.
+
+After several changes of ownership, Brandon came into the possession of
+another prominent colonial family, the Harrisons. The founder of this
+Virginia house (the various branches of which have given us so many men
+prominent in our colonial and national life) was Benjamin Harrison, one
+of the early settlers, a large land holder, and a member of the
+Council. His son Benjamin (also a man of position in the colony and a
+member of the Council) was probably the first of the family to hold
+lands at Brandon.
+
+But it was not until the third generation that the Harrisons became
+thoroughly identified with the two great plantations that have ever
+since been associated with the name; Benjamin Harrison, the third,
+acquiring Berkeley, and his brother Nathaniel completing the
+acquisition of the broad acres of Brandon. Berkeley passed to strangers
+many years ago; but Brandon has come down through unbroken succession
+from the Harrisons of over two centuries ago to the Harrisons of
+to-day.
+
+That makes a great many Harrisons. And as it happened, while Gadabout
+was on her way that day to visit their ancestral home, a genealogical
+chart with its maze of family ramifications was lying on a table in the
+forward cabin, and Henry saw it.
+
+"King's sake!" he exclaimed. "That must be the host they couldn't
+count. Don't you know John say how he saw a host no man could number?
+That's cert'nly them!"
+
+As we approached the Brandon pier, we saw a man on it who proved to be
+the gardener and who helped to handle our ropes as we made our landing.
+Then, with the aid of a beautiful collie, he led us up the slope toward
+the still invisible homestead.
+
+Entering the wooded grounds through quaint, old-fashioned gateways, we
+followed our guide along a trail that topped the river bluff, where
+honeysuckle ran riot in the shrubbery and tumbled in confusion to the
+beach below. The trail ended in a cleared spot on the crest of the
+bluff--a river lookout, where one could rest upon the rustic seat and
+enjoy the ever-varying picture of water, sky, and shore.
+
+[Illustration: RIVERWARD FRONT OF BRANDON.]
+
+But we turned our backs upon it all, for to us it was not yet Brandon.
+Now, our course lay directly away from the river along a broad avenue
+of yielding turf, straight through an aged garden. Above were the
+arching boughs of giant trees; below and all about, a wealth of
+old-fashioned bloom. The sunlight drifted through shadowing
+fringe-trees, mimosas, magnolias, and oaks. Hoary old age marked the
+garden in the breadth of the box, in the height of the slow-growing
+yews, and in the denseness of the ivy that swathed the great-girthed
+trees. It all lay basking in the soft, mellow light of sunset, in the
+hush of coming twilight, like some garden of sleep.
+
+Suddenly, the grove and the garden ended and we were over the threshold
+of a square of sward, an out-of-door reception room, no tree or shrub
+encroaching. Beyond this was a row of sentinel trees; and then a
+massive hedge of box with a break in the middle where stood the white
+portal of Brandon. We could tell little about the building. The eye
+could catch only a charming confusion: foliage-broken lines of wall and
+roof; ivy-framed windows; and, topping all, just above the deep green
+of a magnolia tree, the white carved pineapple of welcome and
+hospitality.
+
+In the softened light of evening, the charm of the place was upon
+us--old Brandon, standing tree-shadowed and dim, its storied walls in
+time-toned tints, its seams and crannies traced in the greens of moss
+and lichen, its ancient air suggestive, secretive,
+
+    "In green old gardens hidden away
+    From sight of revel and sound of strife."
+
+We entered a large, dusky hall with white pillars and arches midway,
+and with two rooms opening off from it--the dining-room on the one
+hand, the drawing-room on the other. In the old chimney-pieces, fire
+leaped behind quaint andirons taking the chill from the evening air.
+
+And there in the dusk and the fire-glow, where shadows half hid and
+half revealed, where old mahogany now loomed dark and now flashed back
+the flickering light, where old-time worthies fitfully came and went
+upon the shadowy, panelled walls--we made our acquaintance with Brandon
+and with the gracious lady of the manor. Our talk ran one with the hour
+and the dusk and the firelight--old days, old ways, and all that
+Brandon stands for.
+
+When our twilight call was over, it was with dreamy thoughts on the far
+days of Queen Anne and of the Georges that we went from the
+white-pillared portico down the worn stone steps and followed a side
+path back toward our boat. In the gloaming the side-lights were being
+put in place, and Gadabout turned a baleful green eye upon us, as
+though overhearing our talk of such unnautical things as gardens and
+heirlooms and ancestral halls.
+
+Next morning there was much puffing of engines and ringing of signal
+bells down in Chippoak Creek. Gadabout went ahead and backed and
+sidled. And it was all to find a new way to go to Brandon. Mrs.
+Harrison had told us of a landing-place in the woods at the creek side
+from which a sort of roadway led to the house. Fortunately, our charts
+indicated, near this landing, a small depression in the bed of the
+creek where there would be sufficient depth of water for our houseboat
+to float even at low tide. At last, we got over the flats and into the
+hole in the bottom of the creek that seemed to have been made for us.
+
+We rowed ashore to a yellow crescent of sandy beach shaded by cypresses
+where a cart-path led off through the woods. We called it the woods-way
+to Brandon. It followed the shore of the creek a little way, and
+through the leafy screen we caught glimpses of Gadabout out in the
+stream, now with a cone-tipped branch of pine and again with a
+star-leaved limb of sweet gum for a foreground setting.
+
+Farther along were many dogwood trees; and in the springtime these
+woods must be dotted with those white blossom-tents that so charmed the
+first settlers on their way up the river. Here, for the first time, we
+came upon the trailing cedar spreading its feathery carpet under the
+trees. Ferns lifted their fronds in thick, wavy clusters. The freshness
+from a night storm was upon every growing thing; a clearing northwest
+wind was in the tree-tops; and the air was filled with the spicy
+sweetness of the woodland.
+
+The way led out of the shadow of the trees into the open, and we came
+upon "the quarters"--long, low buildings with patches of corn and sweet
+potatoes about them. Two coloured women were digging in the gardens and
+another was busy over an out-of-door washtub. A group of picaninnies
+played about a steaming kettle swung upon a cross-stick above an
+open-air fire. One fat brown baby sat in a doorway poking a pudgy thumb
+into a saucer of food and keeping very watchful eyes on the strangers.
+Beyond the quarters were barns and some small houses.
+
+[Illustration: A SIDE PATH TO THE MANOR-HOUSE.]
+
+[Illustration: THE WOODS-WAY TO BRANDON.]
+
+And here was our first reminder of a distressing chapter in the story
+of Brandon. We knew that but few of these buildings were old-time
+outbuildings of the estate. The Civil War bore hard upon this as upon
+other homes along the James. It left little upon the plantation except
+the old manor-house itself, and that injured and defaced.
+
+On ahead, we could see the great grove in which the manor-house stands,
+looming up in the midst of the cleared land like a small forest
+reservation. Our route this time brought us to the homestead from the
+landward side through an open park, and we got a better view of the
+building than the dense foliage on the other side had permitted. The
+house is of the long colonial type, consisting of a square central
+building, two large flanking wings, and two connecting corridors. It is
+built of brick laid in Flemish bond, showing a broken pattern of glazed
+headers. Each front has its wide central porch and double-door
+entranceway.
+
+The emblem of hospitality that tops the central roof is truly
+characteristic of the spirit within. Old colonial worthies, foreign
+dignitaries, presidents and their cabinets, house-parties of "Virginia
+cousins," and "strangers within the gates"--all have known the open
+hospitality of Brandon. And the two latest strangers now moved on
+assured of kindly welcome at the doorway.
+
+Entering Brandon from the landward front, we found ourselves again in
+the large central hall. It is divided midway by arches resting on
+fluted Ionic columns and has a fine example of the colonial staircase.
+This hall and the drawing-room and the dining-room on either side of it
+cover the entire ground floor of the central building. Offices and
+bedrooms occupy the wings. The rooms are lofty, and most of them have
+fireplaces and panelled walls.
+
+Through the east doorway one looks down a long vista to the river. In
+the sunlight it is striking: the shadows from the dense foliage before
+the portal lie black upon the grass; beyond is the stretch of sunny
+sward; and then the turf walk under meeting boughs, a green tunnel
+through whose far opening one sees a bit of brown river and perhaps a
+white glint of sail.
+
+In drawing-room and dining-room are gathered numerous paintings forming
+a collection well known as the Brandon Gallery. It represents the work
+of celebrated old court painters and of notable early American artists.
+
+[Illustration: IN THE DRAWING-ROOM.]
+
+In the drawing-room, a canvas by Charles Wilson Peale may be regarded
+as the portrait-host among the shadowy figures gathered there, its
+subject being Colonel Benjamin Harrison. He was friend and college
+roommate of Thomas Jefferson, and a member of the first State Executive
+Council in 1776. Against the dense background is shown a slender
+gentleman of the old school, with an intellectual, kindly face and
+expressive eyes.
+
+About him is a distinguished gathering--dames and damsels in rich
+attire and languid elegance; gallants and nobles in court costume and
+dashing pose, jewelled hand on jewelled sword.
+
+In the dining-room, the portrait hostess is found, the wife of the
+Colonel Harrison who presides in the drawing-room. She was the
+granddaughter of the noted colonial exquisite and man of letters,
+Colonel William Byrd, whose old home, Westover, we should soon visit on
+our way up the river. It was through her marriage to Colonel Harrison
+that there were added to the Brandon collection many of the paintings
+and other art treasures of the Byrd family, including a certain,
+well-known canvas that carries a story with it.
+
+It is an old, old story--indeed the painting itself is dimmed by the
+passing of nearly two centuries; but just as the sweet face looks out
+from its frame ever girlish, so does perennial youth seem to dwell in
+the romance of the "Fair Maid of the James." The portrait is by Sir
+Godfrey Kneller. It shows a beautiful young woman. Her gray-blue gown
+is cut in a stiff, long-waisted style of the eighteenth century, yet
+still showing the slim grace of the maiden. The head is daintily
+poised. A red rose is in her hair and one dark curl falls across a
+white shoulder. Her face is oval and delicately tinted. She follows you
+with her soft, brown eyes, and her lips have the thought of a smile.
+
+Such was the colonial beauty, Evelyn Byrd, daughter of Colonel William
+Byrd. Though her home was not here but at Westover, and there she
+sleeps under her altar-tomb, yet the girlish presence seems at Brandon
+too, where the winsome face looks down from the wall, and where we must
+pause to tell her story.
+
+This Virginia girl was educated in London where she had most of her
+social triumphs. There she was presented at court and there began the
+pitiful romance of her life in her meeting with Charles Mordaunt. In
+all youth's happy heedlessness these two fell in love--the daughter of
+"the baron of the James" and the grandson and heir of London's social
+leader, Lord Peterborough.
+
+It seemed a pretty knot of Cupid's tying; but just here William Byrd
+cast himself in the role of Fate. Some say because of religious
+differences, some say because of an old family feud, he refused to
+permit the marriage. He brought his daughter back to Virginia where, as
+the old records say, "refusing all offers from other gentlemen, she
+died of a broken heart."
+
+That day when we left the manor-house, we started homeward, or
+boatward, with our faces set the wrong way; for we wandered first into
+the old garden.
+
+It is a typical colonial garden that lies down by the river--a great
+roomy garden where trees and fruit bushes stand among the blossoming
+shrubs and vines and plants. It is a garden to wander in, to sit in, to
+dream in. All is very quiet here and the world seems a great way off.
+Only the birds come to share the beauty with you, and their singing
+seems a part of the very peace and quiet of it all. The old-fashioned
+flowers are set out in the old-fashioned way. There are (or once were)
+the prim squares, each with its cowslip border, and the stiffly regular
+little hedgerows. One may hunt them all out now; but for so many
+generations have shrub and vine and plant lived together here, that a
+good deal of formality has been dispensed with, and across old lines
+bloom mingles with bloom.
+
+The old garden calendars the seasons as they come and go. As an early
+blossom fades, a later one takes its place through all the flowery way
+from crocus to aster.
+
+Trifling, cold, and unfriendly seem most gardens of to-day in
+comparison with these old-fashioned ones. Perhaps the entire display in
+the modern garden comes fresh from the florist in the spring, and is
+allowed to die out in the fall, to be replaced the next spring by
+plants not only new but even of different varieties from those of the
+year before. Not so at Brandon. Here, the garden is one of exclusive
+old families. Its flower people can trace their pedigrees back to the
+floral emigrants from England. The young plants that may replace some
+dead ones are scions of the old stock. Strange blossoms, changing every
+spring like dwellers in a city flat, would not be in good standing with
+the blue flags that great- (many times great-) grandmother planted, nor
+with the venerable peonies and day lilies, the lilacs and syringas that
+remember the day when the elms and magnolias above them were puny
+saplings. Even a huge pecan tree, twenty-one feet around, whose
+planting was recorded in the "plantation book" over a century ago, is
+considered rather a new-comer by the ancient family of English
+cowslips.
+
+Here is restful permanence in this world of restless change. Loved ones
+may pass away, friends may fail, neighbours may come and go; but here
+in the quiet old garden, the dear flower faces that look up to cheer
+are the same that have given heart and comfort to generations so remote
+that they lie half-forgotten beneath gray, crumbling stones with quaint
+time-dimmed inscriptions.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+HARBOUR DAYS AND A FOGGY NIGHT
+
+
+Day after day, we lay in our beautiful harbour of Chippoak Creek as the
+last of the summer-time went by and as autumn began to fly her bright
+signal flags in the trees along the shore.
+
+Sometimes we moored in the little depression that Nature had scooped
+out for us close by the Brandon woods; sometimes we scrambled out from
+it at high tide and went across and cast anchor by the Claremont shore.
+Now and then we would go for a run up the creek, or out for a while on
+the broad James.
+
+It is well to stay in a pretty harbour long enough to get acquainted
+with it. By the time we could tell the stage of the tide by a glance at
+the lily pads, and could get in and out over the flats in the dark, and
+could go right to the deep place in Brandon cove without sounding, we
+had learned where the late wild flowers grew, that the washing would
+get scorched on one side of the creek and lost on the other, that the
+best place for fishing was around behind the island, and that the
+Claremont "butcher" had fresh meat on Tuesdays and Fridays.
+
+Gradually, our neighbours of marsh and woodland lost their shyness, and
+some of them paid us the compliment of simply ignoring us. Most of the
+blue herons flew high or curved widely past Gadabout--long necks
+stretched straight before, long legs stretched straight behind. But the
+Tragedian (he was the longest and the lankest) minded us not at all. At
+the last of the ebb, a snag over near the shore would suddenly add on
+another angle and jab down in the water, coming up again with a shiver
+and a fish. Then, it would approach the houseboat and stalk the waters
+beside our windows. The stage stride of the creature won for it the
+name of the Tragedian. Knowing the shyness of his kind we felt
+especially pleased by a still further proof of his confidence. One
+morning, in response to a cautious whisper from the sailor, we stole
+stealthily upon the after deck and saw that the Tragedian was, truly
+enough, "settin' on an awnin'-pole pickin' hisself."
+
+There was a dead tree on our Brandon shore-line. It stood among tall
+pines and sweet gums and beeches as far up as they went, after that it
+stood alone in the blue. We called it Old Lookout. A bald eagle used it
+for a watch-tower. Lesser birds dared plume themselves up there when
+the king was away: crows cawed and sidled along the smooth branches;
+hawks and buzzards came on tippy wing and lighted there; and even
+little birds perched pompously where the big eagle's claws had been.
+
+But when the snowy head above the dark, square shoulders tipped Old
+Lookout, the national emblem had it all to himself. Occasionally he
+preened his feathers; but he did it in a bored, awkward way, as if
+forced on account of his valet's absence into unfamiliar details of
+toilet quite beneath his dignity. Now and then he would scream. It is
+hard to believe that such a bird can have such a voice. He always lost
+caste in our eyes when he had his little, choked-up penny whistle
+going.
+
+The attractions of harbour life did not keep us away from the old
+manor-house. Once when Gadabout ran around to the river front, she
+found a yacht from Philadelphia at the pier; and so passed on a little
+way and cast anchor in a cove opposite the garden.
+
+Few other notable houses in America, still used as homes, are the
+objects of so many pilgrimages as the historic places on the James.
+Indeed, few people but the hospitable Virginians would so frequently
+and so courteously fling wide their doors to strangers.
+
+When the yachting visitors were gone that day and we were at the old
+home engrossed in the architecture of the Harrison colonial cradle,
+there came the long blasts of the steamer Pocahontas blowing for the
+Brandon landing. Not that she had any passengers or freight for Brandon
+perhaps, or Brandon for her, but because all these river estates are
+postoffices and the Pocahontas carries the river mail. After a
+considerable time (for even the United States mail moves slowly through
+the sleepy old garden), a coloured boy brought in a bag with most
+promising knobs and bulges all over it.
+
+The postoffice at Brandon is over in the south wing where there are
+pigeon-holes and desks and such things. But the family mail is brought
+into the great dining-room and there, in the good plantation way, it is
+opened on the old mahogany.
+
+The mail that morning made a very good directory of the present-day
+family at Brandon. There were letters and packages for the mistress of
+the plantation and for the daughter and the son living in the
+manor-house with her, and also for the other daughter and her husband,
+Mr. Randolph Cuyler, who live across the lawn in Brandon Cottage with
+its dormer windows and wistaria-draped veranda. Mrs. Harrison is the
+widow of Mr. George Evelyn Harrison, and the daughter of the late
+William Washington Gordon, who was the first president of the Central
+Railroad of Georgia and one of the most prominent men in that state.
+
+[Illustration: "VENERABLE FOUR-POSTERS, RICHLY CARVED AND DARK."]
+
+Brandon to-day keeps up correspondence with relatives and friends in
+England and on the Continent, reads English papers and magazines, sends
+cuttings from rosebushes and shrubs across seas, makes visits there and
+is visited in turn. So, it was pleasant to have the reading of our own
+welcome letters diversified by bits of foreign news that came out of
+the bag for Brandon. We could imagine an expression of personal
+interest on the handsome face of Colonel Byrd, as he stood in court
+costume on the wall above us, when the wrappings were taken from a
+volume containing the correspondence of his old friend, the Earl of
+Orrery, and sent by the present Earl to Mrs. Harrison. In it were some
+of the Colonel's letters written from his James River home, and in
+which he spoke of how his daughters missed the gaieties of the English
+Court. The torn wrappings and bits of string were gathered up and a
+little blaze was made of them behind the old fire-dogs. Then we were
+shown more of Brandon.
+
+Up quaint staircases in the wings we went to the roomy bedrooms with
+their ivy-cased windows, mellow-toned panelling, and old open
+fireplaces. As daily living at Brandon is truly in the paths of
+ancestral worthies, so, at night, there are venerable four-posters,
+richly carved and dark, to induce eighteenth century dreams in the
+twentieth century Harrisons. Massive mahogany wardrobes, bureaus, and
+washstands are as generations of forebears have used them.
+
+Some of the bedrooms once had small rooms opening off from them, one on
+either side of the fireplace, each having a window. An English
+kinswoman of the family says that such rooms were called "powdering
+rooms." Through holes in the doors, the colonial belles and beaux used
+to thrust their elaborately dressed heads into these rooms, that they
+might be powdered in there without the sweet-scented clouds enveloping
+silks and velvets too.
+
+From bedrooms to basement is a long way; but we would see the old stone
+bench down there where used to sit the row of black boys to answer
+bells from these rooms above. Just over the bench hangs still a tangle
+of the broken bell wires. When colonial Brandon was filled with guests,
+there must often have been a merry jangle above the old stone bench and
+a swift patter of feet on the flags. Standing there to-day, one can
+almost fancy an impatient tinkle. Is it from some high-coiffured beauty
+in the south wing with a message that must go post-haste--a missive
+sanded, scented, and sealed by a trembling hand and to be opened by one
+no steadier? or is it perhaps from some bewigged councillor with
+knee-buckles glinting in the firelight as he waits for the subtle
+heart-warming of an apple toddy?
+
+Now, we were ready to go home; but we did not start at once. A stranger
+going anywhere from Brandon should imitate the cautious railways and
+have his schedule subject to change without notice. At the last moment,
+some new old thing is bound to get between him and the door. In our
+case, two or three of them did.
+
+Somebody spoke of a secret panel. That sounded well; and even though we
+were assured that nothing had been found behind it, we went to the
+south wing to look at the hole in the wall. At one side of a fireplace,
+a bit of metal had been found under the molding of a panel in the
+wainscoting. It was evidently a secret spring, but one that had long
+since lost its cunning; stiff with age and rust, it failed to respond
+to the discovering touch. In the end, the panel had to be just
+prosaically pried out. And, worst of all, the dim recess behind it was
+empty.
+
+When we had peered within the roomy secret space and had wondered what
+had been concealed there and what hands had pressed the hidden spring,
+we might really have started for the houseboat if it had not been for
+the skull story. But there, just underneath a window of the
+secret-panel room, was another place of secrets. It was a brick
+projection from the wall of such peculiar form as to have invited
+investigation. When some bricks had been removed and some earth taken
+out, a human skull showed white and ghastly. Then, at the touch of
+moving air, it crumbled away. That was no story to start anywhere on,
+even in broad daylight; so we had another.
+
+We were taken into the drawing-room and there, sharing honours with the
+portraits, was a little gold ring hanging high from the chandelier
+rosette. While not a work of art like one of the canvases on the wall,
+it has its own sufficient charm--it is a mystery. The dainty gold band
+has hung above the heads of generations of Harrisons, and somewhere in
+the long line its story has been lost. Who placed the ring where it
+hangs, and whether in joy or in grief, nobody longer knows. But it will
+swing safely there while Brandon stands, for in this ancient house,
+down the ages undisturbed, come the mysteries and the ghosts.
+
+That evening a wind came up and rain set in from a depressing
+dark-blue-calico sky. Gadabout did not take the trouble to run back
+into her creek harbour; but put down a heavier anchor and made herself
+comfortable for the night in the cove above the Brandon pier. The
+cradling boat and the patter upon the roof soon put us to sleep. Then
+something put us very wide awake again. We listened, but there was
+nothing to hear. The wind had died out and the boat had stopped
+rolling. In a moment, the long blast of a steamer whistle told what was
+the matter. In blanket-robe and slippers, the Commodore got quickly to
+a window, and found the river world all gone--swallowed up in fog.
+
+[Illustration: A CORNER IN THE DINING--ROOM.]
+
+[Illustration: THE DRAWING-ROOM FIREPLACE.]
+
+Another weird, warning call out of the mysterious, impenetrable mist;
+the steamer for Richmond was groping her way up the river. To be sure,
+anchored as we were so far inshore of the channel, we were well clear
+of the steamer's course; but in such heavy fogs the river boats often
+go astray. As succeeding blasts sounded nearer, the Commodore became
+anxious and, without waiting to turn out the crew, he started for the
+fog-bell.
+
+But where was the fog-bell? Not where it ought to be, we well knew.
+Some changes in the cockpit had crowded it from its place, and for some
+time it had been stowed away--but where? The Commodore scurried from
+locker to locker.
+
+"Couldn't we just as well whistle?" asked Nautica.
+
+"No, no. A boat under way whistles in a fog, but one at anchor must
+ring a bell."
+
+One more locker, and, "I've found it!" triumphantly cried the
+Commodore; but then, in dismay, "There goes the tongue out of the
+thing."
+
+Suddenly came another blast from the steamer. She sounded almost atop
+of us, and the whistling was followed by a swashing of water as though
+her propeller had been reversed.
+
+"Why don't you call Henry?" asked Nautica.
+
+"No time now," said the Commodore. "I must find something to pound this
+bell with."
+
+Of course there seemed nothing available. The Commodore seized a whisk
+broom, but dropped that in favour of a hair-brush; and then in the
+excitement some harder object was thrust into his hand and he started
+for the door.
+
+Nautica hurried to a window, and now saw a blur of light through the
+fog, showing that the steamer had safely passed us; but, though she
+called joyously, she was not in time to stay the Commodore, who had
+already dashed into the cockpit beating the tongueless bell with her
+curling-irons.
+
+When he was at last caught and silenced, we could hear voices on the
+steamer, orders being given, and then the rattle of running chain. She
+had given up trying to make headway in the fog, and was coming to
+anchor just above us.
+
+We heartened up the hickory fire and dressed after a fashion; and sat
+down to talk things over. The steamer did not ring her bell, so we did
+not summon the sailor to apply dressing-table accessories to ours.
+
+Going to a window now and then, we noticed that the fog was thinning;
+and at one place there seemed a luminous blur, indicating perhaps where
+the steamer lay. We wondered whether running so close upon Gadabout was
+what had determined the captain to cast anchor. And then we wondered
+other things about fogs and mists and bewildered ships.
+
+Nautica sat studying the firelight (not exactly in a dreamy old
+fireplace, but through a damper-hole in the stove), and at length
+voiced the inspiration that she got.
+
+"If only one could see things in a fog, it wouldn't be so bad," she
+said conclusively.
+
+"No," came the answer dryly, "a fog that one could see in would be
+quite an improvement."
+
+"Wait a moment," laughed Nautica. "I mean it isn't merely the dangers
+lurking in a fog, but the way you go into them that is so terrible. The
+dangers of a storm you can meet, looking them straight in the face; but
+those of a fog you have to meet blindfold."
+
+"I thought of that when I got up to-night and stood by the window,"
+said the Commodore. "As the steamer's whistle kept sounding nearer, I
+could imagine the great, blinded creature slowly groping its way up the
+river. I think I quite agree that it would be nicer to have fogs that
+people could see in."
+
+And we felt that Gadabout would be of the same way of thinking. Indeed,
+could we not hear her joining in as we talked, and good naturedly
+grumbling that if we couldn't have that kind of fogs, why then we ought
+to get close in shore among the crabs and the sand-fiddlers, where the
+big boats could not come; or else go into a quiet little creek with a
+sleepy little houseboat.
+
+But by this time no one was listening to Gadabout. Any further fussy
+complaining of this little craft was drowned by the Commodore reading
+aloud. He had bethought him of a book containing some chapters on
+Brandon that we had got from the manor-house. And reading made us
+hungry; and there were two apple tarts on the upper shelf of the
+refrigerator (for had not the cook provided them "in case an' you
+should wish 'em befo' you retiah"?); and by the time the tarts were
+gone, so was the fog; and the steamer headed again for Richmond and we
+for Dreamland.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+OLD SILVER, OLD PAPERS, AND AN OLD COURT GOWN
+
+
+Toward the last of our stay in Chippoak Creek, the weather was bad; but
+it was surprising how agreeable disagreeable days could be at Brandon.
+It was dark and gloomy that afternoon when we got to looking at the old
+family silver, and even raining dismally by the time we were carefully
+unfolding the faded court gown; but on we went from treasure to
+treasure oblivious of the weather.
+
+Fine and quaint pieces of old silver are among the family plate. Many
+of them bear the Harrison crest--a demi-lion rampant supporting a
+laurel wreath. And who would know what the weather was doing, when
+those ancient pieces were passing from hand to hand, and the
+fascinating study of hall marks was revealing dates more than two
+centuries past? There is even some ecclesiastical silver in the old
+home--the communion service once used in the Martin's Brandon Church, a
+building no longer standing. The inscription tells that the service was
+the gift of Major John Westhrope, and the marks give date of about
+1659.
+
+But no one form of the antique can hold you long at Brandon. From out
+some drawer or chest or closet, another treasure will appear and lure
+you away with another story of the long ago. With the inimitable sheen
+of old silver still in our eyes, our ears caught the crackle of ancient
+parchment; and we turned to the fascinations of venerable records and
+dingy red seals and queer blue tax stamps. The papers were delightfully
+quaint and yellow and worn, but from their very age a little awesome
+too.
+
+The most valued one of them all is the original grant of Martin's
+Brandon bearing date 1616--four years before the Pilgrims landed at
+Plymouth. The grant covers a page and a half of the large sheets of
+heavy parchment, and the ink is a stronger black than that on records a
+century younger.
+
+[Illustration: TREASURED PARCHMENTS, INCLUDING THE ORIGINAL GRANT OF
+1616.]
+
+On a worn paper dated 1702 is a plat of Brandon plantation. It shows
+that at that time the central portion of the manor-house had not been
+built as only two disconnected buildings (the present wings) are given.
+A part of the sketch is marked "a corner of the garden." So, for two
+hundred years (and who knows how much longer?) there has been that
+garden by the river. Off at one side of the old map, we found our
+landing-place in the woods beside some wavy lines that, a neat clerkly
+hand informed us in pale brown ink, were the "meanderings of Chippoak
+Creek."
+
+Poring so intently over those ancient papers with their great Old
+English capitals, their stiff flourishes, their quaint abbreviations,
+we should scarcely have been startled to see a peruked head bend above
+them and a hand with noisy quill go tracing along the lines of those
+long-ago "Whereases" and "Be it knowns."
+
+But, instead, something quite different came out of the past: something
+very soft and feminine fell over the blotched old papers--the treasured
+silk brocade in which Evelyn Byrd was presented at the Court of George
+I. Like a shadowy passing of that famous colonial belle, was the sweep
+of the faint-flowered gown. A fabric of the patch-and-powder days is
+this, with embroidered flowers in old blues and pinks clustered on its
+deep cream ground. Its fashioning is quaint: the Watteau pleat in the
+back with tiny tucks each side at the slim waist line, the square low
+neck, the close elbow sleeves, the open front to display the quilted
+petticoat.
+
+Mingled feelings rise at sight of the soft brocade whose bodice once
+throbbed with the happy heartbeats of this Virginia maiden, making
+pretty curtsy in rosy pleasure, the admiration of the English Court.
+Perhaps in this very gown she danced the stately minuet with young
+Charles Mordaunt; perhaps hid beneath its fluttering laces his first
+love sonnet. So, in those far colonial days it knew the life of her.
+The grace of the young body seems still to linger in the pale,
+shimmering folds; and the clinging touch of the old court gown is like
+a timid appeal for remembrance.
+
+After that rainy afternoon at the manorhouse, we were storm-bound
+aboard Gadabout for a few days. At last the weather cleared and we
+again thought of a trip ashore. There was yet a brisk wind; and for
+some time our rowboat rocked alongside, industriously bumping the paint
+off the houseboat, while we sat on the windlass box enjoying the fresh
+breeze in our faces and watching the driftage catch on our anchor
+chain. Of course one can sit right down on the bobby bow itself with
+feet hanging over, and poke with a stick at the flotsam. But that is
+only for moments of lazy leisure, not for a time when one is about to
+visit Brandon.
+
+At last, we were ashore and again in the "woods-way." That was the day
+we got into trouble, all owing to Nautica's passion for ancient
+tombstones. We were half way to Brandon when she concluded that it was
+not the manor-house that she wished to visit first, but the old
+graveyard. We stopped at the manager's house to inquire the way. The
+road led inland. It soon dipped to a bridge over a little stream, where
+the banks were masses of honeysuckle whose fragrance followed us up the
+slope beyond. On a little farther was a field with a grove in the
+centre of it that we knew, from the directions given us, contained the
+cemetery.
+
+We entered the field, and had got almost to the grove when Nautica
+suddenly stopped, stared, and turned pale. The Commodore's glance
+followed hers; whereupon, he uttered brave words calculated to reassure
+the timid feminine heart, and in a voice that would have been steady
+enough if his knees had kept still. The bull said nothing.
+
+Very soon, and without his moving at all, that bull was far away from
+us. We recognized at once that the field was properly his preserve and
+that we really had no right there; but we trusted that our intrusion in
+coming in would be atoned for by our promptness in getting out.
+
+In the absorbing process of putting space between the bull and the
+houseboaters, the restlessness of the Commodore's knees was really an
+advantage. They moved so fast that he was able to keep in advance of
+Nautica, and so be ready to protect her if another bull should appear
+on ahead. When he felt satisfied that he need no longer expose himself
+in the van (and, incidentally, that the bull in the rear had been left
+out of sight), he slackened his pace. We managed to get down to a walk
+in the course of half a mile or so; and at last approached Brandon at a
+quite decorous gait.
+
+There, we learned that we had gone to the wrong cemetery anyway--to the
+one that had belonged to the old Brandon Church whose communion service
+we had seen. The Harrison burying-ground was not far from the home.
+
+So, with members of the household, we went out across the lawn and
+around a corner of the garden to the family graveyard. The first
+Benjamin Harrison, the emigrant, who died about 1649, is not buried
+here. His tomb stands near the great sycamore tree in the churchyard at
+James Towne. However, the tombs of his descendants, owners of Brandon,
+are (with one exception) in this old plantation burying-ground.
+
+[Illustration: THE ANCIENT GARRISON HOUSE.]
+
+In the walk back to the house, we stopped to see what is probably the
+oldest, and in many respects the most interesting, building on the
+plantation. It is just an odd stubby brick house with a crumbling
+cellar-hut at one end. But family tradition says that it is one of the
+old garrison houses, or "defensible houses," built in early times for
+protection against the Indians. It certainly looks the part, with its
+heavy walls, its iron doors and shutters, and the indications of former
+loopholes. Upon those first scattered plantations, a characteristic
+feature was such a strong-house or "block-house" surrounded by a
+stockade or "palisado" of logs.
+
+While this strong-house at Brandon must have been built after the
+terrible Indian massacre of 1622, yet it doubtless served as a place of
+refuge in later attacks. Many a time that dread alarm may have spread
+over this plantation. We thought of the hurrying to and fro; of the
+gathering of weapons, ammunition, bullet-molds, food, and whatever
+necessities there may have been time to catch up; and of the
+panic-stricken men, women and children fleeing from field and cabin to
+the shelter of the stockade and of the strong-house.
+
+Back again in the manor-house, we spent our last hour at Brandon; for
+Gadabout was to sail away next day. It was a colonial hour; for Brandon
+clocks tick off no other, nor would any other seem natural within those
+walls.
+
+Sitting there in the old home, we slipped easily back into the
+centuries; back perhaps to the day of the great mahogany sofa that we
+sat upon. It all seemed very real. The afternoon sun--some eighteenth
+century afternoon sun--came in through deep-casemented windows. It
+lighted up the high, panelled room, falling warmly upon antique
+furniture about us, upon by-gone worthies on the wall, and (quite as
+naturally, it seemed) upon a colonial girl, who now smilingly appeared
+in the doorway. Bringing the finishing touch of life to the old-time
+setting, she came, a curl of her dark hair across a white shoulder and
+her gown a quaintly fashioned silk brocade.
+
+This eighteenth century presentment was in kindly compliance with a
+wish that we had expressed on that rainy day when we were looking over
+Brandon treasures. It was Brandon's daughter in the court gown of her
+colonial aunt, Evelyn Byrd. And we thought in how few American homes
+could this charming visitor from the colonies so find the colonial
+waiting to receive her.
+
+[Illustration: MISS HARRISON IN THE COURT GOWN OF HER COLONIAL AUNT,
+EVELYN BYRD.]
+
+Nowhere in the world, it is said, are there so many new, comfortable
+homes built for the passing day as in America; but also in no civilized
+country are there so few old homes. More and more, as this fact comes
+to be realized, will Americans who care for the permanent and the
+storied appreciate such colonial homesteads as Brandon, the ancestral
+home of the Harrisons.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+A ONE-ENGINE RUN AND A FOREST TOMB
+
+
+By the time we had finished our visit at Brandon, we were in the midst
+of the beautiful Virginia autumn. Though much of the warmth of summer
+was yet in the midday hours, the mornings were often crisp and the
+evenings seemed to lose heart and grow chill as they saw the sun go
+down.
+
+Part of the houseboat was heated by oil stoves, but the forward cabin
+had a wood stove, and above it on the upper deck was our little
+sheet-iron chimney. It had a hood that turned with the wind and creaked
+just enough for company. So, during mornings and evenings and wet days,
+Gadabout smoked away, cozy and comfortable.
+
+She was smoking vigorously on the day that we bade good-bye to Chippoak
+Creek. That was a glorious morning--one of those mornings when the sun
+tries to warm the northwest wind and the northwest wind tries to chill
+the sun, and between the two a tonic gets into the air and people want
+to do things. We wanted to "see the wheels go round" (not knowing then
+that only one would go round); and we prepared to start for Kittewan
+Creek, a few miles farther up the James.
+
+Kittewan Creek is no place in particular, but near it are two old
+plantations that historians and story-writers have talked a good deal
+about. These two estates, Weyanoke and Fleur de Hundred, having no
+longer pretentious colonial mansions, are often overlooked by the
+traveller on the James, who thereby loses a worthy chapter of the river
+story.
+
+When our anchors came up out of the friendly mud of Chippoak Creek, we
+let the northwest wind push us across the flats and into the channel.
+Then we summoned the engines to do their duty. The port one responded
+promptly, but the other would do nothing; and as we ran out of the
+creek and headed up the river, the Commodore was appealing to the
+obdurate machine with a screwdriver and a monkey-wrench.
+
+The tide was hurrying up-stream and the wind was hurrying down-stream,
+and old Powhatan was much troubled. Gadabout rolled awkwardly among the
+white-caps but continued to make headway. Pocahontas, the big river
+steamer, was coming down-stream. We could see her making a landing at a
+wharf above us where a little mill puffed away and a barge was loading.
+Evidently, the steamer was to stop next at a landing that we were just
+passing, for there men and mules were hurrying to get ready for her.
+Now the starboard bank of the river grew high and sightly, but on the
+port side there was only a great waste of marsh.
+
+The Commodore spent much time with the ailing motor. Once he lost a
+portion of the creature's anatomy in the bottom of the boat. Nautica
+found him, inverted and full of emotion, fishing about in the
+bilge-water for the lost piece. She offered him everything from the
+toasting-rack to the pancake-turner to scrape about with; but he would
+trust nothing of the sort, and kept searching until he found the piece
+with his own black, oily fingers.
+
+"I believe the man that built this boat was a prophet!" he exclaimed as
+his face, flushed with triumph and congestion, appeared above the
+floor. "He said that if we put gasoline motors in, we should have more
+fun and more trouble than we ever had in our lives before; and we
+surely are getting all he promised."
+
+[Illustration: STURGEON POINT LANDING.]
+
+[Illustration: AT THE MOUTH OF KITTEWAN CREEK.]
+
+As we rounded the next bend in the river, we got the full force of the
+wind and, with but one engine running, it was a question for a while
+whether we were going to go on up the river or to drift back down
+stream. Fortunately, the James narrowed at this point, thus increasing
+the sweep of the tide that was helping us along, and slowly Gadabout
+pushed on, slapping down hard on the big waves and holding steady.
+
+A short distance beyond Sturgeon Point was the indentation in the shore
+marking the mouth of Kittewan Creek. Old cypress trees stepped out into
+the river on either side, while a row of stakes seemed to indicate the
+channel of the little waterway. Sounding along we went in with four
+feet of water under us.
+
+Our plan was to find an anchorage a little way up the creek, and then
+next day to start with the rising tide for a run on up to Weyanoke. Of
+course Weyanoke fronted upon the James, but our idea was to make a sort
+of back-door landing by running up this stream and in behind the
+plantation. There was no sheltering cove to lie in on the river front;
+and besides, to make the visit at the regular pier was so hopelessly
+commonplace. Any of the ordinary palace yachts could do the thing that
+way. But it took a gypsy craft like Gadabout to wriggle up the little
+back-country creek and to land among the chickens and the geese
+and--bulls perhaps; but then all explorers must take chances.
+
+Kittewan Creek is a marsh stream; yet for some distance in from the
+mouth tall cypresses stand along the reedy banks. These trees protected
+us from the high wind and made it easy for us to take Gadabout up the
+narrow watercourse.
+
+As she moved slowly along, we were looking for an ancient tomb that we
+had been told stood on the left bank of the stream not far from the
+mouth--"the mysterious tomb of the James" some one had called it. While
+we could see nothing of it then, we resolved to search for it upon
+returning from our run up the creek to visit Weyanoke. But we were
+destined to see the tomb before seeing Weyanoke.
+
+[Illustration: THE FOREST TOMB.]
+
+[Illustration: THE OLD KITTEWAN HOUSE]
+
+Upon reaching the first bend in the stream, our tree-protection failed
+us and Gadabout became so absorbed in the antics of wind and tide that
+she paid no further heed to any suggestions on our part as to the
+proper way to navigate Kittewan Creek. Her notion seemed to be to run
+down a few fish-nets whose corks were bobbing about on the water, and
+then to go over and hang herself up on some cypress stumps at the edge
+of the marsh. We insisted upon her going a little way farther up the
+creek. But a compromise was all that could be effected; anchors were
+dropped and operations temporarily suspended on both sides.
+
+We had a much belated dinner, and then all went ashore to make
+inquiries and to get supplies at a house that stood on a bluff above
+the bend in the stream. It proved to be a very old building and quite a
+landmark. It was called the Kittewan house. There, we learned that the
+tomb we were looking for was on the bank almost opposite where our
+houseboat lay.
+
+We found it close to the creek. It was an altar-tomb, broken and
+timeworn and almost covered with an accumulation of earth and moss and
+leaves. One corner support and one side of the caving base were gone,
+letting ferns and lichens find a home within, tender green fronds
+touching the shadowing slab above them.
+
+The strange, unremembered grave was that of a woman. For, when we had
+scraped clear a little of the slab, we came upon the name Elizabeth.
+Our floating home was near enough to lend shovel and broom; and we
+undertook to free the tomb (that was itself being slowly buried) and to
+bring to light again the chiseled story of the long-ago Elizabeth who
+lay in this lonely place.
+
+When the granite slab was uncovered and swept clean, we were able to
+read most of the words upon it, although the stone was cut almost as
+deep by the little fingers of rain and of frost as by the graver's
+heavy hand that had itself gone to dust long ago. Slowly we found the
+words telling that there rested the body of Elizabeth Hollingshorst,
+whose husband, Thomas Hollingshorst, was a shipmaster; that her father
+was Mr. Piner Gordon of the family of Tilliangus in Aberdeenshire,
+Scotland; and that she died November 30, 1728.
+
+The father's name, Gordon (so proud a one in Aberdeenshire), and the
+use before it of the prefix Mr. (a term then synonymous with
+"gentleman" and never lightly given in those days of well-defined rank)
+show that this Elizabeth was of gentle birth. The words "Ship Master"
+tell of how the breath of the old North Sea had called Thomas
+Hollingshorst from the banks and braes and led him to point the bow of
+his merchant ship across seas, bound for England's far-away colony.
+Little would he dream--crowding canvas to speed his cargo to the
+Virginia plantations--that his gentle-born Elizabeth was to find a
+grave in that feared American wilderness.
+
+The longer we worked over the ancient stone the more we came to feel
+the pitiful meaning of it.
+
+We felt that this Elizabeth was a true heart and a brave one, who
+ventured the perilous sea-voyage of the early days with her shipmaster
+husband. She did not come as other women came--to make a home in the
+new land and to have friends and neighbours there. She came, a passing
+stranger, upon her husband's trading ship; a ship that would anchor but
+to exchange its English wares for the planter's tobacco, and then turn
+prow again to the perils of the sea. When illness came in the new, wild
+land, how distant must have seemed Aberdeenshire in those days of the
+little ship and the slow sail! And here, longing for one more sight of
+Scottish heather, this Elizabeth died.
+
+Seeking for her a last resting-place, the stranger ship moved up the
+river and came to anchor at the mouth of this creek. They lowered her
+gently over the ship's side into a long-boat and then rowed up the
+stream into the forest. Here by the creek's side they buried her, and
+(doubtless by the ship's own compass) they orientated the forest grave.
+Then again the ship sailed across seas and bore sad tidings to some
+family of Gordons in Aberdeenshire.
+
+In those days it must have been long before the returning vessel could
+sail up the James, this time bearing the graven tomb from Scotland. For
+a little while, the stillness of the forest was once more broken,
+startling the timid woodland folk; and then these strangers from
+overseas were gone. Again the great silence fell and the wilderness
+took the grave to itself. Slowly it set upon the tomb its seal of moss
+and lichen and vine. Unmindful of the mark of human loss and grief, the
+wild folk came and went. Joyously the cardinal flashed his crimson wing
+above the darkening stone; the deer came to drink from the stream and
+lifted their heads to scent the breeze that came with the dawn through
+the cypress trees, across a forgotten grave; hard and incurious, the
+Weyanoke Indians slipped by like darker shadows in the forest gloom;
+and only the little night birds seemed to know or to care as they
+called plaintively in the marshes at twilight.
+
+As we were about to leave the tomb, we bethought us that the
+anniversary of the death of this Elizabeth was drawing near. We heaped
+the holly with its glowing berries above the crumbling stone. And still
+we lingered; for the Gordons of Tilliangus seemed very far away from
+this daughter of their house. As the sunset lights were fading, we saw
+a new moon pale on the tinted sky; and we thought of how for almost two
+centuries crescent moons had trembled from silver to gold above this
+forlorn grave on the bank of the Kittewan.
+
+A short row in the dusk out upon the stream, and we stepped aboard
+Gadabout. She never seemed more cozy and homelike. A great bowl of pink
+and yellow chrysanthemums from Brandon's old garden and trailing cedar
+and ferns and red-berried holly added to the cheer. Soon our
+home-lights streamed from the broad windows out across the water, and
+some faint glow must have touched that lonely tomb on shore.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+NAVIGATING AN UNNAVIGABLE STREAM
+
+
+In the morning the sun and the mist filled our little harbour with a
+golden shimmer, and all the marsh reeds were quivering in the radiance.
+The blue herons were winging out to the river, and the doves were
+weaving spells round and round the dormer-windowed cottage on the hill.
+
+Gadabout's household was early astir ready for the run up Kittewan
+Creek. We had only to get a chicken or two at the house on the bluff,
+and then we should be ready to start at the turn of the tide. Imagine,
+then, our chagrin when the sailor returned with not only the chickens
+but the information also that we could not get the houseboat any
+farther up the stream, on account of numerous shallows and submerged
+cypress stumps.
+
+Once more the charts were got out and spread upon a table. We still
+felt that if the sounding-marks were right Gadabout could navigate the
+stream. However, at two places islands were shown where there seemed
+scarcely room in the creek for islands and Gadabout too; and if we had
+also to throw in a few cypress stumps for good measure, our prospects
+for visiting Weyanoke by the chickens-and-geese route were indeed not
+promising.
+
+But we knew Gadabout and how we had taken the craft almost everywhere
+that people had told us she could not go. For, to our minds, one of the
+chief charms of houseboating lay in poking about in such out-of-the-way
+places.
+
+Let the yacht reign supreme as the deep-water pleasure craft, that
+trails its elegance perforce ever up and down the same prescribed
+channels. The ideal houseboat is the light-draft water gypsy, that
+turns often from the buoyed course and wanders off into the picturesque
+world of little waters; along streamlets that lead in winding ways to
+quaint bits of nowhere, and into quiet shallows of forgotten lagoons
+that have fallen asleep to the lullaby of their own rushes.
+
+So it was settled that our houseboat was to try to go up the creek to
+Weyanoke's back door, and again we were waiting only for the turn of
+the tide. When sticks and straws and frost-tinted leaves, floating down
+past us toward the James, changed their minds and started back up the
+Kittewan, Gadabout went with them.
+
+After a while the creek began to shallow rapidly and we kept the sailor
+on ahead in a shore-boat sounding, while we tried to keep the houseboat
+from running over him. The southerly breeze was gradually freshening
+and Gadabout began to show a corresponding partiality for the northern
+bank of the stream. But, on the whole, she was behaving very well and
+apparently the mutinous spirit of the day before had entirely
+disappeared. We had to stop just before coming to an island standing in
+a sharp turn of the little waterway.
+
+"Looks like we can't make this bend, sir," called the sailor from the
+shore-boat. "There's a sure enough bar 'cross here."
+
+By keeping at it, he managed to find a channel for going round on the
+port side of the island. Then he came aboard, started an engine, and we
+moved on again. But Gadabout had been deceiving us; she still had no
+notion of going up the creek. We were just starting to go around the
+island when she suddenly transferred her allegiance from the
+steering-wheel to the wind, and sidled off in the marshes till she
+brought up hard aground. There was nothing to do but to wait for the
+rising tide.
+
+Nautica got out the chart again to see where we were. At Weyanoke there
+are two plantations, an upper one and a lower one; and for a while she
+was busy measuring between the stream and the little black dots that
+indicated the plantation buildings. At last, after a final counting up
+on her fingers, she announced, "If we can get around six more bends of
+this curly stream, we shall be within less than half a mile of the
+house at Lower Weyanoke."
+
+As the water rose around the houseboat, we threw out a kedge anchor,
+hauled off, and got under way again. Now, Gadabout started at once to
+go around the island--but (mutiny again!) she was going around on the
+wrong side. The Commodore and the sailor, with long poles, pushed
+frantically in the mud striving to set the unruly craft in the way she
+should go; but she was determined to take the wrong channel and was
+slowly getting the better of us.
+
+"She's gittin' away from us, sir," called the sailor.
+
+"I see she is," said the Commodore, "and I don't believe she can get
+around the island on this side."
+
+But away she went, wind and tide carrying her up the wrong channel.
+Laughing at the amusing persistence of the craft, all we could do was
+to keep her away from the marshes and let her go.
+
+The creek rapidly narrowed; the marsh gave way to woodland; and just
+ahead was but a small passage between island and mainland for us to go
+through. We pushed in between waving walls of autumn foliage. Branches
+tapped on our windows, and crimson sweet gum leaves pressed against the
+panes as if to make the most of their little moment for looking in.
+
+Gadabout passed through the narrow opening without a stop, though
+carrying twigs and bright leaves away with her. We ran the next
+straight stretch of the creek, and at the bend came upon another
+island. Here shoals and cypress stumps quite blocked the channel. In a
+good, old landlubberly manner we hitched Gadabout to a tree and waited
+to see if the rising tide would make a way for us.
+
+[Illustration: HUNTING FOR THE CHANNEL.]
+
+[Illustration: APPROACHING IN A NARROW PLACE.]
+
+Houseboating was taking us into strange places. And yet what a
+comfortable way to journey into the world in the rough! Many are the
+advantages of houseboating over camping or any other form of outing. In
+a floating home one goes into the wild without sacrificing the comforts
+or even the essential refinements of life. For women it is an ideal way
+to visit Dame Nature.
+
+But now the houseboaters upon Gadabout were becoming fearful lest Dame
+Nature had closed her doors on ahead of them and would not receive them
+up the Kittewan. It was good news when the sailor called from his
+rowboat that he had found a channel for going on around the island.
+
+This tune Gadabout showed a willingness to go just where we wished her
+to go, but insisted upon doing it stern-foremost or broadside. We ran
+her forward and backward and poled most vigorously; but after all had
+the humiliation of drifting around the island wrong end first.
+
+After that there was little trouble in going up the stream. Before long
+an old homestead came in sight on a hill to our left, and we knew that
+it must be Lower Weyanoke. But an impassable marsh stretched along the
+stream, and there was no sign of a landing or of a roadway that might
+lead to the house. We kept on, curious now to see how far our houseboat
+could go. Suddenly we found out. She turned a bend and, there ahead,
+hummocks and stumps occupied about all there was left of Kittewan
+Creek.
+
+The head of navigation had been reached for even our presumptuous
+craft. An anchor was cast; whereupon Gadabout swung to one side, bumped
+against a tree, and then settled herself comfortably in the marshes to
+await our pleasure. It would not do to let the falling tide catch us in
+that place. Fortunately, there was a marshy cove on one side of us, and
+by backing into that we got turned around and headed down stream again.
+We found a deep place that would do for an anchorage nearly opposite
+Lower Weyanoke, and close beside a little company of trees that
+showered Gadabout with red and yellow leaves.
+
+When the tide fell, it disclosed many roots and stumps in the channel;
+and the sight of each one added to our sense of importance in having
+successfully navigated the stream. Later, some of the men from the
+Kittewan farm came along in a rowboat.
+
+"Well, you did make it after all," they said. "We've been looking for
+you all along the creek, expecting to find you hung up on a cypress
+stump."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+IN WHICH WE GET TO WEYANOKE
+
+
+As Gadabout lay moored in Kittewan Creek, the houses of Weyanoke were
+not very far from us, and one of them was in plain sight; but the
+question was how to get to them. Wide stretches of marsh bordered the
+stream and a wire fence ran along the reedy edge. We began to be
+impressed with the advantage of approaching such a plantation in the
+customary way, by the river front.
+
+But we had not lost zeal for the unconventional, and fortune favoured
+us. A man passing in a skiff told us that a road leading to the
+Weyanoke houses could be reached by rowing up a tiny bayou that joined
+the creek a short distance above us.
+
+This bayou, he explained, was not one of those ordinary waterways that
+you can travel on just any time. In fact, for a good deal of the time
+it was not a waterway at all. But usually, when a half tide or more was
+in, a rowboat could be taken up to the landing near the road.
+
+So, one afternoon an untenanted houseboat was left lying in the
+sunshine and the marshes, all aboard having taken to the shore-boats
+and gone in search of the more solid portions of Weyanoke. Weyanoke is
+an Indian name and means "land of sassafras." In 1617 the Indian chief,
+Opechancanough, gave this land of sassafras to Sir George Yeardley,
+afterward governor-general of the colony; and his ownership gave early
+prominence to the place, though he did not live upon the plantation
+that he had here.
+
+After several transfers of title, Weyanoke came into the possession of
+Joseph Harwood in 1665. Through many generations both the upper
+plantation and the lower one remained in the Harwood family; and Upper
+Weyanoke is still owned by descendants of Joseph Harwood, the family of
+the late Mr. Fielding Lewis Douthat.
+
+[Illustration: LOWER WEYANOKE.]
+
+In our search for this land of sassafras, a short row up the creek took
+us to the opening into the bayou. Here, there was a break in the wire
+fence along the creek guarded by a queer water-gate that hung across
+the entrance to the side stream. Holding the water-gate open and
+pushing our boats through, with what skill might be expected from
+persons who had never seen a water-gate before, we started up the tiny,
+winding channel.
+
+On either hand the reeds were so tall that we were quite shut in by
+them; but reeds are never so beautiful as when outlined against the
+sky. Here and there, a stump or a cypress tree stood out in the water
+almost barring the way. Ducks were swimming about or absurdly standing
+on their heads in the shallows, and at our coming went paddling off
+into the sedges quacking their disapproval. Before the water quite gave
+out, we reached the little landing. Now our way led up from the lowland
+between hazy autumn fields where crows were busily gleaning and insects
+shrilled in shock and stubble.
+
+The road ended in front of the house at Lower Weyanoke. The building is
+a large frame one and very old. It has had its full share of
+distinction, being for so many generations the home of the colonial
+family of Harwoods and of their descendants, the Lewises and the
+Douthats. Some years ago the plantation passed to strangers. From the
+riverward portico, we saw traces of an old garden whose memory is kept
+green by the straggling box that long ago bordered the fragrant
+flower-beds. On beyond was a glint of the sun-lit river. A group of
+towering cottonwood trees, standing in the dooryard, is so conspicuous
+a feature of the landscape that it serves as a guide for the pilots on
+the river boats.
+
+Leaving the sailor here to do some foraging in the neighbourhood, we
+went on to Upper Weyanoke. We followed a road that skirted corn fields
+and pasture lands, busy plantation life on every hand. One could but
+think of the very different scene that was here in the days of the
+Civil War. Few places suffered at that time more than did Weyanoke.
+Here, part of Grant's army crossed the James in the march upon
+Petersburg. While bridges were building, the Federal forces were
+scattered over the plantation; and when at last they crossed the river,
+they left devastation behind.
+
+As we came upon the outbuildings of the upper plantation, we heard
+singing and laughter. Corn-husking was going on in the big barn. The
+doors were open, and from the distant roadway we could see the negroes
+at work, bits of their parti-coloured garb showing bright against the
+dark interior.
+
+And at last, truly enough, our pathway led among the chickens and the
+geese. Indeed, one blustering gander "quite thought to bar our way."
+But, taking courage from the stirring old couplet,
+
+    "We routed him: we scouted him,
+    Nor lost a single man."
+
+There were other fowl in sight too; fowl that had a special
+significance just then. For, despite the bright, warm days, the last
+Thursday in November was near at hand; and we wondered whether our
+Thanksgiving dinner could be found in this flock of plump, bronze
+birds.
+
+The early plantation house at Upper Wey-anoke was long ago destroyed by
+fire, and a modern house of brick now stands upon the old site. A
+broad, shaded lawn slopes to the river. Here one gets an impressive
+view of the James as it broadens into a curving bay below Windmill
+Point.
+
+When we entered the home, our interest centred in its mistress, the
+little lady of old-time grace and courtesy sitting by the open fire. It
+was later that we noticed the two portraits hanging near her--one of
+Chief-Justice Marshall and one of a beautiful dark-eyed young woman.
+
+The relationship of these three--Mrs. Douthat, the Chief-Justice, and
+the beautiful young woman--added to the charm of our talk. For the
+great John Marshall had a son John who married Elizabeth Alexander, a
+descendant of the colonial house of Thomas; and that Elizabeth
+Alexander was the girl in the picture. John and Elizabeth had a
+daughter, and that daughter was the sweet little lady sitting there
+beneath the portraits. Her grandfather, the Chief-Justice, named her
+Mary Willis in memory of his cherished, invalid wife.
+
+This Mary Willis Marshall married Fielding Lewis Douthat, of the
+Harwood family, and went as a bride to Lower Weyanoke when the home
+there yet spoke bravely of colonial dignity, and the garden was still
+fragrant with trim bordered beds of bloom. Some years later, they moved
+to Upper Weyanoke where Mr. Douthat died. In the family circle as we
+found it were Mrs. Douthat, three daughters, and two sons.
+
+[Illustration: AN ANCESTRESS OF WEYANOKE.]
+
+[Illustration: CHIEF-JUSTICE JOHN MARSHALL.]
+
+While the conversation ranged wide, from seventeenth century plantation
+grants to twentieth century houseboats, we found our attention drawn
+most to the reminiscences of Mrs. Douthat, told in the charming speech
+of a day that had time for the art of conversation. She had childhood
+recollections of the great Chief-Justice, and had treasured the family
+traditions concerning him. We got all too little both of the personal
+recollections and of the traditions; but they made it seem a very real
+John Marshall that this granddaughter of his was talking about.
+
+Mrs. Douthat could not add much to the little that we already knew
+about a small brick building on the plantation that has long been
+pointed out from the steamers' decks as one of the oldest buildings in
+the country. It stands on the river bluff near the present home. If as
+old as is usually supposed, it is doubtless one of the early garrison
+houses, and must have seen desperate days on this Indian-harassed
+peninsula.
+
+In this house, up to the time of her death a few years ago, lived the
+old mammy of the family. She was one of the last of a type developed
+through generations of plantation life, and now disappearing with it.
+Her place was at the end of a long line of dusky nurses, the first of
+whom landed nearly three centuries ago at James Towne, and crooned to
+the children of the royal governors the weird minor lullabies of
+jungle-land.
+
+At present, Elias, a gray-haired negro, lives in the little old house.
+Every morning he goes to see Mrs. Douthat; and he seldom varies the
+greeting: "How is you dis mawnin', Miss Mary? I sut'n'y is glad to see
+you able to be up an' 'roun'. You know you an' me is chil'en of de same
+day."
+
+Weyanoke, like most of the large plantations on the James, has a
+postoffice in the house. Our visit over, we gathered up quite a
+promising lot of mail and started homeward with the Commodore looking
+like a peripatetic branch of the rural free delivery. Evening was
+gathering in as we walked back along the field roads. The air was warm,
+a gentle breeze went rustling through the corn, and the autumn haze
+just veiled field and marsh and distant woods.
+
+Upon reaching our shore-boat, we pushed out upon the marsh waterway. In
+our absence the tide had been slowly creeping up on reeds and rushes,
+had reached its height, and (leaving a brown, bubbly line upon each
+slender stalk to show that the law had been fulfilled) had started
+slowly down again.
+
+But the ebb had only begun. The marsh was yet almost tide-full, and all
+its channels were water-lanes. Each little way was like every other,
+and one could well wander amiss down between those winding walls of
+sedges.
+
+We paddled very slowly, often stopping to let the boat drift on the ebb
+tide. Why might we not find out the secret of the marshes if we went
+very softly through the heart of them?--that secret of which the
+slender reeds are always whispering; that mystery that keeps them
+always a-shiver. Is it something they have hidden from the searching
+tide? Is it known to the little marsh-hen that cunningly builds her
+nest at the foot of the sedges? Is it guessed by the restless finny
+folk that slip and search beneath the brown waters?
+
+Holding our boat quiet in the ebbing bayou, we looked and listened.
+There were sounds of sibilant dripping in the dim sedges; of alewives
+jumping by the side of our boat; of a sudden rush of blackbird wings;
+and of the evening breeze as it freshened in the bending blades. We
+could see the many rivulets, wine-red now in the sunset light; and the
+graceful swaying of great grasses, pale green and silver and tan; and
+the red and golden sky above: ebbing rivulets, rippling reeds, drifting
+clouds, and sunset shades. And that was all. Nor had we guessed the
+secret of the marshes.
+
+Yet, we should have been content still to look and to listen, down in
+the hidden tiny ways of the marshland, but for the fading light that
+warned us homeward. What would night be among the sedges with the
+wandering rivulets full of twinkling stars, with the soft calling of
+wakeful birds, and with the skurrying of little creatures in their
+shadowy forest of reeds?
+
+Slowly we paddled on in the twilight; on through the little water-gate
+and out upon the Kittewan, where images of the bordering trees lay
+sharp and black on the strangely purple water. From down-stream where
+Gadabout waited, came such a fervent burst of song that we knew that
+the entire crew was urging its soul to be on guard--
+
+    "Te-en thou-san' foes ah-rise."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+ACROSS RIVER TO FLEUR DE HUNDRED
+
+
+The next day we determined to run around to the river front of
+Weyanoke. We were yet charmed with the idea of being back-door
+neighbours of the old plantation; but not at quite such long range.
+When the tide served, Gadabout dropped down the twisting Kittewan.
+Though she paused involuntarily in trying to round the island where the
+sweet gum flamed against the pines, and caught her propeller on a
+cypress stump as she sighted the dormer windows of the old house on the
+hill, yet she came in good time to the clear channel and, passing the
+tangled underwood that hid the forsaken tomb, she reached the mouth of
+the creek before the tide turned and started up the James on the last
+of the flood.
+
+Weyanoke plantation is a peninsula lying in a sharp elbow of the river,
+so that it was a run of a few miles from the mouth of Kittewan Creek,
+on one side of the peninsula, around to the Weyanoke pier on the other
+side.
+
+Upon reaching the sharp bend in the river at the point of the
+peninsula, we could see one reason anyway why Grant should have chosen
+this as a place for crossing the James. Here, the banks of the river
+suddenly draw close so that the stream is less than half a mile wide.
+However, it makes up in depth what it has lost in width, the channel at
+this point being from eighty to ninety feet deep. Even at the last of
+the tide the water here flowed swiftly and with ugly swirls and oily
+whirlpools that made the river seem vicious.
+
+Now, we ran toward the southern shore to look at the ruins of a fort
+built in the War of 1812. The sun was setting beyond the high bluff
+that backed the fort, and the place lay blurred in the shadow; but
+apparently time, and perhaps the hard knocks of war, had not left much
+of Fort Powhatan. Two creeks that enter the James near the old fort
+received our close scrutiny, for every side stream tempted us. We would
+wonder how far Gadabout could follow each winding way, and what she
+might find up there.
+
+[Illustration: UPPER WEYANOKE.]
+
+A short run farther up the river took us abreast the pier at Upper
+Weyanoke; and, passing around it, we cast anchor within a stone's throw
+of the plantation home.
+
+[Illustration: AT ANCHOR OFF WEYANOKE.]
+
+We sat out in the cockpit a long time that night enjoying the strangely
+quiet mood of the Powhatan. The old river flowed so peacefully that it
+mirrored all the sky above; and we looked down into a maze of stars
+with the sea-tide running through. Then a blinding light put out all
+our stars as the night boat from Richmond came down the river and
+trained her searchlight so that it picked Gadabout out of the darkness.
+Our whistle saluted with three good blasts. The searchlight responded
+by making three profound bows--so profound that they reached from the
+high heavens down to the water at our feet. Then, it suddenly whipped
+to the front to pick out the steamer's course again through the
+darkness of the night.
+
+While lying at anchor in front of Upper Weyanoke, we made further
+visits at the plantation home. Despite the ravages of war and of two
+destructive fires, relics of old-time life are at this plantation too.
+It was pitiful, but amusing as well, to hear how some of these escaped
+the war-time vandalism. The soldiers who had stripped the home--even of
+carpets--when they left the plantation to cross the James, would have
+been chagrined could they have looked back over the river and have seen
+old family treasures coming out from secret nooks and old family silver
+from a hollow tree.
+
+Mrs. Douthat told us how Nature favoured Grant in the crossing of the
+James. Though comparatively the river is so narrow at the point of the
+Weyanoke peninsula, yet to get to the stream at that point it was
+necessary for the Federal forces to traverse an extensive swamp.
+Apparently the swamp was impassable; but the officers found, running
+through it, a most peculiar formation--a natural ridge of solid earth.
+It was a ready-made military roadway upon which the troops could pass
+through the swamp and reach the river. Mr. Douthat always declared that
+"The Almighty had built it for them."
+
+Across the James from Weyanoke lies Fleur de Hundred. One day, with a
+daughter and a son of the Weyanoke household aboard, we sailed over to
+visit the old plantation. We knew that we should find nothing in the
+way of plantation life there, as the estate has long lain idle; and we
+knew also that no mark was left on the broad acres to tell of the life
+of colonial days. But the broad acres themselves were there, and they
+would remember the old times no doubt; and perhaps, lying in the
+sunshine and with nothing in the world to do, they might tell us
+things.
+
+We knew somewhat about Fleur de Hundred ourselves. In 1618 Sir George
+Yeardley, governor of the colony (the same who owned Weyanoke),
+patented these lands and gave them the name that has scarcely been
+spelled twice alike since. Sir George sold the plantation to Captain
+Abraham Piersey.
+
+We sought to trace the successive owners on beyond Abraham; but they
+married and died at such a rate that we got lost in the confusion
+somewhere between the altar and the tomb, and gave the matter up. Two
+well established customs among the early colonists seem to have been to
+die early and to marry often. Perhaps they usually reversed the order;
+but, at any rate, dying in middle age after having married "thirdly" or
+"fifthly"--yes, even "sixthly"--makes top-heavy family trees and
+puzzling lines of descent.
+
+In this instance, we were quite content to skip to the opening of the
+nineteenth century when Fleur de Hundred became the property of John V.
+Willcox, in whose descendants it has ever since remained.
+
+Landing upon a pebbly beach beside the ruins of a pier, we took a long
+walk inland to the present-day home. While historic Fleur de Hundred is
+now allowed to lie idle, its plantation life all gone, yet its home
+life continues and the old-time hospitality remains, as we found in
+that afternoon visit. And when we set our faces toward Gadabout again,
+Nautica had roses and lavender and violets from an old garden that
+refused to stop blooming with the rest of the plantation, and the
+Commodore treasured a rare pamphlet upon early Virginia that only
+Virginia courtesy would have entrusted to a stranger.
+
+Through the quiet of the sleeping plantation, we took our way toward
+the river. Some bees had found late sweetness along the overgrown
+roadway. The air was still and sweet with the scent of sun-drying
+herbs. A lagging sail was on old Powhatan. About us on every hand lay
+the historic soil of Fleur de Hundred. We wondered where the
+manor-house had stood in those early colonial days when Sir George
+Yeardley, the governor, made his home here, with many indented servants
+and half the negroes in the colony to serve him; and where had been the
+several dwellings and store-houses, stoutly palisaded, that had formed
+quite a village for his day.
+
+[Illustration: PRESENT-DAY FLEUR DE HUNDRED.]
+
+It is not recorded that the Governor was a great smoker, but he was an
+enthusiastic grower of tobacco and may almost be said to have been the
+father of the industry. Doubtless, in his time, most of these fertile
+acres were covered with the strange weed that the Englishmen had got
+from the village gardens of the red man.
+
+But here were grown maize and wheat also; and to grind these Sir George
+built--over there on the point of the plantation--the first windmill in
+America.
+
+In the eyes of the savages, he must have waxed to the stature of a
+great medicine man, when he made of wood the long arms that beckoned to
+the winds and made them come to grind his grain. Through all time, had
+not their fathers (or rather their mothers) had to steep grain for
+twelve hours; then laboriously pound it in stone mortars; and then sift
+it through baskets woven of river reeds?
+
+Less matter for wonderment was that long-armed creature on the point of
+land to Hans Houten and Heinrich Elkens, sailing up the James in the
+White Dove with good Holland sack for barter. These sturdy mariners
+from the dyke-and-windmill country would regard the contrivance with
+more critical eyes than could the red man from the bow-and-arrow
+wilderness.
+
+But we saw nothing of windmill or of palisaded village or of royal
+governor; and field and meadow and woodland all seemed too sleepy to
+tell us much about them. They only served to recall the tantalizing,
+broken bits that the records give of the picturesque life that was
+here--of colonial pomp and savage dignity, of London trade and Indian
+barter, of English games and merriment, of colonial trials and
+tragedies: all this of which we know, yet know so little.
+
+And so we left the old plantation dreaming in the autumn sunshine--left
+it to the poets and to the story-tellers, who seem to have adopted it.
+They know how to weave the spells that bring back old manor-houses and
+gallants and ladies and tall London ships and the vanished scenes of
+love and of war. The place belongs to them; old Fleur de Hundred--half
+real and half ideal--an old-time bit of story-land.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+GADABOUT GOES TO CHURCH
+
+
+It was the day before Thanksgiving when the houseboat Gadabout, with
+her good-byes all said, fished up her anchor from the river bottom in
+front of Weyanoke, and started off to find another place to drop it
+farther up the stream. She was ready for the holiday. The material for
+her Thanksgiving dinner was all aboard: part of it canned and boxed as
+the steamer had just brought it from Norfolk; and the rest of it, and
+the best of it, plump and gobbling on the stern.
+
+But Gadabout's preparations for the day had not stopped here. Not only
+had she provided the season's feast, but she had diligently inquired of
+her chart and of her neighbours where she might take her family to
+church. The chart had told her of a little stream, called Herring
+Creek, a few miles farther up the James, and had shown her a mark upon
+the bank of the creek that it called Westover Church. The neighbours
+had said that the chart was right; and had added that the church was a
+colonial one still in use, and doubtless Thanksgiving services would be
+held there. Fortunately, Herring Creek was a stream that Gadabout had
+intended running into anyway, as it would be the anchorage most
+convenient to the next colonial estate that she should visit--the
+plantation of Westover from which the church had taken its name.
+
+From Weyanoke to the old church was not very far; but, as Gadabout had
+one or two things to stop for on the way and as she might be delayed by
+the tide, this bright Wednesday morning found her bustling up the river
+almost afraid that she would be late for service.
+
+Doubtless, in her haste, she was quite put out when we threw the wheel
+to starboard as she was passing Court House Creek, and carried her
+somewhat out of her way. All that we did it for was to run in close to
+look at some "stobs" just showing above the water. At the mouths of
+most of the creeks along the James are such "stobs" or broken pilings.
+They are the ruins of old-time piers, the last vestige of a vanished,
+picturesque river trade.
+
+Ancient pilings have lasted well in the James; and these evidently once
+belonged to the piers of up-creek colonial planters. They tell of the
+day when ships from England, Holland, and the Indies sailed up the
+river for barter with the colonists. While the planters whose estates
+fronted directly on the James received their importations upon wharves
+before their doors and delivered their tobacco in the same convenient
+manner, the planters up the creeks were at more trouble in the matter.
+The bars at the mouths of the streams kept the ships from entering; and
+they had to wait outside while the planters brought their produce down
+upon rafts and in shallow-draft barges, pirogues, and shallops.
+
+Some of the most picturesque of the colonial river trade was at these
+little creek-mouth piers. Here came not only the tall ships from
+England bearing everything used upon the plantations from match-locks
+and armour to satin bodice and perfumed periwig, from plow and spit to
+Turkey-worked chairs and silver plate, from oatmeal, cheese, and wine
+to nutmegs and Shakespeare's plays; but here came also tramp
+craft--broad, deep-laden bottoms from the Netherlands, and English and
+Dutch boats from the West Indies. These picturesque vagrant sails
+sought their customers from landing to landing, and sold their cargoes
+at comparatively low prices. Such a ship was assort of bargain boat for
+these scattered settlers up the creeks of the James; a queer, transient
+department store at the little cross-roads of tidewater.
+
+There would be exchange of news as well as of commodities, and a
+friendly rivalry in the matter of tales of adventure--the planter's
+story of Indian attacks being pitted against the captain's yarn of the
+"pyrats" that gave him chase off the "Isle of Devils." Then up the
+masts of the trading ship the sails would go clacking, and the prow
+that had touched the warm wharves of the Indies would point up the
+river again, bound for the next landing. And the shallops of the
+planter--after loading from the little pier with casks and bales still
+strong of the ship's hold, of the tar of the ropes, of the salt of the
+sea--would disappear up the forest stream.
+
+A short distance above Court House Creek, Gadabout stopped at a landing
+to get some oil. She was rather hurried and flustered about the matter,
+as the steamer from Petersburg was coming around the point above and
+would soon be making this same landing, and a schooner that was loading
+was right in the way, and the first line that was thrown out broke, and
+the engine stopped at the wrong time, and--all those people looking on!
+Besides, this was supposed to be an interesting fishing point; but how
+was a little houseboat to get a look at it, lying there alongside a big
+schooner that she couldn't see over? Altogether, Gadabout fumed and
+fussed so much here, pitching about in the choppy water, jerking her
+ropes, and battering her big neighbour, that it was a relief to all
+concerned when she got her oil aboard, cast off her ropes, and, giving
+the schooner a last vindictive dig in the ribs, set off up the river.
+
+Even after getting away from the schooner there was not much to be seen
+at the landing. Yet, in season, the little place would be quite quaint
+and bustling; for it was one of the many fishing hamlets along the
+river.
+
+The James has always been a favourite spawning-ground for sturgeon.
+Those first colonists, writing enthusiastically of the newfound river,
+declared "As for Sturgeon, all the World cannot be compared to it."
+They told of a unique and spirited way the Indians had of catching
+these huge, lubberly fish. In a narrow bend of the river where the
+sturgeon crowded, an adroit fisherman would clap a noose over the tail
+of a great fish (a fish perhaps much larger than himself) and go
+plunging about with his powerful captive. And he was accounted
+"cockarouse," brave fellow, who kept his hold, diving and swimming, and
+finally towed his catch ashore.
+
+The colonists early turned their attention to sturgeon fishing. The roe
+they prepared and shipped abroad for the Russians' piquant table
+delicacy. The grim irony of it--half famished colonists shipping
+caviar!
+
+To-day the coming of the sturgeon puts life into the little hamlets
+like the one we had just passed, and dots their sandy beaches with the
+bateaux and the drying nets of the fishermen.
+
+[Illustration: A FISHING HAMLET.]
+
+We passed the down-bound steamer near Buckler's Point and her heavy
+swell came rolling across toward us. Almost instinctively we turned our
+craft crosswise to the river to face the coming waves; for to take them
+broadside meant a weary picking up of fragments from the cabin floors,
+and a premature commingling of the contents of the refrigerator. Just
+beyond Buckler's Point we came to the opening into Herring Creek and,
+passing readily over the bar, went on up the little stream. As we
+sailed along we caught glimpses to port of the warm, red walls of a
+stately building that we knew to be Westover.
+
+[Illustration: A RIVER LANDING.]
+
+We found Herring Creek a good, lazy houseboating waterway; a brown
+ribbon of marsh stream wandering aimlessly among the rushes. Turn after
+turn, and the marshes still kept us company--the quiet, lone marshes
+that had come to have such a charm for us. Evidently, they were
+beginning to feel that the year was growing old. Greens were sobering
+into browns, and near the water's edge were tips of silvery white. The
+frowsy-looking grassy bunches, here and there, were ducking blinds,
+where hunters soon would be in hiding with their wooden decoys floating
+near.
+
+Like some great marsh creature herself, Gadabout followed the winding
+way, puffing along contentedly. Sometimes, when the turns were too
+sharp for her liking, she swung to them lazily, with a long purr of
+water at bow and stern, and seemed about to wallow off through the
+rushes.
+
+Now something of a bank developed along our starboard side. It grew
+into a bluff covered with pines and thick-coated cedars and
+white-trunked sycamores and gray beeches. This woodland too had the
+year writ old. The surviving green of cedar and pine could not hide the
+telltale leafless trees that stood between. But more significant than
+leafless trees was the luxuriant holly with its ripe, red berries,
+gayly ready for Christmas decorations and to grace the birth of a new
+year.
+
+And yet, these were among the most glorious days for houseboating:
+tonic days with a hint of winter in the chill, crisp air, and dreamy
+days with a lingering of summer in the sun's warm glow. The enervating
+heat was over, and the worrisome insects were gone. In peace we could
+sail in the marsh stream or climb the banks for ferns and holly.
+Gadabout moved with masses of pale reeds, spicy boughs of cedar, bay
+branches, and glowing holly nodding on her bow. The air was no longer
+filled with the song of birds; but it was alive and cheerily a-twitter
+with their fat flittings from seeds to berries, from marsh to woodland.
+Heartily we declared that it was better to go an-Autumning than
+a-Maying.
+
+After a while there were signs of people about. Little boats were
+nosing into the bank here and there, and occasionally a white farmhouse
+would peep over the bluff above our water-trail.
+
+[Illustration: "LITTLE BOATS WERE NOSING INTO THE BANK HERE AND
+THERE."]
+
+It was along toward dinner time when, according to our count, the
+houseboat had rounded as many bends as the chart seemed to require, and
+ought to be near Westover Church. So, upon catching sight through the
+trees of a brick building up on the bluff, we concluded that Gadabout
+had reached her journey's end, and an anchor was dropped.
+
+Toward evening Nautica and the Commodore went ashore. At the top of the
+hill was a little graveyard, and standing in it was the old church that
+we had come to see. It was a small building and plain, but of historic
+interest. As originally built, about the middle of the seventeenth
+century, it stood not here but down on the shore of the James at
+Westover. One of the earliest churches in the country, and then
+standing on one of the greatest estates in Virginia, it was a typical
+centre of colonial life; and gathered about it, in the little graveyard
+by the river, were the tombs of noted colonial dead.
+
+About the middle of the eighteenth century the church was moved to its
+present site. Enclosed within a brick wall and with the tombs of
+generations of worshippers again clustering about it, Westover Church
+had settled down once more to revered old age when the ravages of war
+swept over the land. In that sad war of brothers over a union that this
+church had seen formed, over soil that it had seen won from Great
+Britain, the humble old House of God was left dismantled, its graveyard
+walls thrown down, and its tombs broken. After the war, the church was
+repaired, and it is still the place of worship for the countryside.
+
+The rectory stood on a bluff near by, overlooking the wide stretch of
+marsh and the far windings of the stream. We found that the latest of
+the long line of rectors and equally important rectors' wives that
+Westover Church has known were the Reverend and Mrs. Cornick, who told
+us of the hopes of the little community that the Government would yet
+pay indemnity for the injury done by Federal soldiers to the old
+church.
+
+The next morning brought so fine a Thanksgiving Day that our gratitude
+rose up with the sun--though the rest of us awaited a more convenient
+hour. The air was crisp; the sky was unclouded. When, in good time for
+morning service, we went up the hill to the old brick church, we saw
+horses and carriages lined along the fence. Inside the building some of
+the people who had come early were having neighbourly confidences over
+the backs of the pews.
+
+Naturally our thoughts went wandering between service and sermon and
+church. Sometimes (and through no fault of the good rector either), we
+would find ourselves far back in the story of that colonial house of
+worship, and full two hundred years away from the text. We would see
+this old church as it stood at first on the wild bank of the James, and
+the families of those early planters gathering in. They would come from
+up and down the river; some in pirogues and pinnaces and sloops, and
+some on horseback with the fair dames on pillions behind. Or, somewhat
+later, lordly coaches would roll to the door bearing colonial grandees.
+
+The plain little church had seen brave attire in those days, when the
+parish worshipped in flowered silks and embroidered waistcoats and
+laced head-dresses and powdered periwigs. Then, after the services,
+would come the social hour, when dinner invitations went round, parties
+were planned, and there was a general changing about of the guests that
+were always filling Virginia homes. Doubtless, the lavish hospitality
+of the master of Westover, who attended this church, caused quite a
+Sunday pilgrimage to that mansion of his that we had glimpsed through
+the trees as Gadabout entered Herring Creek.
+
+We went out past chatting groups (stopping for the greeting of the
+rector and his wife); past horses that were being unhitched and
+vehicles that were cramping and creaking; on down to the stream where
+geese were paddling in the marshes, and overhead the rectory doves were
+wheeling in the sunny air. Rowing down the creek toward the houseboat,
+we stopped here and there to gather reeds and holly.
+
+"This is the first time that we have ever gone to church by boat," said
+the Commodore.
+
+"Yes," answered Nautica, "and it was just the way to do it. We have
+attended a colonial church in a quite colonial way."
+
+When we sat down to our Thanksgiving dinner, we felt almost like
+landlubbers again; for while our home acre was a watery one and
+Gadabout, boat-like, swung and swayed, yet we had real neighbours up on
+the bluff and there was even a church next door. Later, we saw coming
+down the stream some good after-dinner cheer--our rowboat with mail
+that had been accumulating for days at Westover. Letters and papers and
+packages and magazines were welcomed aboard. Comfortably we settled
+down for an evening of catching up with the world.
+
+Next morning Gadabout made an uneventful run down the stream, anchored
+just within the mouth of the creek, and sent Henry off into the country
+foraging.
+
+Of course certain provisioning arrangements followed Gadabout from
+harbour to harbour. Boxes of groceries came up from Norfolk or down
+from Richmond by steamer; and also every few days a big cake of ice
+arrived in a travelling suit of burlap lined with sawdust. But that
+still left many things to be obtained along the way. As most of the
+country stores were back from the river, the sailor, on horseback or in
+a cart, made many a long provisioning trip.
+
+Toward evening when there came a gentle bump upon Gadabout's guard and
+the rattle of a chain upon her cleat, we went out to see what the
+supply boat had brought. As soon as we heard the troubled sputtering,
+"An' I mos' give up gittin' anything," we knew that the little
+shore-boat was a nautical horn of plenty. And so she proved as her
+cargo came aboard to an accompaniment of running comment.
+
+"I don' know _where_ I been, an' if I had to go back, I couldn' do it.
+That's butter there--that'll do till the nex' box comes. The store
+didn' have much of anything; an' I struck out into the country, I did,
+an' mos' los' myse'f. But the horse he knowed the way. I got another
+turkey, anyhow. I'm cert'nly glad we jes' begun to eat 'em if we got to
+eat 'em steady. The man had done sold him; but I used my silver tongue,
+I did, an' he let me have him. There's some apples an' turnips an'
+sweet potatoes. I got them at the store. An' where I got them eggs at,
+I could get a couple of chickens nex' week if I could jes' fin' the
+place."
+
+So the fruits of the foraging came tumbling aboard--a promising, goodly
+array. And Gadabout had no troubled dreams that night of a wolf
+swimming up to her door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+WESTOVER, THE HOME OF A COLONIAL BELLE
+
+
+On the following day, Gadabout scrambled across the flats out into the
+James again, intent upon a visit to Westover.
+
+Unlike Brandon, Westover stands within sight from the river; and we had
+a good view of the old homestead as we passed by to make our landing at
+the steamer pier which is a little above the house.
+
+There was a break in the tree-fringe on the north bank of the James. A
+sea-wall extended along the water's edge, and from either end of it a
+brick wall ran far inland. Within the spacious enclosure, the grounds
+swept back and up from the river, with noble trees and close-cut lawn;
+and crowning the slope stood the beautiful old mansion. A stately
+central building of red brick, with dormer windows in its steep-pitched
+roof, rose between low flanking corridors and wings like some overlord
+with his faithful vassals in attendance. In neutral brown the quiet
+river, in shadowy green the sloping lawn, in dull red and gleaming
+white the lofty, many-windowed front of Westover--a picture that drew
+Gadabout in close to the shoals that day.
+
+The bit of history that goes with the picture gives us many glimpses of
+old-time elegance and romance, and helps us to a good idea of some of
+the pretentious phases of colonial life. It runs in this way.
+
+Back in the beginnings of things American, when the dissatisfied
+planters at James Towne were starting out to establish their estates
+along the river, these lands by Herring Creek attracted attention.
+Under the name of Westover they soon became the property of the Byrd
+family, and rose to prominence among colonial estates in connection
+with the fortunes of that distinguished house.
+
+The golden age of Westover was in the days of the second William Byrd,
+who was one of the most striking figures of colonial times. Handsome,
+learned, witty, and capable; with exquisite taste and elegant culture
+fashioned in the friendship of English noblemen; with almost endless
+acres and boundless wealth--a cavalier of cavaliers was this
+London-bred Virginian.
+
+[Illustration: RIVERWARD FRONT OF WESTOVER.]
+
+It is surprising that this _beau-ideal_ should have remained spouseless
+for two years after coming into his estate. He must have been
+considered the most fascinating matrimonial possibility in the colony.
+One can imagine how in a gathering of Virginia maidens intent upon
+their tambour embroidery, when the name of Westover's young master came
+up, a circle of eyelashes went down and a circle of tender hearts went
+both up and down. The prize was finally won by Lucy Parke, daughter of
+Colonel Daniel Parke whose portrait hangs at Brandon.
+
+Some years later, family litigation called Colonel Byrd to England,
+where his wife and little daughter, Evelyn, joined him, and where his
+wife soon died. The residence in London continued for a number of
+years; and resulted in giving the Colonel a new wife in the person of a
+rich young widow, and in giving social finish and a broken heart to
+Evelyn Byrd.
+
+Under the guidance of her father, she was educated after the manner of
+the fashionable life of that day. It must have been a time quite to the
+elegant Colonel's liking when London turned in admiration to his
+daughter; when, but sixteen and already crowned with social successes,
+the cultured beauty from the plantation on the James was presented at
+the English Court.
+
+The stories of Evelyn Byrd's London experiences bring many noted names
+into the train of those who did her honour: the Lords Chesterfield and
+Oxford, and Pope at the height of his glory, and the cynical Lord
+Hervey, and Beau Nash, the autocrat of Bath. There should be mentioned
+too that old courtier (whoever he was) whose admiration was expressed
+in the rather mild witticism, "I no longer wonder that young men are
+anxious to go to Virginia to study ornithology, since such beautiful
+_birds_ are to be found there."
+
+It was in the midst of this London gayety that Evelyn Byrd so literally
+met her fate in meeting the grandson of Lord Peterborough, Charles
+Mordaunt. The story of that unhappy love affair--the devoted pair, the
+opposition of the maiden's father, and the separation of the
+lovers--has become an oft-told but ever attractive romance.
+
+About 1726, Colonel Byrd returned with his family to Virginia; and it
+was then, it seems, that he built the present mansion at Westover, and
+entered upon the almost sumptuous life there that was to make the
+plantation famous.
+
+And Westover was a worthy setting for the worthy Colonel. Without the
+home, were lawns and gardens beautiful with native and imported trees,
+shrubs, and vines; and within the home, spacious rooms with rich
+furnishings and art treasures gathered in England and on the Continent.
+Here too was one of the largest and most valuable collections of books
+in the colonies. As a matter of course, this home was a distinguished
+social centre, drawing to itself the most brilliant colonial society.
+
+Colonel Byrd died in 1744, and was buried in the old garden when it was
+in all its summer glory. In the next generation, Westover passed to
+strangers, having been for a century and a quarter the home of the
+Byrds, who for three successive generations had held proud position in
+colonial America.
+
+Since then, the plantation has suffered from many changes of ownership,
+and from the Civil War. The mansion was held several times by the
+Federal forces, being used as headquarters and as an army storehouse.
+Among the war injuries it sustained was the destruction of one wing.
+The destroyed portion has been rebuilt recently by the present owner of
+the estate, Mrs. C. Sears Ramsay. Under her ownership, Westover has had
+added interest, especially for lovers of the colonial, on account of
+such extensive restoration as has made the old home one of the finest
+examples of eighteenth century architecture and furnishing in America.
+
+Surely while we have been telling the story of Westover, Gadabout has
+had time to reach the steamboat pier above the house; and we may take
+it that she is safely tied to the pilings.
+
+Once ashore, Nautica and the Commodore found that a short walk along
+the river bluff brought them to an entrance to the Westover grounds.
+Gates of wrought iron, with perhaps a martlet from the Byrd coat of
+arms above them, swung between tall pillars in the wall. From this
+entrance, a pathway approached the homestead diagonally, and afforded
+charming views of the house and its surroundings. To our right as we
+walked, the lawn, thick set with trees, sloped gently to the river
+wall. To our left, the views came in broken, picturesque bits; a
+stretch of shrubbery, a reach of garden wall, some quaint outbuildings
+in warm, dull red, a glimpse of courtyard beyond a corner of box, and
+then the old home itself.
+
+[Illustration: THE HALL, WITH ITS CARVED MAHOGANY STAIRCASE.]
+
+The riverward portal of Westover stands tall, white, and finely typical
+of its day. Above squared stone steps, the double doors with the
+fanlight above them are framed by two engaged columns supporting an
+elaborate pediment that has the symbolic pineapple in the centre.
+
+We stood before the fine entrance, fancy painting the old-time scene
+within; that scene of eighteenth century elegance which is the
+traditional picture of colonial Westover. The door opened, and we
+entered upon perhaps quite as charming an eighteenth century scene,
+which is the Westover of to-day.
+
+A panelled hall extended through the house, the double doors at the
+farther end opening upon a glass-enclosed vestibule. About midway, and
+from beneath a heavy crystal chandelier, the stairway of carved
+mahogany rose to a landing, where an ancient clock stood tall and dark,
+then turned and wound to the rooms above.
+
+To the right of the hall was the drawing-room. Passing over its
+threshold, we thought of those old colonial days, the days of Colonel
+Byrd. As in his time, the light came subdued through the
+deep-casemented windows. It fell upon the walls that he had so
+handsomely panelled, upon the ceiling that he had ornamented in the
+delicate putty-work of his day, and upon furniture in carved mahogany
+that was of the period of his ownership of Westover.
+
+At the farther end of the room was the noted mantelpiece imported from
+Italy by Colonel Byrd. It is an elaborate creation of Italian marble
+with relief design in white upon a black background. In front of it, on
+either hand, stood handsome brass torcheres, with their suggestion of
+the mellow candle-light that was wont to fall in this same room upon
+the courtly Colonel, the lovely Evelyn, and those brilliant assemblages
+of colonial times.
+
+Opening also from the hall are the dining-room with its high colonial
+mantel and typical Virginia buffet, the French morning-room with its
+gray green tints and its touches of gilt, and the library with its old
+chimney-piece, high black fire-dogs, and quaint fire-tending irons. All
+the rooms have their colonial panelling, deep window-seats, and open
+fireplaces.
+
+[Illustration: THE HEPPLEWHITE SIDEBOARD WITH BUTLER'S DESK.]
+
+In the dining-room our interest was quickened upon our being told that
+the handsome sideboard had belonged to the Byrd family. It is believed
+to be a Hepplewhite, though similar in lines to a rare design of
+Sheraton's. Above the sideboard a circular, concave mirror of elaborate
+eighteenth century type accentuates the period furnishing of the room.
+
+[Illustration: "FOUR-POSTERS AND THE THINGS OF FOUR-POSTER DAYS."]
+
+Up-stairs even more than below, we felt the atmosphere of the olden
+time. Perhaps passing the ancient clock on the landing helped to set us
+back a century or two. We were quite prepared for the quiet,
+old-fashioned upper hall, with its richness half lost in the shadows
+and with its sleepy night-stand holding a brass house lantern and a
+prim array of candles in brass candlesticks.
+
+In the bedrooms were four-posters and the things of four-poster days.
+Wing-cheek chairs of cozy depths told of old-time fireside dreams; a
+work-table with attenuated legs called to mind the wearisome needlework
+of our foremothers; and a brass warming-pan carried us back to the
+times when only such devices could make tolerable the frigid winter
+beds of our ancestors.
+
+One of the riverward bedrooms is the romantic centre of Westover. It
+now belongs to the little daughter of the house; but nearly two
+centuries ago it was the room of Evelyn Byrd. Doubtless, in a sense, it
+will always be hers. The soft toned panelled walls, the old fireplace
+opposite the door, and the cozy little dressing-room looking
+gardenward, all seem to speak of her; and the imaginative visitor can
+quite discern a graceful figure in colonial gown there in one of the
+deep window seats that look out upon the pleasance and the river.
+
+Here the unfortunate colonial beauty lived and died with the grief that
+she brought from over the sea. Here she laid away the rich brocade, the
+old court gown of brilliant, bitter memories that was shown to us at
+Brandon. Through these windows she looked with ever more wistful eyes
+out upon the river, her thoughts hurrying with its waters toward the
+ocean and the lover beyond. And one day, it is said, a great ship from
+London came, and it touched at the pier before her windows, and Charles
+Mordaunt plead his cause with the stern father once more. But he plead
+in vain, and the ship and the lover sailed away. For a while longer,
+the colonial girl waited and looked out upon the river, then she too
+went away and the romance was over.
+
+[Illustration: THE ROMANTIC CENTRE OF WESTOVER; EVELYN BYRD'S OLD
+ROOM.]
+
+In the family circle at Westover to-day are Mrs. Ramsay, two sons, and
+the little daughter, Elizabeth. Among well-known families appearing in
+Mrs. Ramsay's ancestry are the Sears and the Gardiners of
+Massachusetts, she being a descendant of Lyon Gardiner of Gardiner's
+Island. She also claims kinship with the Randolphs and the Reeveses of
+Virginia, and a collateral and remote connection with the Byrds.
+
+When we returned to the steamer pier after our visit at Westover, we
+found quite a wind on the river and the houseboat fretfully bumping the
+pilings. We hastened aboard, ran down stream before a stiff wind, and
+skurried back into our harbour in Herring Creek, where Gadabout settled
+to her moorings as contented as a duck in the marshes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+AN OLD COURTYARD AND A SUN-DIAL
+
+
+For some time that little anchorage was our watery home acre. We came
+to call it our sunrise harbour. The opening where creek and river met
+faced to the east; and it was well worth while, if the morning was not
+too chill, to have an eye on that opening when the sun came up.
+Breaking through the mist veil that hung over the James, he cast a
+golden pontoon across the river, and then came over in all his
+splendour. He made straight for the mouth of our little creek, flooding
+wood and marsh with misty glow, and fairly crowding his glory into the
+narrow channel.
+
+One morning, quite in keeping with the splendid burst of dawn, a loud
+report rang out over the marshes like the sound of a sunrise gun. But
+it was no salute to the orb of day. Somebody was poaching. More shots
+followed; and ducks, quacking loudly, fluttered up out of the marshes.
+Later, when we were at breakfast, a long rowboat, containing a man and
+a pile of brush and doubtless some ducks with the fine flavour of the
+forbidden, came out from a break in the marshes and went hurriedly up
+the stream.
+
+As we lay in our harbour, we found ourselves almost unconsciously
+listening for a sound that seemed to belong to those chill, gray days.
+At last, from somewhere high up in the air, it came ringing down to
+us--the stirring "honk, honk" of the wild goose. Though our eyes
+searched the heavens, we could see nothing of the living wedge of
+flight up there that was cleaving its way southward with the speed of
+the wind. But we felt the thrill of that wild, stirring cry and were
+satisfied.
+
+Whether the geese brought it or not, bad weather came with them. Half a
+gale came driving the rain before it down the river. Gadabout lay with
+her bulkheads closed tight about her forward cockpit, and must have
+looked most dismal. But inside, dry and warm, she was a very cheery
+little craft. We listened quite contentedly to the uproar, looking out
+from our windows upon windswept marsh and scudding clouds and the fussy
+little wavelets of our harbour. It added to our sense of coziness to
+look through a stern window out upon the river where the waters piled
+and broke white, in their midst an anchored schooner with swaying
+masts, tipsy between wind and tide.
+
+One day when the heavens had gone blue again, though tattered clouds
+were still racing across, we hoisted anchor for another visit to
+Westover. When Gadabout poked her head out of the creek, she saw a
+queer looking craft busy on the James. It was a government buoy-tender,
+an awkward side-wheeler with a derrick forward, and big red sticks and
+black ones lying on deck.
+
+As we passed the tender, it was moving the red buoy at the mouth of our
+creek farther out into the river. Evidently the shoals were encroaching
+upon the channel. Gadabout showed little interest in the strange boat
+and its doings; and, unconcernedly turning her back, headed up the
+river. Of course buoys were all very well and she found them quite a
+help in getting about; but all this fussy shifting of them by a few
+feet mattered little to her, for she was on the wrong side of them most
+of the time anyway.
+
+However, we thought of how differently the watchful buoy-tender would
+be regarded by the heavy laden freighters that would pass that way,
+their rusty hulls plowing deep. To them how important that each buoy,
+each inanimate flagman of the river route, should stand true where
+danger lies and truly point the fairway.
+
+Reaching the little cove below the steamboat pier, Gadabout ran close
+in and cast anchor. She may well have been proud of the quite
+perceptible waves that she sent rolling to the shore and of the quite
+audible swish that they made on the beach.
+
+That morning we saw the landward front of Westover, and straightway
+forgot all about the more pretentious river front. You step from the
+house down into an old-time courtyard. At first you do not see much of
+the courtyard itself, for you have heard of its noted entrance gates,
+perhaps the first example of ornamental iron-work in the colonies, and
+they stand quite conspicuously in front of you. These gates were
+imported from England by Colonel William Byrd, whose initials, W.E.B.,
+appear inwrought in monogram.
+
+Two great birds standing on stone balls top the gate-posts. With a fine
+disregard of both ornithology and heraldry these birds have often been
+spoken of as martlets--the martlet appearing in the Byrd coat of arms.
+They are evidently eagles, and pretty well developed specimens.
+American eagles, we might call them, if they had not lighted upon these
+gate-posts before the American nation adopted its emblem--indeed before
+the American nation was born. When, in the days of the Civil War, the
+Federal troops came along, the soldiers seem to have stood strictly
+upon chronology, and to have determined that these fine
+prerevolutionary birds were not entitled to any immunity as national
+emblems nor even as kinsfolk of "Old Abe." And so their tough feathers
+flattened many a bullet, and one eagle had to be sent to Richmond to
+get some toes and a new tail.
+
+Turning from the gates, your eyes follow down the courtyard toward the
+garden. Walls, outbuildings, the quaint cellar-hut, even the
+diamond-shaped stepping-stones along the way, all help to make up a
+characteristic colonial scene.
+
+And for what striking bits of colonial life has this old courtyard been
+the setting! Now the exquisite Colonel and his ladies would visit the
+little capital of Williamsburg; so, at his door, stands ready his
+"lordly coach and six with liveried outriders in waiting." Again, the
+great gates are thrown open to guests arriving on horseback and in
+chariots and chairs. Pompous, beruffled dignitaries vie with gay
+gallants in obeisances and compliments to the ladies, and in assisting
+them to alight without harm to brocades and laces and rich cloaks and
+wide-hooped petticoats. And, yet again, all is a-bustle here with
+scarlet-coated horsemen and baying hounds and hurrying black boys and
+all that goes to
+
+    "Proclaim a hunting-morning."
+
+When the ancient courtyard is left empty again--the colonial coaches
+rolled off through the gates; the colonial huntsmen up and away and now
+but distant points of red, fading to the music of hounds and horns--we
+fall to wondering about those early Virginians.
+
+Such, largely, was their life--abundant leisure, elegant display,
+exuberant merrymaking. Just such a life, by all the rules, as would
+produce a useless race devoid of any solidity of mind or of character.
+Just such a life as in fact produced a race of high-minded, intelligent,
+and capable men; a race that gave us Washington, Jefferson, Henry,
+Madison, Marshall, Monroe, and the scarcely lesser names on down the
+long list of those wonderful sons of the Old Dominion.
+
+It would do no good to ask even that colonial courtyard for an
+explanation of all this. It simply recalled what it had seen and heard.
+Nor could we of to-day understand the explanation were we to get it.
+Unable to reconcile industry and leisure, we underrate the real work
+that went with the idling of those early Virginians; and as to the
+gayety, we long ago lost sight of the fact that merrymaking is
+man-making.
+
+Turning from the gateway, we went down the old courtyard. We followed a
+walk that led past the kitchen and the dairy, skirted a wall, and then
+turned through a box-shaded gateway into the garden.
+
+Those December days were not the season of gardens, even in Virginia.
+The paths led us not where bloom was, but where bloom had been. Yet,
+truly all times are garden times where warm red walls shut you in with
+shadowing trees and shrubs, and where ancient box and ivy hedge the
+prim old ways.
+
+How much our colonial forefathers thought of their gardens! and how
+much their English forefathers thought of theirs! It was in the blood
+to have a garden, and to have it walled, and to sit and to walk and to
+talk in it.
+
+[Illustration: THE COLONIAL COURTYARD GATES.]
+
+Walking and talking that day with Westover's mistress in Westover's
+garden, we soon came upon the tomb of the noted William Byrd.
+Representative as was this master of Westover of all that was most
+elegant in the colonial life of his day, he was much more than merely a
+man of the fashionable world. Ability of a high order went with the
+beauty and the ruffles and the powder. He was statesman, scholar, and
+author; and in England he had been made, for his proficiency in
+science, a fellow of the Royal Society.
+
+[Illustration: TOMB OF COLONEL WILLIAM BYRD.]
+
+
+We owe a great deal to this old-time grandee for the glimpses his
+writings give us of colonial life in the South during the generation
+just preceding that of Washington. Unlike the Northern colonists, the
+Southern ones left little record of themselves. So much the more
+valuable, then, the accounts given by this remarkable man of the times.
+
+We seemed turning from an impressive text as we left the tomb; left the
+old grand seignior in his little six feet of earth--six feet out of
+175,000 acres! But, after all, it was a rueful text; not one for
+morning sunshine and blue sky, for hearts that yet beat strong, that
+yet gloried in a boundless estate--all the bright world ours. And the
+birds were holding carnival over by the stone basin under the ram's
+head on the wall; and the river was dancing in the sunlight; and
+besides, we had caught sight of a sun-dial there in that old colonial
+garden by the banks of the "King's River"! To he sure we were told that
+this was not an ancient timepiece of the sun. We were much too late to
+see the original sun-dial of this garden. That old colonial worthy had
+found time too long for its marking. Worn with the years that it had
+told, it had leaned and dozed, and lost count, and was gone.
+
+But it is not so much that a garden should have an _old_ sun-dial, as
+that it should have a sun-dial. For the matter of that, they are all
+old. Venerableness is their birthright. Whoever thinks of youth in a
+sun-dial? Were you unboxing one just from the maker would you not
+expect to find it moss-grown?
+
+Indeed, are these timepieces of sun and shadow made at all, or do they
+just occur here and there like hoary rocks and mossy springs? And what
+a charming provision of Nature it is that they so often occur in
+gardens! Sun-dials and gardens! Sunshine-and-shadow time for plants to
+grow by; sunshine-and-shadow time for flowers to bloom by. Surely this
+is the only time by which a morning-glory should waken, by which a
+four-o'clock should know its hour, by which an evening primrose should
+time its fragrant bloom.
+
+Sun-dials and gardens! Sunshine-and-shadow time for birds to sing by;
+sunshine-and-shadow time for mortals to laze and dream by. Beautiful,
+silent, peaceful time; where no clocks strike the passing hours, no
+whistles scream the round of toil. What time like that of the
+noiseless, scarce-moving shadow upon the dial for a sleepy old garden
+and a day-dreamer in the sunshine? And if, perchance, the garden-lover
+is not building castles in Spain, but has crept into the garden only
+for brief rest from the fray, or to give a weary clock-driven soul an
+hour with its Maker, then truly again--sun-dials and gardens! Sun-dial
+time to rest the fainting heart by; sun-dial time for the troubled soul
+to reach up to God by. Sun-dials and gardens!
+
+Be the garden-lover what he may--day-dreamer, fainting heart, troubled
+soul--how gently the shadow-finger on the dial points the time for him!
+How softly, almost lingeringly, it lets the moments slip from gold to
+gray, seeking to give him, to the full and unfretted, his little hour
+in the sunshine!
+
+And yet, the gentlest marker of time must mark. It may mark very softly
+those passing moments of life's lessening span; but when we come to
+look again, the shadow has moved on. Nor can childish interference
+avail. Spread your rebellious hands upon the dial; you shall only see
+the shadow come stealing through your fingers. Stand defiantly in the
+path of the sunlight, and blot out the telltale dial shadow with your
+own; it but waits until you step aside, then leaps across the moments
+you have wasted. Not for you shall the boon to the sick and penitent
+King of Judah be repeated; not for you shall the shadow turn backward
+on the sun-dial of Ahaz.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+AN UNDERGROUND MYSTERY AND A DUCKING-STOOL
+
+
+For a day or two Gadabout lay out in the James in front of Westover.
+One evening it turned cold and a strong wind set in, coming straight at
+us across the river. As usual, when Gadabout was anchored on a stormy
+night near a lee shore, we cast a lead out ahead, so as to be able to
+tell (after it should become too dark to see the land) whether or not
+we were dragging anchor.
+
+That is, we called it casting a lead, though in reality the process
+consisted in throwing out into the river (as far ahead of us as we
+could) a piece of old iron with a string tied to it. Then, at any time,
+by gathering up the loose end of the string that lay in the cockpit,
+one could detect by the outgo of the line any tendency on the part of
+Gadabout to run away with her anchor. It was a very simple device and
+not exactly original, having doubtless been used a little earlier by
+Christopher Columbus and Noah and those people. But we never permitted
+any question of priority to dampen our interest in the thing.
+
+As the evening wore on the storm held steadily; steadily and rapidly
+the barometer kept counting backward; and we took the river's width in
+wind and sea for half the night. We could not sleep, and sat bolstered
+up in our chairs. The Commodore quite likely did breathe audibly now
+and then; but Nautica was wide awake, as shown by her announcing with
+feeling and frequency that "she knew we were dragging anchor and were
+just about to be horribly wrecked upon rocks or 'stobs' or something or
+other."
+
+The Commodore arose and busied himself about cockpit and cabin
+mysteriously. When he finished his labours, the string from the piece
+of iron out in the river came into the cabin through a hole in the wall
+made for an engine bell cord. It ran along the ceiling to the after end
+of the cabin, where a weight kept it taut. A handkerchief that could be
+plainly seen even in the dim light, was fastened to the string just
+where it passed above Nautica's head. By this time, the Commodore's
+mystery was a mystery no longer; and Nautica was laughing.
+
+"So that is to put an end to all my anxieties, is it?"
+
+"Just so," said the Commodore. "When that anxious feeling comes, watch
+the handkerchief. If it is moving toward the door, you may know that
+your fears are better grounded than the anchors; but if it is not, try
+to get a wink of sleep."
+
+And the wind howled and the boat pitched; but Nautica gazed in such
+relief at the immovable handkerchief that she fell asleep in her chair.
+When she wakened with a start and looked anxiously at the handkerchief,
+it was too late--the storm was over.
+
+In the morning there was nothing to show for all that night's
+commotion. Smooth, peaceful, and lazy, old Powhatan was loitering in
+the sunlight to the sea. But Gadabout was not to be soothed into
+forgetfulness of those night hours. As soon as she had her morning work
+done up, she hoisted anchor and headed again for her quiet harbour in
+Herring Creek. After that, when we had a mind to go to Westover, we
+usually had no mind to take Gadabout with us. Instead, we were more
+likely to row up the river or to walk up the beach at low tide.
+
+On the occasion of our last visit to the manor-house, we determined to
+go "beachway." We ran our rowboat on a sandy point jutting into the
+mouth of the creek, and took our way along the narrow strip of solid
+land that lay between river and marsh. White-limbed sycamores and
+tangled undergrowth went along with us, and sometimes inclined to take
+up more than their share of the narrow way. Brilliant berries gleamed
+on some bare, brown bushes, and the green leaves of the smilax
+pretended that they grew there too. Along the beach, tall bunches of
+reeds stood out against the brown of the river and the blue of the sky
+in their waving slenderness.
+
+Looking backward across the marshes, we could see the white railing on
+Gadabout's upper deck and could catch the flutter of her flags through
+the openings in the trees. As we neared Westover, a slope led to higher
+land and to a riverward, side entrance to the grounds. Passing through
+this, a tangle of vines swinging with the great iron gate, we followed
+the walk toward the house.
+
+Just before reaching the ballroom wing, we paused in front of a small
+brick outbuilding to have a few appropriate shivers over what was under
+it. From reading and from our talks at Westover, we knew about the
+mysterious subterranean chambers down there. To be sure, we had not
+seen them yet (one thing and another having got in the way of our
+making a visit to them); but surely one need not always wait to see;
+one can shiver a little anyway upon hearsay.
+
+And the hearsay was like this. Somewhere underneath that brick
+outbuilding was an opening down into the earth, like a dry well, some
+fifteen or twenty feet deep. At the bottom, arched doorways on opposite
+sides of the shaft opened into two small square rooms. The walls of the
+well and of the rooms were cement; and the floors were paved with
+brick. A round stone table used to stand in one of the rooms. From this
+well once ran two passages or tunnels, large enough for people to go
+through; one connecting with the house by a curious stairway in the old
+wing that was destroyed in the war, and the other leading to the river.
+
+We stood looking blankly at the closed outbuilding trying to imagine
+the hidden rooms and passages beneath it. Tradition told us that they
+were for refuge from the Indians. That explanation seemed well enough
+at first. But before we could get into the spirit of it enough to catch
+even the faintest bit of a warwhoop and to scuttle for the subterranean
+chambers, we made up our minds that that was not what the things were
+for anyway. There had ceased to be much danger from Indians along that
+part of the James by the time even this old home at Westover was built.
+
+So, casting about for a better explanation, we hit upon the idea that
+William Byrd had constructed the underground rooms in imitation of
+Pope's famous grotto, which the Colonel and his daughter Evelyn must
+have seen when entertained by the poet in his villa at Twickenham. But
+even after we had pictured the mysterious chambers all hung round with
+mirrors, just like Pope's, and candles everywhere, we could see that so
+tame a thing as the grotto theory would never do.
+
+There were so many nice, awful things that such a place would be good
+for. Spurring our jaded fancy with bits from Ali Baba and the Forty
+Thieves, we got on famously for a while with a pirates' den. We had a
+long, low, rakish ship lying in the river just off the tunnel's mouth;
+black-bearded ruffians, with knives between their teeth, stealing
+ashore and disappearing within the dark underground passage; the great
+stone table down there heaped with Spanish gold; good Jamaica rum
+pouring down wicked throats; the dark tunnels ever echoing the
+rollicking chorus, "Six men sat on the dead man's chest"--when suddenly
+it occurred to us that we were somewhat compromising the old colonial
+grandee, Colonel Byrd. With that we gave the matter up. We quit staring
+at a closed brick outbuilding with unseeable things down under it, and
+went on our way. And, as it turned out that we never visited the
+underground rooms after all, this was as near as we ever came to
+solving the colonial mystery.
+
+That day, sitting about the fireplace in Colonel Byrd's library, we
+listened to a pleasant chapter in the story of an old manor-house--the
+account of the recent restoration of Westover. As in most cases where
+extensive rehabilitation of colonial homes has been attempted, an
+interesting part of the work was the opening up of goodly old-time
+fireplaces that the changing fashions of changing generations had
+filled in with brick and mortar. Sometimes they had shrunk to the
+dimensions of a modern grate; sometimes even to that of a stovepipe
+hole. Indeed, what chronological mile-stones are the various forms of
+our American fireplaces! As the historic dates grow larger, the
+fireplaces grow smaller.
+
+Of course Westover never had the hugest of fireplaces. Even when this
+old home was built, the shrinkage in chimney-pieces had been going on
+for some time. No longer was most of the side of a room in a blaze. No
+longer was the flame fed by a backlog so huge that "a chain was
+attached to it, and it was dragged in by a horse."
+
+How far removed Westover was from the day of such things, is shown by
+the noted mantelpiece in the drawing-room. Only with the coming of
+smaller fireplaces came those elaborate mantelpieces. But the great
+fireplaces of our ancestors yielded slowly, inch by inch, as it were;
+and something of the goodly proportions they yet had in Colonel Byrd's
+day, the hammer and chisel have shown at Westover.
+
+If the exquisite Colonel's doubtless exquisite ghost haunts this home,
+we can imagine his pleasure when, one wintry night, he found reopened
+this fine old library fireplace, and sat him down to toast his shapely
+calves (even ghostly, they must yet be shapely) in the genial old-time
+glow.
+
+Some of the most interesting features of the work of putting an old
+homestead back into a period from which it has strayed, grow out of the
+very limitations. At Westover, while conformity to colonial times is
+carried far, even to the exclusion of rocking-chairs, yet there has
+been no shrinking from anachronisms that comfort or convenience demand.
+
+Eighteenth century fireplaces may blaze and crackle, and quite imagine
+themselves to be still heating the old house; but somewhere down below
+is a twentieth century furnace that is quietly doing most of the work.
+
+[Illustration: THE DRAWING-ROOM MANTELPIECE AT WESTOVER.]
+
+And what a shock it must be to the colonial ghosts when they stumble in
+the dark over great claw feet, cold even as their own; the feet of
+monstrous hollow things, white and awesome as themselves--the things
+that moderns call bathtubs!
+
+Over in the kitchen, unfortunately for the picturesque, all has to be
+modern. There the eighteenth century furnishing breaks down altogether.
+Not from the glowing heart of the old chimney-place, but from a huge,
+homely range comes the gastronomic hospitality of present-day Westover.
+
+No devotion to the eighteenth century can bring the colonial kitchen
+back again; send the roaring blaze up the wide chimney; swing the crane
+with the great kettle into the glow; and rebuild the quaint row of
+skillet and gridiron and broiler, perched on their little legs over the
+hot embers of the old hearthstone.
+
+Westover has an interesting reminder of the colonial in a copy of an
+old survey of the plantation that we saw that day. Our eyes quickly
+caught the suggestive name given on the map to the low, sandy point at
+the mouth of Herring Creek, where we had left our shore-boat to wait
+for us. We had not known that it was a place of such associations as
+the words "Ducking-stool Point" indicated.
+
+Upon first landing there, we had been impressed with the unusual depth
+of water just off that point; but we had not suspected how, in colonial
+tunes, many a too-talkative woman had also been impressed with it. It
+was the law, made and provided, that a ducking-stool should be set up
+"neere the court-house in every county." So, doubtless, in accordance
+with that law, a long pole used to reach out from our sandy point,
+having a seat on the end of it, right over the deep water. And, also in
+accordance with law, the end of the pole sometimes went down into the
+water, and a shivering woman went with it. But what would you, when
+"brabbling women slander and scandalize their neighbours, for which
+their poore husbands are often brought into chargeable and vexatious
+suits and cast in great damages"?
+
+The survey showed, also, where Westover Church stood in colonial days.
+Near the river a little way above the house, stood not only the church
+but a court-house and a brewing-house, all in sociable and suggestive
+proximity. We walked up the river bank to visit the spot.
+
+[Illustration: TOMBS IN THE OLD WESTOVER CHURCHYARD. (In the foreground
+is the tomb of Evelyn Byrd.)]
+
+It is still marked by a few gravestones that remain in the deserted
+churchyard. Among these is the altar-tomb of Evelyn Byrd. It stands
+with an iron band about it, holding the aged stones in place. The
+time-dimmed inscription tells us to "be reminded by this awful Tomb" of
+many dismal things with which we refuse to associate our thoughts of
+this lovely colonial girl.
+
+Rather, we recall the story of her intimacy with Mrs. Anne Harrison of
+Berkeley, and of the compact the two friends made, that whichever
+should die first should appear at some time to the other. The tale goes
+on to tell that Mrs. Harrison, after the death of her friend, was
+walking over to Westover one evening, and as she passed the churchyard
+she saw the ethereal figure of Evelyn Byrd there by the altar-tomb,
+smiling in happy fulfilment of the strange tryst.
+
+It was late afternoon when we were ready to take our way for the last
+time down the strip of sandy beach that led from William Byrd's old
+home to ours. The sun slanted low over the Powhatan; in its glow the
+old manor-house stood out in all its stateliness. We reflected that
+just as Westover looked then, it had looked when Colonel Byrd himself
+used to step out from the marble portal to saunter among his trees and
+flowers, or to take his faultless self out upon the pier perhaps to
+watch the unloading of the ship from London Towne. Just so the old
+house had looked through all those days when it was the scene of a
+luxurious colonial life not excelled by that of the patroons of the
+Hudson.
+
+Looking from the home out upon the river we saw a low-laden vessel, all
+sail spread to the soft, faltering breeze, coming slowly up stream on
+the last of the tide. How she fitted into the old-time setting! She was
+one of Colonel Byrd's freighting ships just in from overseas. After a
+tempestuous voyage, and a narrow escape from the Spanish too, she had
+safely entered Chesapeake Bay and now, the wind serving but ill, she
+was slowly drifting up the river.
+
+Soon she would touch at the old colonial pier swarming with plantation
+negroes. To the rhythm of African melodies the cargo would come out of
+the hold--mahogany furniture, a new statue for the garden, cases of
+wine, casks of muscovado sugar, puncheons of rum, plantation machinery,
+sweetmeats and spices, and some bewildered Irish cows. Quite likely,
+picking their way daintily in the midst of the exciting scene, would
+come the lady of the manor and Mistress Evelyn to make anxious inquiry
+for boxes of London finery. And then--but, no! that vessel out on the
+James, without stopping at all, had sailed on past the old plantation
+front. Just a common fishing schooner of to-day bound for Richmond! We
+turned and closed behind us the ancient iron gate of Westover.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+A BAD START AND A VIEW OF BERKELEY
+
+
+On the next morning, we exercised one of the most enjoyable
+prerogatives of the houseboater, one that belongs to him as to but few
+other travellers--that of changing his mind and his destination. We sat
+down to breakfast with the intention of moving on up the James to Eppes
+Creek; we rose from the table with the determination to make a run up
+Powell's Creek, which was a little above us on the other side of the
+river.
+
+We always enjoyed these changes of mind. They added so much the more to
+our sense of freedom and independence. There were no bits of cardboard
+with the names of stations printed on them to predestine our way; no
+baggage checks to consign our belongings to fixed destinations. Even at
+the last moment a change of mind, a change of rudder, and a new way and
+a new destination would lie before us.
+
+Now, our thoughts headed toward Powell's Creek, because up that stream
+was another colonial church, called Merchants' Hope Church; and the
+next day would be Sunday.
+
+Necessarily, such houseboat voyagers as we, that the Sundays usually
+found up forgotten bits of tidewater, were a trifle irregular in the
+matter of church-going. Our houseboat would have had to have a
+church-boat for a consort to make it otherwise. Yet, as Sunday after
+Sunday Gadabout lay in her quiet creek harbours, the spirit of the day
+seemed to find her there without the call of church chimes.
+
+Though it was morning when we changed our minds and determined to seek
+a high-backed pew in old Merchants' Hope Church, it was evening by the
+time we got under way. And in this case, changing our minds did not
+work well. We should have come just as near getting to a church and
+should have saved ourselves trouble, if we had clung to our first
+intention and had spent that Saturday in moving on up the James.
+
+As we crossed the river on the way to Powell's Creek, a closer study of
+the sounding-marks on the chart showed a depth of but one half foot at
+several places on the flats at the mouth of the stream. Evidently,
+getting into that creek was bound to be a problem in fractions; and
+Gadabout was not good at fractions and the day was waning and the tide
+was setting out.
+
+It seemed that the way to get the best depth of water would be to go to
+the lower side of the wide, shallow creek-mouth, and then to enter the
+stream in that affectionate style of navigation called "hugging the
+shore."
+
+And that is the way we did it. But with all the affection that could be
+put into the matter, we could not find along that shore any such water
+as the chart indicated; and Gadabout was beginning to need it sorely.
+So, we sent the sailor out to see where it had gone to. He found it
+over on the other side of the creek. Our confidence in the chart had
+been betrayed. Depending upon it, we had been hugging the wrong shore.
+
+At first, we thought little of the matter; for, our side of the stream
+having played us false, we felt no hesitancy in transferring our
+affections to the other side. But we found that poor Gadabout took
+things much more seriously. She could not so lightly "off with the old
+love and on with the new." For her the affair had already gone too far;
+already, for the side she was now on, she had formed a serious, a
+hopeless, a lasting attachment.
+
+Our craft aground, our prospects of attending church next day vanished.
+Slowly the tide went down; slowly the moon came up; and Nautica made
+some candy. By the time it was ready to be put out on the guard to
+cool, even what little we had found of Powell's Creek had
+disappeared--all about us was just moonlight and mud. And ahead of us
+and behind us (sticking down a little way in the mud, but sticking up
+more in the moonlight) were the two anchors that we had put out to hold
+us in position when the tide should rise in the night. They looked like
+great crabs sitting there and watching us.
+
+Of course, sometime in the darkness, Gadabout rose on the flood tide,
+and perhaps was even ready to cross to the other side of the creek and
+proceed to church. But nobody else was ready then; and so, finding all
+asleep, she slowly settled down once more, and we found her in the
+morning again hard aground. The good minister of Merchants' Hope Church
+must surely have reached "Seventhly, my brethren," before our houseboat
+was afloat.
+
+Now, we moved her out in deeper water (for it would not do that she
+should be aground next day when we ought to be starting for Eppes
+Creek); and it was gratifying this time when we cast our anchors, to
+see them go plumping out of sight as anchors should, instead of looking
+so distressingly unnautical with flukes sticking up in the air.
+
+But mooring a boat (securing her between two anchors, one ahead and one
+astern) is rather unsatisfactory at the best. Often it is necessary so
+to hobble your floating home where there is danger of her swinging upon
+hidden obstructions; but it is hard on the poetry of houseboating. To
+be held in one position, with unvarying scenes in your windows, is too
+much like living in a prosaic land home set immovable in sameness.
+
+Your gypsy craft should ride to a single anchor; free to swing to wind
+and tide in the rhythm of the river. It is of the essence of home life
+afloat to sit down to dinner heading up-stream, and to rise from table
+heading down-stream; to open a favourite book with a bit of shore-view
+in the casement beside you, and to close the chapter with the open
+river stretching from under your window, your half-drawn shade perhaps
+cutting the topsail from a distant schooner.
+
+Monday morning dawned bright and fair (as we afterward learned from the
+sailor); and bright and fair it certainly was when we made its
+acquaintance. The day was yet young when everything was ready for the
+trip up the river, and the shores of the little creek were echoing the
+harsh clicks of our labouring windlass.
+
+"She's hove short, and all ready to start whenever you are, sir,"
+announced the sailor at the bow door.
+
+Nautica snipped a thread and laid down her sewing; the Commodore tossed
+his magazine aside. A moment more and we were off. When well out in the
+river, we headed toward the left bank, for we were to make a landing at
+the pier above Westover to take on two boxes of provisions that had
+been left there for us by the Pocahontas. The steamer had gone;
+everybody about the wharf had gone; but we had arranged to have the
+boxes left out for us, and there they stood on the end of the pier.
+
+Aboard Gadabout was the stir and bustle usually incident to the making
+of a landing. Clear and sharp rose the voice of the Commodore; now
+issuing his orders, now taking them back again. When he could think of
+nothing more to say, he went below and relieved Nautica at the wheel as
+our good ship swung beautifully in toward the wharf.
+
+It must be remembered that a houseboat does not come up to piers like a
+steamboat, always finding men waiting to catch lines and to help in
+making landings. Often, as was the way of it that morning, the
+wandering houseboat comes along to find only an empty pier; and if she
+wishes to establish any closer relations with it, she must make all the
+advances herself.
+
+The wind may be blowing strong; the tide running strong--everything
+strong but the qualifications of the commanding officer; in which case,
+it is well that preparations for the landing begin early. There should
+be a coil of rope made ready at either end of the boat, and also a
+light line with a grapnel attached to It. What is a grapnel? How
+strange that question sounds to us now, mighty mariners that we have
+become! But of course we should remember that there was a time when we
+did not know ourselves. Well, a grapnel is much like one of those
+fish-hooks that have five points all curving out in different
+directions, only it usually weighs several pounds.
+
+[Illustration: "OFTEN ... THE WANDERING HOUSEBOAT COMES ALONG TO FIND
+ONLY AN EMPTY PIER."]
+
+The value of the grapnel was shown that day at the pier above Westover.
+Though Gadabout swung to the landing finely, a strong off-shore wind
+caught her; our ropes fell short; and we should have made but sorry
+work of it if a grapnel had not shot out into the air and saved the
+day. As it fell upon the wharf, the line attached to it was hauled in
+hand over hand; and though the grapnel started to come along with it,
+sliding and hopping over the pier, soon one of its points found a crack
+or a nail or a knot-hole to get hold of; and the houseboat was readily
+drawn up and made fast to the pilings.
+
+The boxes aboard, our lines were cast off and Gadabout moved on up the
+James.
+
+[Illustration: A TRAPPER'S HOME BY THE RIVERBANK.]
+
+Soon we were approaching one of the most historic points on the river.
+We could tell that by a deserted old manor-house occupying a fine,
+neglected site on the left bank of the stream.
+
+While the main structure still stood firm, and would for generations to
+come as it had for generations gone, yet the verandas about it had been
+partially burned and had collapsed, and the place looked dilapidated
+and forlorn. In front, the spacious grounds, once terraced gardens,
+stretched wild and overgrown down to the river, where the straggling
+ruins of a pier completed the picture of desolation.
+
+But, even neglected and abandoned, this sturdy colonial home, nearly
+two centuries old, still wore a noble air of family pride; still looked
+bravely out upon the river. And why should it not? What house but old
+Berkeley is the ancestral home of a signer of the Declaration of
+Independence and of two Presidents of the United States?
+
+This plantation became the colonial seat of the elder branch of the
+Harrison family about the beginning of the eighteenth century. It
+passed to strangers less than half a century ago.
+
+From its founding, Berkeley was the home of distinguished men. Here
+lived Benjamin Harrison, attorney general and treasurer of the colony;
+and his son, Major Benjamin Harrison, member of the House of Burgesses;
+and his son, Benjamin Harrison, member of the Continental Congress and
+signer of the Declaration of Independence; and his son, William Henry
+Harrison, famous general and the ninth President of our country; whose
+grandson, Benjamin Harrison, became our twenty-third President--a
+striking showing of family distinction, and including the only
+instance, except that of the Adamses, of two members of the same family
+occupying the presidential chair.
+
+[Illustration: BERKELEY. (The ancestral home of a signer of the
+Declaration of Independence and of two Presidents of the United
+States.)]
+
+Very different from the Berkeley that we saw, was that fine old
+plantation of colonial times. Imagine it, perhaps upon a summer's day
+in that memorable year of 1776. There are the great fields of tobacco
+and grain, the terraced gardens gay with flowers, the boats at the
+landing, and the manor-house standing proudly, "an elegant seat of
+hospitality."
+
+The master of Berkeley, that tall, dignified colonial, Colonel Benjamin
+Harrison, is not at home. He is at Philadelphia attending the
+Continental Congress. Perhaps even now he is affixing his signature,
+with its queer final flourish, to the Declaration of Independence. In
+the meantime, in front of the old home, a pretty woman in quaint
+taffeta "Watteau" and hooped petticoat and dainty high-heeled slippers
+is playing with a little boy, among the sweet old shrubs and the
+English roses upon the terraces.
+
+That little boy is to bring added honour to old Berkeley; and one day,
+as General William Henry Harrison, president-elect of the United
+States, his love for this mother shall bring him back to this home of
+his boyhood to write, amidst the tender associations of "her old room,"
+his inaugural address.
+
+After passing Berkeley, we left the buoyed course and ran the rest of
+the way to Eppes Creek in a narrow side channel that threads among the
+shallows close along shore. It is what the river-men call a "slue
+channel"; and we had to take frequent soundings to follow it. Looking
+back at dejected old Berkeley, we were glad to know that a new owner of
+the place was about to restore it.
+
+Gadabout soon approached an opening in the river bank that we knew was
+the wide mouth of Eppes Creek. We were going to turn into this stream,
+not merely for the stream itself, but for a convenient anchorage from
+which to reach the last of the noted river homes that we should
+visit--Shirley, the colonial seat of the Carters. Our chart showed the
+mansion as standing just around the next bend of the James. But we were
+not going around that bend, because the chart showed also this little
+creek cutting across the point of land lying in the elbow of the river
+and apparently affording an inside route to Shirley. We should soon
+learn whether or not Gadabout could navigate it and how near it would
+take her to the old home.
+
+As we moved slowly into the creek it was between banks in strange and
+attractive contrast. The starboard side (that from which we hoped to
+find a way to Shirley) was high and covered with trees of many kinds.
+The bank to port was low and covered with a marsh forest of cypresses.
+It was a dark and gloomy forest, but the spell of its sombre depths
+drew our eyes quite as often as the cheerfuller charm of the woodland
+on the other side; and so was equally responsible for the zigzag course
+that Gadabout was taking.
+
+But it was the high bank that, after a while, was responsible for
+Gadabout's ceasing to take any course at all. We came about a bend and
+saw, just ahead, a little cove. There were trees crowding close, rich
+pines and cedars and bright-beaded holly. One tree leaned far out over
+the water, and beneath it two row-boats were drawn up to the bank. We
+thought it must surely be the landing-place for Shirley. Gadabout
+sidled to starboard, and grapnels were thrown up into the trees to hold
+her alongshore.
+
+Stepping out on the bank we went up the hill through the woods. On the
+way we turned and glanced down upon the houseboat. She looked pretty
+enough, little white and yellow cottage, snuggling close to the bank
+with a holly tree at her bow and her flags stirring gently in the warm
+sunny air.
+
+At the top of the hill, we came out upon the edge of a cornfield.
+Everything was cornfield as far as we could see. No house, no road in
+sight. Back aboard Gadabout, we got under way again. But the creek soon
+lost even its one solid bank and, finding ourselves running between two
+lines of marsh woods, we turned about and headed back for the place
+where we had stopped, "Leaning Tree Landing," as we called it.
+
+We had gone but a little way when our rudder-cable snapped, the
+steering-wheel turned useless, and Gadabout headed for the marsh woods.
+She minded none of our makeshift devices to shape her course; and we
+were forced to stop the engine and resort to a more primitive motive
+power.
+
+The sailor dropped an end of a long pole into the water at the bow of
+the houseboat and, bending heavily upon the other end, slowly pushed
+her forward as he walked aft along the guard. Steadily back and forth
+he paced the rail; steadily, silently, we floated down the stream.
+
+And the silence of our going took hold of us, as we sat lazily in the
+bow. How in keeping it all seemed with the quiet of the day, the calm
+of the stream, and the stillness of the woods! And how out of keeping
+now seemed Gadabout's noisy entrance into that tranquil scene!
+
+"I feel quite apologetic," said Nautica. "Look at these great solemn
+trees, just like an assemblage of forest philosophers in the hush of
+silent deliberation."
+
+"We must have stirred them up a bit," replied the Commodore, "with our
+puffing and ringing. But I don't think they are deliberating. I believe
+they are asleep. It seems more like the hush of poppy-land in here to
+me."
+
+"Yes, that is just it." And the answer really came quite dreamily.
+"This is the hush of poppy-land, and we are drifting on the quiet brown
+waterway that leads through the sleepy, endless afternoon."
+
+And the notion pleased, and so did the languor and the heavy content.
+Slowly and steadily the sailor and the long pole went up and down the
+guard; slowly and steadily the houseboat moved down the stream.
+
+Now we were skirting the bolder bank where the pines bent heavy heads
+over the water, the holly crowded close to the shore, and pale tinted
+reeds made border at the water's edge. Now in rounding a curve, we
+passed close to the cypress wood fringed with bush and sedge. Delicate
+brown festoons of vines hung from the branches; and, high out of reach,
+mats of mistletoe clung. It seemed one with our mood and our fancy when
+two round yellow eyes stared out of the shadows, two wide lazy wings
+were spread, and the bird of daylight slumber took soft, noiseless
+flight. We were just getting fully in the humour of our new way of
+travel, drifting on in the world of laze-and-dream, when the whole
+thing came to an end. A familiar voice from the world of up-and-do was
+in our ears, and there was Leaning Tree Landing just ahead.
+
+We anchored out in the channel until low tide; then, after sounding
+about the landing and finding a good depth of water and no
+obstructions, we drew Gadabout in, bow to the bank, and made fast. We
+felt almost as though she were a real, true cottage, with that solid
+land at her door and her roof among the branches.
+
+When we looked from Gadabout's windows next morning, a dense fog had
+blotted out all of our creek country except that which was close in
+about us. But what was left was so beautiful as to more than make up
+for the loss. Nature, like most other women, looks particularly well
+through a filmy veil. We feared that the mist would soon clear away,
+but it did not and we sat down to breakfast with our houseboat floating
+in one of the smallest and fairest worlds that had ever harboured her.
+A beautiful white-walled world with some shadowy bits of land here and
+there, a piece of a misty stream that began and ended in the clouds,
+and everything most charmingly out of perspective and unreal. Some
+ghostly trees were near us, delicate veils of mist clinging about their
+trunks and floating up among the bare branches. Nearer yet, a blur of
+reeds marked the shore-line. From somewhere out along the river,
+probably from the lighthouse at Jordan's Point, came the tolling of a
+fog-bell.
+
+As we watched the scene, a faint glow filtered in through the
+whiteness, and made it all seem a fairy-land. Indeed, was it not? And
+were not the little swaying mist-wreaths that wavered in at our windows
+some dainty elves timidly come to give us greeting? All day the fog
+held, and the sad tolling of the bell went on. Now and then, the calls
+of the river craft would come to our ears.
+
+Toward evening the fog thinned and let the moonlight in. Then we were
+quite sure that Gadabout had indeed come to Fairy-land. Now, if only
+there were a way leading from Fairy-land to Shirley! And it turned out
+that there was.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE RIGHT WAY TO GO TO SHIRLEY
+
+
+Everybody goes to Shirley the wrong way. We found that out by ourselves
+happening to go the right way.
+
+When you are sailing up the James in your houseboat (You haven't one?
+Well, a make-believe one will do just as well, and in some ways
+better), do not pass Eppes Creek, as everybody does, and go to the
+Shirley pier; but, instead, enter the creek and tie up at Leaning Tree
+Landing as we did.
+
+[Illustration: THE FIELD ROAD AND THE QUARTERS.]
+
+Then, instead of taking that trail up the hill that leads only into a
+cornfield, look for a path leading to the left through the woods. It is
+not much of a path; and unless you love Nature in even her capricious
+moods, when she now and then trips the foot of the unwary and mayhap
+even scratches, it is too bad after all that you came this way. To love
+of Nature should be added a certain measure of agility, so that you
+will be all right when you come to the fence. Fortunately, you can let
+down the upper rails--being careful to put them back again when you are
+safe on the other side.
+
+Beyond the fence, a great pasture-field stretches away endlessly. But
+then everything is on a large scale at Shirley. Ampleness is the
+keynote; it pervades everything. Before you have half crossed the
+field, you will come upon a road that will lead you to a little
+eminence near the quarters.
+
+No, it is not a village that you now see peeping out through the grove
+over there by the river; it is the group of buildings constituting the
+homestead of Shirley. In the bright sunlight, you can pick out bits of
+the mansion through the trees, of the dairy, of the kitchen, and of the
+smaller buildings; while farther out stand the roomy barns and the
+quaint turreted dove-cote. All the buildings are of brick and show a
+warm, dull red.
+
+Time has left few such scenes as this--the completely equipped
+home-acre of a great; seventeenth century American plantation. The
+scene is not exactly a typical one; for few of such early colonial
+estates, and indeed not many of the later ones, had homesteads as
+complete, as substantially built, and on as large a scale as this of
+Shirley.
+
+Now, as you can need no further guidance, we are going off some two or
+three hundred years into the past, to see if we can get hold of the
+other end of the story of this plantation.
+
+Perhaps the start was "about Christmas time" in the year 1611, when Sir
+Thomas Dale, High Marshal of the Colony of Virginia, sailed up the
+river from James Towne; killed or drove away all the Indians hereabout;
+and then, thinking it ill that so much goodly land should be lying
+unoccupied, took possession of a large tract of it for the colony. But
+the part that came to be called Shirley is soon lost sight of in the
+fogs of tradition. Later, we catch a glimpse of it in the possession of
+Lord Delaware. But it is not until the middle of the seventeenth
+century that we get a firm hold of this elusive colonial seat and of
+its colonial owners.
+
+At that time, in the colony of Virginia, two of the proud families on
+two of the proud rivers were the Hills, who had recently acquired the
+plantation of Shirley on the James, and the Carters, who were
+establishing their seat at Corotoman on the Rappahannock. In the story
+of these two houses is most of the story of Shirley.
+
+The Hills became one of the leading families in the colony. It was
+Edward Hill, second of the name, who built the present mansion. He was
+a member of the King's Council; and his position is indicated, and his
+fortune as well, by the building in those early times of such a home.
+Antedating almost all of the great colonial homes, it must long have
+stood a unique mark of family distinction. The exact date of the
+building of the manor-house is not known, but doubtless it was not far
+from the middle of the seventeenth century.
+
+In the meantime, the Carters had become notable. This family reached
+its greatest prominence in the days of Robert Carter, who was one of
+the wealthiest and most influential men in the colony. In person he was
+handsome and imposing; in worldly possessions he stood almost
+unequalled; and in offices and honours he had about everything that the
+colony could give. His estate included more than three hundred thousand
+acres of land and about one thousand slaves. Either because of his
+imposing person or of his power or of his wealth, or perhaps because of
+all three, he was called "King" Carter. He does seem to have been quite
+a sovereign, and to have known considerable of the pompous ceremony
+that "doth hedge a king."
+
+It was in the fourth generation of the houses of Shirley and of
+Corotoman, and in the year 1723, that the families were united by the
+marriage of John, son of "King" Carter, and Elizabeth, daughter of the
+third Edward Hill. John Carter was a prominent man and the secretary of
+the colony; Elizabeth Hill was a beauty and the heiress of Shirley. In
+the descendants of this union the old plantation has remained to this
+day.
+
+The first time that we went from our creek harbour up to Shirley was a
+strange time perhaps for people to be abroad in woods and field-roads.
+The day was one of struggle between fog and sun, neither being able to
+get his own way, but together making a wonderful world of it. We walked
+in a luminous mist; the road very plain beneath our feet, but leading
+always into nothingness, and reaching behind us such a little way as to
+barely include the tall, following, hazy figure that was Henry.
+
+There was little for us to see, but that little was well worth seeing;
+only a tree or a clump of bushes or a hedge-row here and there, but all
+dimmed into new forms and graces for that day and for us.
+
+As we neared a ridge of meadowland, a pastoral for a Schenck took shape
+in the fog cloud before us. Scattered groups of sheep appeared close at
+hand, and, faintly visible beyond them, a denser mass of moving white.
+No tree nor landmark was to be seen; just set into the soft whiteness,
+showing mistily, was the snowy flock itself. Sheep grazed in groups,
+the tan shaded slope in faint colouring beneath them. Here and there a
+mother turned her head to call back anxiously for the bleating lambkin
+lost behind the white curtain; and, dim and grotesque, the awkward
+strayling would come gamboling into sight. Near by on a little hillock,
+a single sheep stood with its head thrown up, a ghostly lookout. The
+hidden sun made the haze faintly luminous about this wandering flock of
+cloudland. We were not the first to move and to break the picture.
+
+As we gained higher ground, a breeze was stirring and the fog was
+beginning to lift. When we reached the edge of the Shirley homestead
+and passed the turreted dove-cote, the near-by objects had grown quite
+distinct. But out on the river the fog yet lay dense; and two boats
+somewhere in the impenetrable whiteness were calling warningly to each
+other.
+
+Now we went on toward the manor-house that loomed against a soft
+background of river fog.
+
+The mansion is wholly unlike either Brandon or Westover, being a
+massive square building without wings. It is two and a half stories
+high, with a roof of modified mansard style pierced with many dormer
+windows. It has both a landward and a riverward front, and both alike.
+Each front has a large porch of two stories in Georgian design with
+Doric columns. The walls of the house are laid in Flemish bond, black
+glazed bricks alternating with the dull red ones. While both the roof
+and the porches are departures from the original lines of the house,
+yet they are departures that have themselves attained a dignified age
+of about a century and a quarter.
+
+Always, in the consideration of colonial homes, Shirley is regarded as
+one of the finest examples. This means much more than at first appears.
+For the mansions with which Shirley is usually compared, were built
+from half a century to a century later.
+
+Continuing along the road as we studied the home, we were led around to
+the landward front and into the midst of the ancient messuage.
+
+[Illustration: RIVERWARD FRONT OF SHIRLEY.]
+
+We stood in a great open quadrangle, having the house at one end, the
+distant barns at the other; on one side the kitchen, a large two-story
+building, and on the other side a similar building used for storage and
+for indoor plantation work. A high box hedge ran across from one of
+these side buildings to the other, dividing the long quadrangle into
+halves, one part adjacent to the house and the other to the barns.
+
+The village effect produced by the grouped buildings must have been
+even more striking in colonial times; for then the manor-house was
+flanked by two more large brick buildings, forming what might be called
+detached wings. One of these was still standing up to the time of the
+Civil War.
+
+The visitor is conscious of two dominant impressions, as he stands thus
+in the midst of this seventeenth century homestead. The massive
+solidity of the place takes hold of one first; but, strangely enough,
+the strongest impression is that of an all-pervading air of
+youthfulness. Doubtless the oldest homestead on the river, and one of
+the oldest in the country, it utterly refuses to look its age. Perhaps
+the solid, square compactness of the buildings has much to do with
+this. They appear as though built to defy time. Even the shadow of the
+venerable trees and the ancient ivy's telltale embrace seem powerless
+to break the spell of perennial youth.
+
+In the home, we met Mrs. Bransford, widow of Mr. H.W. Bransford,
+Commander and Mrs. James H. Oliver, U.S.N., and Miss Susy Carter. Mrs.
+Bransford and Mrs. Oliver are the daughters of the late Mr. and Mrs.
+Robert Randolph Carter, and are the present owners of the plantation,
+Mrs. Bransford making her home there. Commander Oliver represents the
+third consecutive generation of naval officers in the Shirley family.
+
+Upon entering the house in the usual way, from the landward side, the
+visitor finds himself in a large square hall occupying one corner of
+the building. This room discloses at a glance the type and the genius
+of Shirley. It begins at once to tell you all about itself; and when
+you know this old hall, you have the key to the mansion and to its
+story. It is truly a colonial "great hall." It tells you that by its
+goodly old-time ampleness, its high panelled walls with their dimming
+portraits, its great chimneypiece flanked by tall cupboards, and its
+massive overshadowing stairway.
+
+[Illustration: THE OLD "GREAT HALL."]
+
+The chief architectural feature of the room is this stairway. Starting
+in one corner, it rises along the panelled wall until half way to the
+ceiling, then turns sharply out into the room for the remainder of its
+ascent to the second floor, thus exposing overhead a handsome soffit.
+The effect, in connection with the great panelled well of the
+staircase, is one of rich and goodly ancientness.
+
+Indeed, though you may enter Shirley feeling that the house, like some
+long-lingering colonial belle, is perhaps not quite frank with you
+about its age, you will not find the hall taking part in any such
+misrepresentation. Despite some modern marks and even the fact that the
+fireplace has been closed, this room says in every line that it is very
+old.
+
+It stands true to the memory of its seventeenth-century builder who had
+known and loved the "great halls" of "Merrie England." It tells of the
+time when the life of a household centred in the spacious hall; when
+there the great fire burned and the family gathered round--of the time
+when halls were the hearts, not the mere portals, of homes.
+
+And so in this room, as in few others in our country, does the visitor
+find the setting and the atmosphere of manor-house life in early
+colonial days. He can well fancy this "great hall" of Shirley in the
+ruddy light of flaming logs that burned in the wide fireplace two
+centuries and a half ago. Dusky in far corners or sharply drawn near
+the firelight, stood, in those days, chests and tables and forms and
+doubtless a bed too with its valance and curtains. In a medley typical
+of the times in even the great homes, were saddles, bridles, and
+embroidery frames, swords, guns, flute, and hand-lyre.
+
+Here, in a picturesque and almost mediaeval confusion, the family
+mostly gathered, while favourite hounds stretched and blinked in the
+chimney-place beside the black boy who drowsily tended the fire.
+
+Here, the long, narrow "tabull-bord" was spread with its snowy cloth,
+taken from the heavy chest of linen in the corner, of which my lady of
+the manor was prodigiously proud. Upon the cloth were placed
+soft-lustred pewter and, probably almost from the first, some pieces of
+silver too. The salt was "sett in the myddys of the tabull," likely in
+a fine silver dish worthy its important function in determining the
+seating about the "bord." As family and guests gathered round, the host
+and hostess took places side by side at one end; near them the more
+important guests were given seats "above the salt," while lesser folk
+and children sat "below the salt."
+
+Then, from the distant kitchen in the quadrangle, came slaves or
+indentured servant bearing the steaming food in great chargers and
+chafing-dishes. Doubtless, in those earliest days, the food was eaten
+from wooden trenchers, not plates; while from lip to lip the communal
+bowl went round. Knives and spoons were plentiful, but even in such a
+home as Shirley forks were still a rarity; and the profusion of napkins
+was well when helpful fingers gave service to healthy appetites.
+
+But that was the hall life of very early days. Gradually, in the
+colonies as in England, the evolution of refinement specialized the
+home; developed drawing-rooms, dining-rooms, libraries; and so took
+away from the "great halls" almost all of this intimate life of the
+household.
+
+There is something pathetic in this desertion of the ancient, central
+hearthstone. We thought of Shirley's old hall growing sadly quiet and
+chill as it lost the merry chatter about the "tabull-bord"; as saddles
+and bridles jingled there for the last time on their way to some far
+outbuilding; as the gentlewomen carried their needlework away, and the
+little maids followed with their samplers. At last, all the old life
+was gone. Even the master himself came no longer to mull his wine by
+the andirons; and the very dogs stretched themselves less often and
+with less content at the chimney-side.
+
+All the rooms at Shirley are richly panelled to the ceiling, and have
+heavy, ornate cornices and fine, carved mantelpieces and doorways. The
+examples of interior woodwork especially regarded by connoisseurs are
+the panelling in the morning-room, the elaborately carved mantel in the
+drawing-room, and the handsome doorway between that room and the
+dining-room.
+
+Upstairs, a central hallway runs through the house, double doors
+opening at both riverward and landward ends upon broad porticoes. The
+bedrooms on either hand are panelled to the ceiling. They have deep-set
+windows, open fireplaces, and quaint old-time furnishings.
+
+And people slept here back in the seventeenth century; dreamed here in
+those faraway times when James Towne, now long buried and almost
+forgotten, was the capital of the little colony. Here, in succeeding
+generations, have slept many notable guests of Shirley. Tradition
+includes among these the Duke of Argyle, LaFayette, our own George
+Washington, and the Prince of Wales.
+
+[Illustration: THE DRAWING--ROOM.]
+
+
+Here, too, are some of the oldest ghosts in America. Most of these are
+quiet, well-behaved members of the household; but one ancient shade,
+Aunt Pratt by name, seems to presume upon her age as old people
+sometimes will, and is really quite hard to get along with.
+
+Listen to an instance of her downright unreasonableness. Her portrait
+used to hang in the drawing-room among those of the Hills (she is or
+was, or however you say it, a sister of the Colonel Hill who built the
+mansion); but having become injured it was taken down and put away face
+to the wall. Immediately, this ghostly Aunt Pratt showed deep
+resentment. Womanlike, she threw herself into a chair in one of these
+bedrooms and rocked and rocked violently. Of course she disturbed the
+whole household; but no matter how noiselessly people stole in to catch
+her at her tantrums, she was always too quick for them--the room was
+empty, the chairs all still. At last the picture was got out, repaired,
+and rehung. At once all was peace and quiet; Aunt Pratt had had her
+way.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+FROM CREEK HARBOUR TO COLONIAL RECEPTION
+
+
+Eppes Creek was the most remote and isolated of all our James River
+harbours. Gadabout was like a bit of civilization that had got broken
+off and had drifted away into the wild. The stream was such a mere
+ribbon with such tall trees along its banks, that we looked upward to
+but a narrow lane of open sky. Sometimes the lane was blue, sometimes
+gray, and sometimes dark and set with twinkling stars.
+
+The wood across the creek from us was a dismal looking place. The trees
+were swamp cypresses that had lost their summer green, and stood
+drooping and forlorn in the low, marshy soil. Nautica wasted a good
+deal of sympathy upon them as she compared them with the richly clothed
+pines and the luxuriant holly upon our side of the stream.
+
+There doubtless was game in that desolate wood; although about the only
+living things that we saw in it, even when we rowed close along its
+ragged shore, were owls. At night, strange, uncanny cries came out of
+the wood, and probably out of the owls also; but such sad and querulous
+cries as may well have been the plaints of the mournful marsh forest
+itself. Upon our Shirley shore too, there lived an owl, evidently of a
+different kind. We never saw him; but at night he worked untiringly
+upon a voluminous woodland edition of "Who's Who."
+
+In this harbour, we heard often the stirring cry out of the high
+heavens that our ears had caught once in our anchorage at Westover. And
+now we saw the wild geese themselves.
+
+Each time, at the first faint "honk," we got quickly to the windows or
+out on deck, and stood waiting for the beautiful V-shaped flight to
+come swinging into our sky-lane. And with what a glorious sweep the
+birds came on! And to what gloriously discordant music!
+
+Sometimes they went over in V's that were quite regular; but often the
+diverging lines would grow wavy, the beautiful flying letter still
+holding but swinging in and out as though blown about on the face of
+the sky.
+
+Perhaps we had something to do with those variants of the wild goose's
+favourite letter. Quite likely the sight of Gadabout, fluttering her
+flags down there in Eppes Creek, made those wise old gander leaders
+veer in a way somewhat disconcerting to their faithful followers.
+
+But on they came, and on they went in their wonderful flight through
+sunshine and through storm, by day and by night; leaving a strangely
+roused and quickened world behind them. Just a fleet passing of wings,
+a clamour of cries--why should one's heart leap, and his nerves go
+restless, and joy and sadness get mixed up inside him? A few birds
+flying over--yet stirring as a military pageant! A jangle of senseless
+"honks"--yet in it the irresistible urge of bugle and drum!
+
+One cannot explain. One can only stand and look and listen, till the
+living, flying letter is lost in the sky; till his ear can no longer
+catch the glorious, wild clangour of "the going of the geese."
+
+Isolated as our anchorage was, we had a connecting link between
+Gadabout and civilization. It was about three feet long, of a sombre
+hue, and its name was Bob. Bob brought us milk and eggs and our mail,
+and ran errands generally. He was usually attended by such a retinue
+that only the smallest picaninnies could have been left back at the
+quarters.
+
+Sometimes, Bob lightened his labours by having a member of his
+following carry a pail or the mail-bag. This worked badly; for it was
+only by such badges of office that we were able to tell which was Bob.
+But after several small coins had gone into the wrong ragged hats, Bob
+grasped the situation; and, in a masterly way, solved the question of
+identity without losing the services of his satellites. Henceforth,
+when we heard the chattering boys coming through the woods, if we
+looked out promptly enough, we would see Bob relieving some one of his
+doubles of pail or mail-bag; and by the time he reached the houseboat,
+he would be in full possession of all means of identification.
+
+"Would you like to go to meet the ladies and gentlemen on the walls?"
+Mrs. Bransford asked one day at Shirley.
+
+The invitation was accepted with as much alacrity as if we had feared
+that the reception hours were almost over. But there was really no need
+of haste; for the lines of notables on Shirley's walls stand there from
+generation to generation, yet receiving always with such dignity and
+courtesy as permit not the slightest sign of weariness or expression of
+being bored.
+
+In meeting those old-time owners and lovers of Shirley, the visitor is
+passed from one hand-clasp to another, as it were, down through the
+generations of colonial times.
+
+Giving precedence to age, we made our first fancied obeisance before
+two distinguished looking people who, however, did not seem entitled to
+any consideration whatever on the ground of age, being both in the
+prime of life. And yet, these were Colonel and Mrs. Edward Hill, second
+of the name at Shirley, and the first master and mistress of the
+present manor-house.
+
+We were a little surprised at the Colonel's appearance; for he was
+clean shaven and wore a wig. Now, we had been hobnobbing long enough
+with those beginners of our country--Captain John Smith, Sir Edwin
+Sandys, Lord Delaware, and the rest--to know that they were a bearded
+set and hadn't a wig amongst them.
+
+Fortunately, we remembered in time that this portrait-gentleman, old as
+he was, did not quite reach back to the days of those first settlers;
+and that he had lived to see the great change of fashion (in the reign
+of Charles II) that made Englishmen for generations whiskerless and
+bewigged.
+
+Though our land was settled by bearded men, with just the hair on their
+heads that Nature gave them (and sometimes, when the Indians were
+active, not all of that), yet the country was developed and made
+independent and set up as a nation by smooth-faced men, most fuzzily
+bewigged. That reign of the razor that began in the days of Colonel
+Hill, was a long one, and, later, determined the appearance of the
+Father of our Country. Imagine George Washington with a Van Dyck beard!
+
+Of course it was bad form for us to stand there staring at the Colonel
+while we reasoned out all this matter of the beards and the wigs. Now
+the Commodore, at a suggestion from Nautica's elbow, shifted to the
+other foot and cleared his throat to say something. But what was there
+to say? It is a little trying, this meeting people who cannot converse
+intelligently upon anything that has happened since the seventeenth
+century.
+
+At last, we murmured something about Charles II; and, to make sure, let
+the murmuring run over a little into the reigns of James II and of
+William and Mary, and then passed on; though the Commodore felt there
+should have been at least some slight allusion to the pyramids and the
+cave-dwellers.
+
+We must have taken very slowly the few steps that carried us to the
+next member of the receiving party; for in that time the world moved on
+a generation, and we found ourselves paying respects to no less a
+personage than "King" Carter himself. Too modest to suppose that he had
+come over from Corotoman on our account, we strongly suspected that the
+matter of alliance between the families of Hill and of Carter was in
+the air; which would account for the presence of the potentate of the
+Rappahannock.
+
+He looked very imposing in his velvets and his elaborate, powdered
+periwig, standing ceremoniously, one hand thrust within his rich,
+half-open waistcoat.
+
+Now was the time for all that we knew about Queen Anne and King George
+the First, and about the recent removal of the colonial capital from
+James Towne to Williamsburg.
+
+The next dignitaries were very near; but again it took a generation to
+get to them, the names being John Carter (usually called Secretary
+Carter from his important colonial office) and Elizabeth Hill Carter,
+his wife. These were the young people who united the houses of Shirley
+and Corotoman. So, even yet, we had got down only to the days of George
+the Second.
+
+Secretary and Mrs. Carter were a handsome pair; she, fair and girlish,
+with an armful of roses; he, dark and courtly and one of the most
+attractive looking figures we had met in our travels in Colonial-land.
+These people could not tell us much about the old manor-house; for,
+while possessing two of the finest plantations in the colonies, Shirley
+and Corotoman, they made their home chiefly at Williamsburg.
+
+However, they were especially interesting people to meet because of
+their familiarity with the first half of the eighteenth century, that
+brightest and most prosperous period of colonial life. They could tell
+us at first hand of those happy, easy-going times that lay between the
+long struggle to establish the colonies and the fierce struggle to make
+them free.
+
+Though neither Mr. nor Mrs. Carter exactly said so, yet we gathered the
+idea that those were days of much dress and frivolity. It seems that
+ships came from everywhere with handsome fabrics and costly trifles;
+and that rich colonials strove so manfully and so womanfully to follow
+the capricious foreign fashions (by means of dressed dolls received
+from Paris and London) that usually they were not more than a year or
+two behind the styles.
+
+We could not help feeling that the matter of wigs must have been an
+especially troublesome one. As styles changed in England, these
+important articles of dress (often costing in tobacco the equivalent of
+one hundred dollars) had to be sent to London to be made over. Between
+the slowness of ships and the slowness of wig-makers, it must often
+have happened that even such careful dressers as the fastidious
+Secretary himself would be wearing wigs that would scarcely pass muster
+at the Court of St. James or at Bath. Indeed, Secretary Carter did not
+deny there being some truth in this; but he appeared so at ease that
+day at Shirley that we knew, on that occasion at least, he was sure of
+his wig.
+
+One more progression along the receiving line, one more generation
+passed by the way, and we came upon Charles Carter, with his strong,
+kindly face, a gentleman of the days of George III and of the last days
+of colonial times.
+
+And what days those were! The days of stamp acts and "tea parties" and
+minute men; of state conventions and continental congresses; of
+Lexington and Valley Forge and the surrender of Cornwallis; of the
+Articles of Confederation and the formation of the Union. This Charles
+Carter saw our nation made and, in the councils of his colony, helped
+to make it. Here, in old Shirley, he put down the cup from which he had
+right loyally drunk the colonial toast, "The King! God bless him!" and
+he took it up again to loyally and proudly drink to "George Washington
+and the United States of America."
+
+We met still other old-time people at the manor-house that day; but it
+would not do to try to tell about them all. The omitted ones do not
+count much, being chiefly wives. Everybody knows that in meeting
+colonial people it is scarcely worth while considering a man's wife,
+for so soon she is gone and he has another.
+
+Truly, Shirley's colonial reception was very enjoyable, we thought, as
+we took a last glance at the serene, old-time faces and caught a last
+whiff of ambergris from the queer, old-time wigs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+AN INCONGRUOUS BIT OF HOUSEBOATING
+
+
+By this time, we were becoming anxious about the lateness of the
+season. Of course it was only through some mistake that we were getting
+all those fine warm days in December. Perhaps Nature had not had her
+weather eye open when Father Time wet his thumb and turned over to the
+last page of the calendar. But now, there was something in the look of
+the sky and in the feel of the air to make us fearful that the mix-up
+of the seasons had been discovered, and that winter was being prodded
+to the front.
+
+Still we lingered in Eppes Creek, and soon we could not do otherwise
+than linger; for we wakened one morning to find the stream frozen over,
+and Gadabout presenting the incongruous spectacle of a houseboat fast
+in the ice.
+
+All that day and the next the coldness held; and the ice and the tide
+battled along the creek with crackings and roarings and, now and then,
+reports like pistol shots. This surely was strange houseboating. It was
+a serious matter too. We knew that we might be held in the grip of the
+ice indefinitely. We did not care to spend the winter in Eppes Creek;
+nor could we abandon our boat there.
+
+Throwing on our heavy wraps and trying to throw off our heavy spirits,
+we went above and paced the deck. In mockery our flags rippled under
+the northwest wind; from our flower-boxes, leafless, shrivelled little
+arms were held up to us; while our bright striped awning, with all its
+associations of sunshine and summer-time, was close furled and frozen
+stiff and hung with icicles.
+
+We were surprised enough when the weather suddenly changed again, and
+the bright, warm sun set up such a thawing as soon sent the ice out of
+the creek and our anxieties with it. But no time was to be lost in
+getting away from that beautiful, treacherous stream. We should make
+one more visit to Shirley and then head again up river. But that last
+visit should be a quite conventional one; we should run the houseboat
+around to the regular steamboat pier in front of the old manor-house.
+
+It was a warm, hazy afternoon down in Eppes Creek when we untied our
+ropes from the trees (cast them off, we ought to say), and Gadabout
+pulled her nose from the reedy bank and slowly backed out into the
+stream. She was obeying every turn of the steering-wheel perfectly (as
+indeed she always did except when the mischievous wind put notions into
+her head); and it was not her fault at all when her bow swung round
+under the tree that leaned out over the water and almost knocked her
+little chimney off. We dropped down the stream and passed out into the
+river where everything was softened and beautified by the light fog.
+
+Skirting the low northern shore, we looked across the river at the high
+southern one where, through the mist, we could see the town of City
+Point and the bold promontory that marked where the Appomattox was
+flowing into the James. Upon the tip of the promontory was the home of
+the Eppes family, "Appomattox." While the present house is not a
+colonial one, the estate is one of the oldest in the country.
+
+Now, just ahead of us was the Shirley pier on one side of the river and
+the village of Bermuda Hundred on the other. We headed first for the
+village, our intention being to get some supplies there.
+
+We could not see much of Bermuda Hundred, perhaps because there was not
+much to see. It consists principally of age, having been founded only
+four years after the settlement of James Towne. Still, we let the
+sailor go ashore for butter and eggs, trusting that both would be as
+modern as possible. Our supplies aboard, Gadabout quickly carried us
+across the river and landed us at Shirley.
+
+[Illustration: THE KITCHEN BUILDING, FIFTY YARDS FROM THE MANOR-HOUSE.]
+
+In that last visit to the old home, we went across the quadrangle and
+into the kitchen building, with its cook-room on one side of the hall
+and its bake-room on the other. Of course most of the colonial kitchen
+appointments had long since disappeared; but we were glad to see, in
+the stone-paved bake-room, the old-time brick ovens. With their
+cavernous depths, they were quite an object lesson in early Virginia
+hospitality.
+
+And can any modern ranges bake quite as perfectly as did those colonial
+brick ovens? After a fire of oven-wood had flamed for hours in one of
+those brick chambers, and at last the iron door had been opened and the
+ashes swept out, the heated interior was ready to receive the meats and
+breads and pastry, and to bake them "to a turn."
+
+When, in the restoration of Mount Vernon, the kitchen was reached,
+recourse was had to Shirley's kitchen. Drawings were made of an unusual
+colonial table, of a pair of andirons with hooks for spits to rest on,
+and of several other old-time cookery appointments; and, from these
+drawings, were constructed the duplicates that are now in the Mount
+Vernon kitchen.
+
+It was on our way from the kitchen to the mansion that we came upon
+another visitor to Shirley. She was short and round and black and
+smiling and "feelin' tol'ble, thank you, ma'am." This, we learned, was
+Aunt Patsy. She had "jes heard dat Miss Marion done come home"; and so,
+arrayed in her best clothes including a spotless checked apron, she had
+come to "de gre't house" to pay her respects to Mrs. Oliver.
+
+Drawn out somewhat for our benefit, she gave her views upon the subject
+of matrimony.
+
+"I been married five times," she said. We were not particularly
+surprised at that; but were scarcely prepared for the added statement,
+"an' I done had two husban's."
+
+However, no one could fail to understand Aunt Patsy's position, and to
+heartily agree with her, when she came to explain her marital paradox.
+
+"De way 'tis is dis way," she said. "What I calls a _husban_' is one
+dat goes out, he do, an' gethahs up" (here, a sweeping gesture with the
+apron, suggestive of lavish ingathering), "gethahs up things an' brings
+'em in to me. But what I calls _havin' a man aroun'_ is whar he sets by
+de fiah and smokes he pipe, while I goes out an' wuks an' brings things
+home, an' he eats what I gives him. An' dat's how come I been married
+five times, an' I done had two husban's."
+
+[Illustration: BRICK OVEN IN THE BAKE-ROOM.]
+
+Before the old oak chest was opened for us, that day at Shirley, we
+knew that this colonial home was rich in antique silver. Yet, the
+family speak of the many pieces as "remnants," because of the still
+greater number lost at the time of the war. The plate was sent for
+safe-keeping to a man in Richmond who was afterward able to account for
+but a small part of it. Evidently, the Hills and the Carters went far
+in following the old colonial custom of investing in household silver.
+And as an investment the purchase of this ware was largely regarded in
+those days; family plate being deemed one of the best forms in which to
+hold surplus wealth.
+
+Different periods are represented in the old pieces yet remaining at
+Shirley. There are the graceful, classic types of the days of the
+Georges; the earlier ornate, rococo forms; and the yet earlier massive
+styles of the time of Queen Anne and long before. Among the most
+ancient pieces, are heavy tankards that remind one of the long ago,
+when such great communal cups went round from merry lip to merry
+lip--microbes all unknown. The numerous spoons too speak of the time
+when there were no forks to share their labours. Most of the silver
+remaining to-day is engraved with the coat of arms of the Carters.
+
+Suggestive of the days when colonial belles were toasted about
+Shirley's table, are the old punch bowl and the punch strainer and the
+wine coasters; though a more noteworthy object, having the same
+associations, is an antique mahogany wine chest with many of the
+original cut glass bottles still in its compartments.
+
+[Illustration: SOME NOTEWORTHY PIECES OF OLD SHIRLEY PLATE.]
+
+And looking at Shirley's old silver in Shirley's old dining-room, we
+thought of the lavish colonial entertainments in which both had played
+their part. What hospitable places were those early planters' homes! As
+courts, assemblies, races, funerals, weddings, and festivals took the
+people up and down the country, they found few inns; but, instead, at
+every great plantation, wide-spreading roofs and ever-open doors. The
+spirit of welcome even stood at the gates and laid hands upon the
+passing traveller, drawing him up the shady avenues and into the
+hospitable homes.
+
+In the days of the colonial Carters (who, through a complicated network
+of intermarriages, were cousins to all the rest of Virginia), Shirley
+must often have been full to overflowing.
+
+And, along with our thoughts of Shirley's hospitality, came the
+recollection of a pretty story that had been told to us one day at
+Brandon by Miss Mary Lee, daughter of General Robert E. Lee. It was a
+story of one of the merry, old-time gatherings about Charles Carter's
+long table in the Shirley dining-room. Among the guests was a dashing
+young cavalry officer who had won fame and the rank of general in the
+Revolutionary War; and who, in his unsatisfied military ardour, was
+contemplating joining the Revolutionary Army of France. But just now,
+he was contemplating only his host and his dinner.
+
+Suddenly, he became aware of a flushed and charming maiden in distress.
+She had lifted a great cut glass dish filled with strawberries, and it
+was more than her little hands could hold. She strove to avert a crash;
+and, just in time, the gallant young General caught the appealing look
+from the dark eyes and the toppling dish from the trembling hands. But
+in saving the bowl and the berries, he lost his heart.
+
+And the maiden was Anne Hill Carter, daughter of the genial host; and
+the young General was "Light Horse Harry" Lee. The dreams of further
+glory on French battlefields were abandoned; and there was another
+feast at Shirley when bridal roses of June were in bloom. The young
+people went to live at Stratford, the ancestral home of the Lees; and
+there was born their famous son, Robert E. Lee.
+
+As Shirley's old dining-room thus brought to our minds that greatest
+Virginian of our day, so it brought to mind the greatest Virginian of
+all days; for, even as we looked at silver and thought of love stories,
+a life-size portrait of George Washington, by Charles Wilson Peale,
+stood looking down upon us from the panelled wall.
+
+[Illustration: PEALE'S PORTRAIT OF GEORGE WASHINGTON.]
+
+It is a noted and invaluable canvas that hangs there at Shirley, and it
+is doubtless a good likeness of the Father of our Country; but it is
+not just the George Washington that most of us have in our mind's eye.
+When the average American thinks of hatchets and cherry trees and
+abnormal truthfulness, the face that rises before him is that benign
+and fatherly one that he has seen a thousand times in the popular
+reproductions of the portrait by Gilbert Stuart. Just as for
+generations only the good has been told of George Washington, so has
+this handsomest picture (doubtless a trifle flattering) always been the
+popular one.
+
+However, in this day, when the ideal George Washington of story is
+being ruthlessly brushed aside in the search for the real
+flesh-and-blood man, any canvas also that has idealized him is somewhat
+in jeopardy.
+
+It is well that the Washington of Sparks and of Irving and of Stuart
+should be superseded by the truer Washington of Mitchell and of Ford
+and of Peale; but the result will be that, for a while, the country
+will scarcely recognize its own father.
+
+Always at Shirley our interest came back to the old colonial hall. Of
+course, to get the good of it, one had to set one's eyes so as to throw
+out of focus many marks of modernism; but that adjustment would almost
+come of itself with a little study of quaint transoms, or of ancient
+hatchments, or, above all, of the time-worn stairway.
+
+Why is it that the spirit of the long-ago so clings about an old
+stairway? Why should the empty stair seem to remember so much, to
+suggest so much, of a life that came to it only in fitful passings and
+that left nothing of itself behind?
+
+There were no signs of that long by-gone life upon Shirley's stairway,
+save for a dimming of the old rail where countless hands--strong,
+feeble, fair--had lightly rested or, more helpless, clung; and save for
+that worn trail of the generations that followed up the dull, dark
+treads. But even these had much to tell of the passings for nearly two
+centuries and a half up and down this household highway: of the
+masterful tread of spur-shod boots, the dancing of the belle's
+slim-slippered feet, the pompous double steps of bumpy baby shoes, the
+gouty stump of old grandsire, and the faithful shamble of the black boy
+at his heels.
+
+That day (regretfully our last in this colonial home) not only the
+stairway but all of the old house seemed inclined to become
+reminiscent. Nautica noticed this in the quiet drawing-room that would
+keep bringing up by-gone times, and, she insisted, by-gone people too.
+In the great hall, even the Commodore felt the mood of old Shirley and
+the presence of a life that all seemed natural enough, but that must
+have come a good ways out of the past.
+
+On the staircase, despite the dim light over there (or because of it),
+one could even catch sight of a shadowy old-time company.
+
+There were stately figures passing up and down: the old lords of the
+wilderness in velvet coats and huge wigs, and ladies of the wilderness
+too in rich brocades and laced stomachers. There were many slender and
+youthful figures. Charmingly odd and quaint were the merry groups of
+girls, catching and swaying upon the shadowy stair; dainty ruffles
+peeping through the balusters; laughing faces bending above the dark,
+old rail. And fine indeed were the gallants that did them homage; those
+young colonials of bright velvets and flowered waistcoats and lace
+ruffles and powdered periwigs.
+
+Now, from the stairway the old-time life spread throughout the old-time
+home. Shirley was living over again some merry-making of colonial days.
+That was the Governor that just passed with the glint of gold lace and
+the glint of gold snuff-box; and that, a councillor's lady that rustled
+by in stiff silks, her feet in gold-heeled slippers and her powdered
+head dressed "Dutch." And quite as fine and quite as quaint were the
+ladies that followed in their gay flowered "sacques" looped back from
+bright petticoats and point lace aprons.
+
+It was all as London-like as might be: rich velvets and brocades,
+wide-hooped skirts and stiff stomachers, laced coats and embroidered
+waistcoats, broad tuckers and Mechlin ruffles, high-heeled shoes and
+handsome buckles, powdered wigs and powdered puffs, and crescent beauty
+patches.
+
+Evidently, by colonial time, twilight was coming on; for now the
+fragrant bayberry candles were lighted. There was the faint tinkle of a
+harpsichord. Dim figures moved in the stately minuet; their curtsies,
+punctiliously in keeping with the last word from London, were "slow and
+low."
+
+Little groups gathered about the card tables, where fresh candles and
+ivory counters were waiting. Lovers found their way to deep
+window-seats; and lovers of yet another sort to brimming glasses and
+colonial toasts, and perhaps to wigs awry.
+
+It was the old-time Shirley, the strange, incongruous Shirley that was
+a bright bit of English manor life within; and, without, wilderness and
+savages and tobacco-fields and Africans. In from the life of the old
+messuage, came a touch of the barbaric; weird minor songs that belonged
+with the hot throb of the African tom-tom floated in through the deep
+windows, and strangely mingled with the thin tinkle of the harpsichord
+and the tender strains of an old English ballad.
+
+The green bayberry candles grew dim, and in their fragrant smoke the
+old colonials faded away. Our visit at Shirley was over.
+
+Out in the quadrangle, we turned for a last look at the homestead, and
+were almost forced to doubt that old colonial scene that we had just
+left within. There stood the fine buildings in perfect preservation,
+insisting at last as they had insisted at first that this matter of old
+age was but a huge mistake--that they had been built but yesterday.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+THE END OF THE VOYAGE
+
+
+Before daylight on the following morning Gadabout was awake and astir.
+She had resolved to catch the early tide and finish her James River
+cruise that day by a final run to the head of navigation at Richmond.
+
+For the last time the clacking windlass was calling the sleeping anchor
+from its bed in the river; the Commodore was hanging out the
+sailing-lights; and Nautica (who could not find the dividers) was
+stepping off the distance to Richmond on the chart with a hairpin.
+
+How dreary a start before dawn sounds to a landsman! The hated early
+call; the hasty breakfast with coffee-cup in one hand and time-table in
+the other; the dismal drive through dull, sleeping streets; the
+cheerless station; the gloomy train-shed with its lines of coaches
+wrapped in acrid engine smoke.
+
+But the houseboater knows another way. For him, the early call is the
+call of the tide that finds ready response from a lover of the sea.
+Does the tide serve before dawn, man of the ship? Then before dawn its
+stir is in your blood; your anchor is heaved home; your sailing-lights,
+white and green and red, are bravely twinkling; your propellers are
+tossing the waters astern; and you are off.
+
+You are off with the flood just in from the sea, or with the ebb that
+is seeking the sea; and with it you go along a way where no one has
+passed before--an evanescent way that is made of night shades and river
+mists. And after a while you come upon a wonderful thing--almost the
+solemn wonder of creation, as, from those thinning, shimmering veils,
+the world comes slowly forth and takes shape again.
+
+When the real world took shape for Gadabout that morning on the James,
+she was some distance above Shirley and the river was a smaller river
+than we had seen at any time before. By the chart, we observed that it
+was a comparatively narrow stream all the rest of the way to Richmond.
+
+We had now entered upon a portion of the old waterway that Nautica
+insisted had been done up in curl-papers. Here, the voyager must sail
+around twenty miles of frivolous loops to make five miles of progress.
+
+Upon coming to a group of buildings indicated on the chart and standing
+close to the right bank, we knew that Gadabout had navigated the first
+of the fussy curls. Around it, we had travelled six miles since leaving
+Shirley, and now had the satisfaction of knowing that the old
+manor-house itself stood just across from these buildings, less than a
+mile away.
+
+On a little farther, we passed a fine plantation home called Curle's
+Neck. A long while after that, another large plantation, Meadowville,
+came alongside. But the curious thing was that, at the same time,
+alongside came Curle's Neck again. We had travelled something over four
+miles since leaving it, yet there it stood directly opposite and less
+than three quarters of a mile from us.
+
+[Illustration: VARINA.]
+
+Perhaps the river observed that we were getting a little out of
+patience; for, almost immediately, it sought to beguile us by bringing
+into view one of its show points, a landing on the left bank with a
+large brick house near by. The chart told us that this was Varina; and
+the guide-books told us a pretty story about how here, in their
+honeymoon days, lived John Rolfe and Pocahontas.
+
+Although that honeymoon was almost three centuries gone, and there was
+nothing left at Varina to tell of it, yet somehow our thoughts
+quickened and Gadabout's engines slowed as we sailed along the romantic
+site.
+
+To be sure, to keep up the spirit of romance one has to overlook a good
+deal. The fact that John Rolfe had been married before and the report
+that Pocahontas had been too, somewhat discouraged sentiment. And then,
+was it love, after all, that built the rude little home of that strange
+pair somewhere up there on the shore? Or, had Cupid no more to do with
+that first international marriage in our history than he has had to do
+with many a later one? Can it be that politics and religion drew John
+Rolfe to the altar? and that a broken heart led Pocahontas there?
+
+Poor little bride in any event! A forest child--wrapped in her doe-skin
+robe, the down of the wild pigeon at her throat, her feet in moccasins,
+and her hair crested with an eagle's feather; bravely struggling with
+civilization, with a new home, a new language, new customs, and a new
+religion.
+
+How many times, when it all bore heavy on her wildwood soul, did she
+steal down to this ragged shore, push out in her slender canoe, and
+find comfort in the fellowship of this turbulent, untamable river! And
+how often did she turn from her home to the wilderness, slipping in
+noiseless moccasins back into the narrow, mysterious trails of the red
+man, where bended twig and braided rush and scar of bark held messages
+for her!
+
+Then came the time when the river and the forest were lost to her. The
+princess of the wilderness had become the wonder of a day at the Court
+of King James. Almost mockingly comes up the old portrait of her,
+painted in London when she had "become very formall and civill after
+our English manner." The rigid figure caparisoned in the white woman's
+furbelows; the stiff, heavy hat upon the black hair; the set face, and
+the sad dark eyes--a dusky woodland creature choked in the ruff of
+Queen Bess.
+
+When Varina was left behind, we fell to berating the tortuous river
+again. Of course we did not think for a moment that the troublesome
+curlicues we were finding had always been there. When the river was the
+old, savage Powhatan, we may be sure it never stooped in its dignity of
+flow to such frivolity. These kinks were silly artificialities that
+came when the noble old barbarian was civilized and named in honour of
+a vain and frivolous foreign king.
+
+Now, just ahead of us, was the most foolish frizzle of all. It was a
+loop five miles around, and yet with the ends so close together that a
+boy could throw a stone across the strip of land between. At a very
+early day, sensible folk lost patience and sought, by digging a canal
+across the narrow neck, to cut this offensive curl off altogether.
+
+Some Dutchmen among the colonists were the first to try this (and
+Dutchmen understand waterway barbering better than anybody else); but
+they were unsuccessful. Their efforts seem to have resulted only in
+giving the place the name of Dutch Gap. Many years ago, the United
+States Government took up the work and, in 1872, the five-mile curl was
+effectually cut off by the Dutch Gap Canal.
+
+A good deal of interesting history is associated with this loop of the
+James. Here, but four years after the coming of those first colonists,
+the town of Henrico or Henricopolis was founded. The place made a
+somewhat pretentious beginning and was doubtless intended to supersede
+James Towne as the capital of the colony. Steps were taken to establish
+a college here. If they had been successful, Harvard College could not
+lay claim to one of its present honours, that of being the earliest
+college in America. But the Indian massacre of 1622 caused the
+abandonment of the college project and of Henricopolis too.
+
+We passed into the canal, which was so short that we were scarcely into
+it before we were out again and headed on up the river. The banks of
+the stream grew higher and bolder, and we were soon running much of the
+time between bluffs with trees hanging over.
+
+On some of the bald cliffs buzzards gathered to sun themselves; and
+they lay motionless even as we passed, their wings spread to the full
+in the fine sunshine. It was almost the sunshine of summer-time. In its
+glow we could scarcely credit our own recollections of some wintry bits
+of houseboating; and as to that story in our note-books about our being
+ice-bound in Eppes Creek, it was too much to ask ourselves to believe a
+word of it.
+
+[Illustration: DUTCH GAP CANAL.]
+
+In colonial times there were a number of fine homes along this part of
+the James, but most of them have long since disappeared. Just after
+passing Falling Creek we came upon one colonial mansion yet standing.
+It belonged in those old times to the Randolphs, and is best known
+perhaps as the home of the colonial belle, Mistress Anne Randolph.
+Among the beaux of the stirring days just before the Revolution, she
+was a reigning toast under the popular name of "Nancy Wilton." The
+second Benjamin Harrison of Brandon was among her wooers; and it is to
+his courtship that Thomas Jefferson refers when expressing, in one of
+his letters, the hope that his old college roommate may have luck at
+Wilton. He did have. And we remembered the sweet-faced portrait at
+Brandon of "Nancy Wilton" Harrison.
+
+[Illustration: FALLING CREEK.]
+
+Soon, our course was along a narrow channel saw-toothed with jetties on
+either hand. The signs of life upon the river told that we were nearing
+Richmond. We passed some work-boats, tugs, dredges, and such craft, and
+everybody whistled.
+
+Over the top of a rise of land that marked the next bend of the river,
+we saw an ugly dark cloud. It had been long since we had seen a cloud
+like that; but there is no mistaking the black hat of a city.
+
+So, there was Richmond seated beside the falls in the James--those
+water-bars that the river would not let down for any ship to pass;
+there was where our journey would end. To be sure, long years ago, the
+pale-faces outwitted the old tawny Powhatan by building a canal around
+its barriers. Their ships climbed great steps that they called locks;
+and, passing around the falls and rapids, went up and on their way far
+toward the mountains. But the river knew the ways of the white man, and
+kept its water-bars up and waited.
+
+After a while the pale-faces took to a new way of getting themselves
+and their belongings over the country; they went rolling about on rails
+instead of floating on the water; and before long, they almost forgot
+the old waterways. Nature waited a while and then took their abandoned
+canals to grow rushes and water-lilies; and she covered the tow-paths
+with green and put tangles of undergrowth along; and then she gave it
+all to the birds and the frogs and the turtles.
+
+So, it came to pass that river barriers counted once more--that the
+barrier across our river counted once more. We did not know whether the
+canal ahead of us was wholly abandoned; but we did know that it was so
+obstructed as to no longer furnish a way of getting a vessel above the
+falls.
+
+The Powhatan was master again; and a little way beyond that next bend
+it would bar the progress of Gadabout just as, three centuries earlier,
+it had barred the progress of the exploring boats that the first
+settlers sent up from James Towne.
+
+Well, it was high time anyway for our journey to end. We had been
+several months upon the river--several months in travelling one hundred
+miles! One can not always go lazing on, even in a houseboat; even upon
+an ancient waterway leading through Colonial-land.
+
+The old river may carry you to the beginning-place of your country; it
+may bear you on to the doors of famous colonial homes, full of old-time
+charm and traditional courtesy. But if so, then all the more need for
+falls and rapids to put a reasonable end to your houseboat voyage.
+
+We came about the bend in the stream and, at sight of the city before
+us, were reminded of the keen prevision of its colonial founder. When
+Colonel William Byrd, that sagacious exquisite of Westover, came up the
+river one day in 1733 to this part of his almost boundless estate, and
+laid the foundations of Richmond here in the wilderness beside the
+Falls of the James, he foresaw that he was founding a great city. A
+"city in the air" he called it, and his dream came true. Its
+realization in steeples and spires and chimneys and roof-lines opened
+before us now upon the slopes and the summits of the river hills.
+
+Soon we were skirting the city's water front. We passed piers and
+factories and many boats. We went from the pure air of the open river
+into the tainted breath of the town. Among many odours there came to be
+chiefly one--that of tobacco from the great factories.
+
+And that brought to mind a strange fact. In all our journey up the
+river, we had not seen a leaf of tobacco nor had we seen a place where
+it was grown. Tobacco, upon which civilization along the James had been
+built; that had once covered with its broad leaves almost every
+cultivated acre along the stream; that had made the greatness of every
+plantation home we had visited--and now unknown among the products of
+the fertile river banks!
+
+At last Gadabout was at the foot of the falls and rapids. Like those
+first exploring colonists we found that here "the water falleth so
+rudely, and with such a violence, as not any boat can possibly passe."
+
+[Illustration: THE VOYAGE ENDED. GADABOUT IN WINTER QUARTERS.]
+
+Of course there was a temptation to do with our boat as the colonists
+once proposed to do with theirs--take her to pieces and then put her
+together again above the falls, and so sail on up the old waterway to
+the South Sea and to the Indies. But the exploring spirit of the race
+is not what it used to be, and we simply ran Gadabout into a slip
+beside the disused canal and stopped. An anchor went plump into the
+water, making a wave-circle that spread and spread till it filled the
+whole basin--a great round water-period to end our river story.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+Adams
+Alexander, Elizabeth
+Appomattox River, The
+Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, The
+
+Back River, The
+Bacon, Nathaniel
+Barney, Mrs. Edward E., owner of Jamestown Island
+Berkeley, Lady Frances
+Berkeley, Sir William
+Berkeley (the estate)
+  home of elder branch of Harrison family
+  ancestral home of a signer of the Declaration of Independence,
+    and of two Presidents of the United States
+  plantation in 1776
+Bermuda Hundred, village founded four years after settlement of James Towne
+Brandon
+  history of
+  riverward entrance to grounds
+  the "woods-way" to the mansion
+  "the quarters"
+  the landward entrance
+  type of architecture
+  characteristic hospitality
+  interior of mansion
+  colonial portraits
+  the old garden
+  present day family at Brandon
+  the bedrooms
+  colonial silver
+  ancient records
+  an old court gown
+  the family burying-ground
+  the garrison house
+Bransford, Mrs. H.W., of the Carter family of Shirley, and one of the
+  present owners of the plantation, living in the manor-house
+Buck, Reverend Richard
+Byrd, Evelyn, portrait and romance of
+  her room at Westover
+  tomb of
+Byrd, Lucy Parke, wife of William Byrd of Westover
+Byrd, William, the second, of Westover
+  portrait at Brandon
+  about 1726 built present mansion at Westover
+  death
+  tomb of
+  ability of this colonial grandee
+  founded the city of Richmond
+
+Carter, Anne Hill, of Shirley, wife of "Light Horse Harry" Lee and
+  mother of General Robert E. Lee
+Carter, Charles, portrait at Shirley
+Carter, Elizabeth Hill, of Shirley, daughter of the third Edward Hill,
+  and wife of John Carter of Corotoman
+  portrait at Shirley
+Carter family acquire Corotoman
+  reach greatest prominence in days of "King" Carter
+  cousins to all the rest of Virginia
+Carter, John, son of "King" Carter of Corotoman, was secretary of the
+  colony
+  married Elizabeth Hill of Shirley in 1723
+  portrait at Shirley
+Carter, Robert, of Corotoman on the Rappahannock, one of the wealthiest
+  and most influential colonials
+  his possessions
+  called "King" Carter
+  portrait at Shirley
+Carter, Robert Randolph, of Shirley
+Carter, Mrs. Robert Randolph, of Shirley
+Carter, Miss Susy
+Chickahominy River, The
+Chippoak Creek
+Chuckatuck Creek
+City Point
+Claremont
+Colonial river trade
+Constant, Sarah
+Cornick, Reverend John, rector of Westover Church
+Corotoman, Carter family acquire
+Cotton, Mrs. An.
+Court House Creek
+Curie's Neck
+Cuyler, Randolph
+Cuyler, Mrs. Randolph, of Brandon
+
+Dale, Sir Thomas
+Dancing Point
+Delaware, Lord
+  ownership of Shirley
+Discovery, ship
+Douthat family of Weyanoke
+Douthat, Fielding Lewis
+Douthat, Mrs. Mary Willis Marshall, granddaughter of Chief-Justice
+  Marshall, and present mistress of Weyanoke
+Dutch Gap Canal
+
+Eppes Creek
+Eppes family, home at City Point
+
+Faffing Creek
+Fleur de Hundred
+Ford, Paul Leicester
+Fort Powhatan
+"Friggett Landing"
+
+Goodspeed, ship
+Gordon family of Aberdeenshire
+Gordon, William Washington
+Grant, U.S., Grant's army crossed the James
+
+Hampton Roads
+Harrison, Mrs. Anne, of Berkeley
+Harrison, Miss Belle, of Brandon
+  in court gown of her colonial aunt, Evelyn Byrd
+Harrison, Benjamin, the emigrant
+Harrison, Benjamin, of Berkeley, treasurer of the colony
+Harrison, Major Benjamin, of Berkeley, member of the House of Burgesses
+Harrison, Benjamin, of Berkeley, member of the Continental Congress
+  and signer of the Declaration of Independence
+Harrison, Benjamin, of Brandon, member of the Council
+Harrison, Colonel Benjamin, of Brandon, portrait by Peale
+Harrison, Mrs. Benjamin. See Mistress Anne Randolph of Wilton
+Harrison, Benjamin, grandson of William Henry Harrison of Berkeley,
+  and twenty-third President of the United States
+Harrison, George Evelyn, of Brandon
+Harrison, Mrs. George Evelyn, present mistress of Brandon
+Harrison, Nathaniel, of Brandon
+Harrison, William Henry, of Berkeley, ninth President of our country
+Harvard College
+Harwood, Joseph
+Henrico or Henricopolis, founded four years after James Towne
+  site of proposed college which would have been oldest in America
+Henry, Patrick
+Herring Creek
+Hill family acquire Shirley
+Hill, Edward, the second,
+  built present mansion at Shirley about the middle of the seventeenth
+  century
+  his portrait at Shirley
+Hill, Mrs. Edward, portrait of, at Shirley
+Hollingshorst, Elizabeth Gordon
+Hollingshorst, Thomas
+
+Indian massacre of 1622
+  caused abandonment of Henrico
+Irving, Washington
+
+James River, The
+  width
+  depth
+  historical importance
+  colonial life upon
+  colonial water life
+  Grant's army crossed
+  colonial river trade
+  sturgeon in
+  buoy-tender on
+  narrow and crooked from Shirley to Richmond
+  site of Richmond on
+  the Falls of the.
+James Towne
+  settlement of
+  development, decline, and abandonment of
+  Captain Edward Ross
+  the typical village
+  streets
+  buildings
+  "alehouses"
+  abandonment of
+  re-settlement
+  final abandonment
+  ancient site not lost
+  unearthing the buried ruins
+Jamestown Island
+  settlement of
+  appearance
+  the way across
+  isthmus
+  width of
+  battle upon
+  church
+  churchyard
+  mysterious tomb
+  Confederate Fort
+  historic sites
+  where Pocahontas and John Rolfe were married
+  coining of "the maids"
+  beginnings of American self-government
+  the colonists' first landing-place
+  the colonists' first fort
+  the colonists' first village
+  the story of the "Starving Time"
+  the "Lone Cypress"
+Jefferson, Thomas
+
+Kittewan Creek
+Kittewan house
+Kneller, Sir Godfrey
+
+Lee, General Robert E.
+Lee, Miss Mary
+Lee, "Light Horse Harry," married at Shirley
+Lee, Mrs. Henry. See Anne Hill Carter of Shirley
+Lewis family
+
+Madison, James
+Marshall, Chief-Justice John
+Marshall, John, son of Chief-Justice Marshall
+Marshall, Mary Willis, wife of Chief-Justice Marshall
+Martin, Captain John
+Meadowville
+Merchants' Hope Church
+Mitchell, Dr. S. Weir
+Mordaunt, Charles
+Monroe, James
+
+Newport News
+
+Oliver, Commander James H., U.S.N.
+Oliver, Mrs. James H., of the Carter family, and one of the present
+  owners of Shirley
+Opachisco
+Opechancanough, Indian chief
+Parke, Colonel Daniel
+Peale, Charles Wilson
+  his portrait of Washington at Shirley
+Peterborough, Lord
+Petersburg, March upon
+Piersey, Captain Abraham, ownership of Fleur de Hundred
+Pocahontas
+  marriage to John Rolfe
+  after marriage lived at Varina
+Pope, Alexander
+Powell's Creek
+Powhatan, Indian chief, not at wedding of Pocahontas
+"Pyping Point"
+
+Ramsay, Mrs. C. Sears, present owner of Westover
+Ramsay, Elizabeth
+Ramsay family at Westover
+Randolph, Mistress Anne, of Wilton
+  pre-Revolutionary belle, married the second Benjamin Harrison of
+  Brandon
+  her portrait at Brandon
+Richmond, at the Falls of the James
+  founded by William Byrd of Westover in 1733
+Rolfe, John
+  marriage to Pocahontas
+  after marriage lived at Varina
+Shirley, colonial seat of the Hills and of the Carters
+  right way to go to
+  great seventeenth-century American plantation
+  early owners of
+  the exterior of the mansion and the ancient messuage
+  the oldest homestead on the river and one of the oldest in the
+  country
+  the present owners
+  the colonial "great hall"
+  interior of mansion
+  ghosts
+  colonial portraits
+  kitchen and cook-room
+  colonial furnishings copied in restoration of the Mt. Vernon kitchen
+  colonial silverware
+  romance of "Light Horse Harry" Lee and Anne Hill Carter
+  Peale's portrait of Washington
+  old-time Shirley
+
+Silverware, colonial, family silver at Brandon
+  communion service of Martin's Brandon Church at Brandon
+  at Shirley
+Smith, Captain John
+Stratford, the ancestral home of the Lees
+Stuart, Gilbert
+
+Thomas, colonial house of
+
+Varina, site of early home of John Rolfe and Pocahontas
+Virginia society, type of
+
+War of 1812, fort built in
+Washington, George
+  portrait of, by Peale, at Shirley
+Water Supply of James Towne colonists
+Westover
+  became property of the Byrds
+  present mansion built
+  its colonial importance, and its successive owners
+  riverward front
+  interior of mansion
+  romantic centre of
+  present owner and family
+  landward front, courtyard, and noted entrance gates
+  garden and sun-dial, and tomb of William Byrd
+  mysterious subterranean chambers
+  recent restoration of
+  old survey of plantation
+  graveyard
+Westover Church
+  one of earliest churches in the country
+Weyanoke
+  two plantations
+  houses of
+  an Indian name
+  Upper
+  Lower
+  present day family at
+  oldest building at
+  postoffice at
+Williamsburg
+Whittaker, Reverend Alexander
+Willcox, John V., ownership of Fleur de Hundred
+Wilton, home of Mistress Anne Randolph
+Windmill Point
+  first windmill in America
+Wowinchopunk
+
+Yeardley, Sir George, tomb of
+  ownership of Weyanoke
+  ownership of Fleur de Hundred
+  built first windmill in America
+Yonge, Samuel H.
+
+
+
+
+"SEE AMERICA FIRST" SERIES
+
+Each in one volume, decorative cover, profusely illustrated
+
+CALIFORNIA, ROMANTIC AND BEAUTIFUL
+By George Wharton James                          $6.00
+
+NEW MEXICO: The Land of the Delight Makers
+By George Wharton James                          $6.00
+
+THREE WONDERLANDS OF THE AMERICAN WEST
+By Thomas D. Murphy                              $6.00
+
+A WONDERLAND OF THE EAST: The Mountain and Lake Region of New England
+and Eastern New York
+By William Copeman Kitchin, Ph.D.                $6.00
+
+ON SUNSET HIGHWAYS (California)
+By Thomas D. Murphy                              $6.00
+
+TEXAS, THE MARVELLOUS
+By Nevin O. Winter                               $6.00
+
+ARIZONA, THE WONDERLAND
+By George Wharton James                          $6.00
+
+COLORADO: THE QUEEN JEWEL OF THE ROCKIES
+By Mae Lacy Baggs                                $6.00
+
+OREGON, THE PICTURESQUE
+By Thomas D. Murphy                              $6.00
+
+FLORIDA, THE LAND OF ENCHANTMENT
+By Nevin O. Winter                               $6.00
+
+SUNSET CANADA (British Columbia and Beyond)
+By Archie Bell                                   $6.00
+
+ALASKA, OUR BEAUTIFUL NORTHLAND OF OPPORTUNITY
+By Agnes Rush Burr                               $6.00
+
+VIRGINIA: THE OLD DOMINION. As seen from its Colonial waterway, the
+Historic River James
+By Frank and Cortelle Hutchins                   $5.00
+
+A number of additional volumes are in preparation, including Maine,
+Utah, Georgia, The Great Lakes, Louisiana, etc., and the "See America
+First" Series will eventually include the whole of the North American
+Continent.
+
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+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIRGINIA: THE OLD DOMINION***
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