Virginia: the Old Dominion · Chapter 8List of Illustrations (7)
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."