Virginia: the Old Dominion Part 12

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, pa.s.sing 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 sh.o.r.e 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: UPPER WEYANOKE.]

A short run farther up the river took us abreast the pier at Upper Weyanoke; and, pa.s.sing around it, we cast anchor within a stone's throw of the plantation home.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AT ANCHOR OFF WEYANOKE.]

We sat out in the c.o.c.kpit 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 impa.s.sable; 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 pa.s.s 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.

Willc.o.x, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 st.u.r.dy mariners from the d.y.k.e-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 pa.s.sing 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 a.s.sort 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 fl.u.s.tered 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 sp.a.w.ning-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 "c.o.c.karouse," brave fellow, who kept his hold, diving and swimming, and finally towed his catch ash.o.r.e.

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 pa.s.sed, and dots their sandy beaches with the bateaux and the drying nets of the fishermen.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A FISHING HAMLET.]

We pa.s.sed 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, pa.s.sing 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A RIVER LANDING.]