The James River carries a heavy commerce below Richmond, and the channel depths of the wayward and very crooked stream are maintained by an elaborate system of jetties, constructed by the Government. Both sh.o.r.es show the earthworks that are relics of the war, and Drewry"s Bluff, with Fort Darling, the citadel of the Confederate defence of the river, is projected across the stream. Below is Dutch Gap, where the winding river, flowing in a level plain, makes a double reverse curve, going around a considerable surface without making much actual progress. Here is the Dutch Gap Ca.n.a.l, which General Butler cut through the narrowest part of the long neck of land, thus avoiding Confederate batteries and saving a detour of five and a half miles; it is now used for navigation. Just below is the large plantation of Varina, where the Indian Princess Pocahontas lived after her marriage with the Englishman, John Rolfe. Its fine brick colonial mansion was the headquarters for the exchange of prisoners during the Civil War.
The brief career of Pocahontas is the great romance of the first settlement of Virginia. She was the daughter and favorite child of Powhatan, her name being taken from a running brook, and meaning the "bright streamlet between the hills." When the Indians captured Captain John Smith she was about twelve years of age. He made friends of the Indian children, and whittled playthings for them, so that Pocahontas became greatly interested in him, and the tale of her saving his life is so closely interwoven with the early history of the colony that those who declare it apocryphal have not yet been able to obliterate it from our school-books. Smith being afterwards liberated, Pocahontas always had a longing for him, was the medium of getting the colonists food, warned them of plots, and took an interest in them even after Smith returned to England. The tale was then told her that Smith was dead. In 1614 Pocahontas, about nineteen years old, was kidnapped and taken to Jamestown, in order to carry out a plan of the Governor by which Powhatan, to save his daughter, would make friendship with the colony, and it resulted as intended. Pocahontas remained several weeks in the colony, made the acquaintance of the younger people, and fell in love with Master John Rolfe. Pocahontas returned to her father, who consented to the marriage; she was baptized at Jamestown as Lady Rebecca, and her uncle and two brothers afterwards attended the wedding, the uncle giving the Indian bride away in the little church at Jamestown, April 5, 1614. A peace of several years" duration was the consequence of this union. Two years afterwards Pocahontas and her husband proceeded to England, where she was an object of the greatest interest to all cla.s.ses of people, and was presented at Court, the Queen warmly receiving her. Captain Smith visited her in London, and after saluting him she turned away her face and hid it in her hands, thus continuing for over two hours. This was due to her surprise at seeing Smith, for there is no doubt her husband was a party to the deception, he probably thinking she would never marry him while Smith was living. The winter climate of England was too severe for her, and when about embarking to return to Virginia she suddenly died at Gravesend, in March, 1617, aged about twenty-two.
She left one son, Thomas Rolfe, who was educated in London, and in after life went to Virginia, where he became a man of note and influence. From him are descended the famous children of Pocahontas--the "First Families of Virginia"--the Randolph, Bolling, Fleming and other families.
SHIRLEY, BERKELEY AND WESTOVER.
The winding James flows by Deep Bottom and Turkey Bend, and one elongated neck of land after another, pa.s.sing the noted battlefield of Malvern Hill, which ended General McClellan"s disastrous "Seven Days"
of battles and retreat from the Chickahominy swamps in 1862. The great ridge of Malvern Hill stretches away from the river towards the northwest, and in that final battle which checked the Confederate pursuit it was a vast amphitheatre terraced with tier upon tier of artillery, the gunboats in the river joining in the Union defense.
Below, on the other sh.o.r.e, are the s.p.a.cious lowlands of Bermuda Hundred, where, in General Grant"s significant phrase, General Butler was "bottled up." Here, on the eastern bank, is the plantation of Shirley, one of the famous Virginian settlements, still held by the descendants of its colonial owners--the Carters. The wide and attractive old brick colonial house, with its hipped and pointed roof, stands behind a fringe of trees along the sh.o.r.e, with numerous outbuildings constructed around a quadrangle behind. It is built of bricks brought out from England, is two stories high, with a capacious front porch, and around the roof are rows of dormer windows, above which the roof runs from all sides up into a point between the tall and ample chimneys. The southern view from Shirley is across the James to the mouth of Appomattox River and City Point.
The Appomattox originates in the Blue Ridge near Lynchburg, and flows one hundred and twenty miles eastward to the James, of which it is the chief tributary. It pa.s.ses Petersburg twelve miles southwest of its point of union with the James, this union being at a high bluff thrust out between the rivers, with abrupt slopes and a plateau on the top, which is well shaded. Here is the house--the home of Dr. Epps--used by General Grant as his headquarters during the operations from the south side of the James against Petersburg and Lee"s army in 1864-65. Grant occupied two little log cabins on top of the bluff, just east of the house; one his dwelling and the other his office. One is still there in dilapidation, and the other is preserved as a relic in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia. A short distance away is the little town of City Point, with its ruined wharves, where an enormous business was then done in landing army supplies. To the eastward the James flows, a steadily broadening stream, past the sloping sh.o.r.es on the northern bank, where, at Harrison"s Landing, McClellan rested his troops after the "Seven Days," having retreated there from the battle at Malvern Hill. His camps occupied the plantations of Berkeley and Westover, the former having been the birthplace of General William Henry Harrison, who was President of the United States for a few weeks in 1841, the first President who died in office. The Berkeley House is a s.p.a.cious and comfortable mansion, but it lost its grand shade-trees during the war. A short distance farther down is the quaint old Queen Anne mansion of red brick, with one wing only, the other having been burnt during the war; with pointed roof and tall chimneys, standing at the top of a beautifully sloping bank--Westover House, the most famous of the old mansions on the James. It was the home of the Byrds--grandfather, father and son--noted in Virginian colonial history, whose arms are emblazoned on the iron gates, and who sleep in the little graveyard alongside. The most renowned of these was the second, the "Honourable William Byrd of Westover, Esquire," who was the founder of both Richmond and Petersburg.
William Byrd was a man of imposing personal appearance and the highest character, and his full-length portrait in flowing periwig and lace ruffles, after Van Dyck, is preserved at Lower Brandon, farther down the river. He inherited a large landed estate--over fifty thousand acres--and ample fortune, and was educated in England, where he was called to the bar at the Middle Temple, and made a Fellow of the Royal Society. The inscription on his Westover tomb tells that he was a friend of the learned Earl of Orrery. He held high offices in Virginia, and possessed the largest private library then in America.
In connection with one Peter Jones, in 1733, he laid out both Richmond and Petersburg on lands he owned, at the head of navigation respectively on the James and the Appomattox. He left profuse journals, published since as the _Westover Ma.n.u.scripts_, and they announce that Petersburg was gratefully named in honor of his companion-founder, Peter Jones, and that Richmond"s name came from Byrd"s vivid recollection of the outlook from Richmond Hill over the Thames in England, which he found strikingly reproduced in the soft hills and far-stretching meadows adjoining the rapids of the James, with the curving sweep of the river as it flowed away from view behind the glimmering woods. He died in 1744. Westover House was McClellan"s headquarters in 1862. The estates have gone from Byrd"s descendants, but the house has been completely restored, and is one of the loveliest spots on the James. Major Augustus Drewry, its recent owner, died in July, 1899, at an advanced age. Coggins Point projects opposite Westover, and noted plantations and mansions line the river banks, bearing, with the counties, well-known English names. Here is the ruined stone Fort Powhatan, a relic of the War of 1812, with the Unionist earthworks of 1864-65 on the bluff above it. Then we get among the lowland swamps, where the cypress trees elevate their conical knees and roots above the water. The James has become a wide estuary, and the broad Chickahominy flows in between low sh.o.r.es, draining the swamps east of Richmond and the James. This was the "lick at which turkeys were plenty," the Indians thus recognizing in the name of the river the favorite resort of the wild turkey.
THE COLONY OF JAMESTOWN.
We have now come to the region of earliest English settlement in America, where Newport and Smith, in 1607, planted their colony of Jamestown upon a low yellow bluff on the northern river bank. It is thirty-two miles from the mouth of the James River, and the bluff, by the action of the water, has been made an island. The location was probably selected because this furnished protection from attacks. The later encroachments of the river have swept away part of the site of the early settlement, and a portion of the old church tower and some tombstones are now the only relics of the ancient town. The ruins of the tower can be seen on top of the bluff, almost overgrown with moss and vines. Behind is the wall of the graveyard where the first settlers were buried. A couple of little cabins are the only present signs of settlement, the mansion of the Jamestown plantation being some distance down the river.
When the English colony first came to Jamestown in 1607, they were hunting for gold and for the "northwest pa.s.sage" to the East Indies.
In fact, most of the American colonizing began with these objects.
They had an idea in Europe that America was profuse in gold and gems.
In 1605 a play of "Eastward, Ho" was performed in London, in which one of the characters said: "I tell thee golde is more plentifull in Virginia than copper is with us, and for as much redde copper as I can bring, I will have thrice the weight in golde. All their pannes and pottes are pure gould, and all the chaines with which they chaine up their streetes are ma.s.sie gould; all the prisoners they take are fettered in golde; and for rubies and diamonds they goe forth in holidays and gather them by the seash.o.r.e to hang on their children"s coates and sticke in their children"s caps as commonally as our children wear saffron, gilt brooches, and groates with hoales in them." The whole party, on landing at Jamestown, started to hunt for gold. Smith wrote that among the English colonists there was "no talk, no hope, no work, but dig gold, wash gold, refine gold, loade gold."
They found some shining pyrites that deceived them, and therefore the first ship returning to England carried away a cargo of shining dirt, found entirely worthless on arrival. The second ship, after a long debate, they more wisely sent back with a cargo of cedar. They hunted for the "northwest pa.s.sage," first going up the James to the falls at the site of Richmond, but returning disappointed. It was this same hunt for a route to the Pacific which afterwards took Smith up the Chickahominy, where he got among the swamps and was captured by the Indians.
The Jamestown colonists met with great discouragements. Most of them were unfitted for pioneers, and the neighboring swamps gave them malaria in the hot summer, so that nearly half perished. Smith, by his courage and enterprise, however, kept the colony alive and took charge, being their leader until captured by the Indians, and also afterwards, until his return to England. Among the first constructions at Jamestown were a storehouse and a church. These, however, were soon burnt, and a second church and storehouse were erected in September, 1608. This church was like a barn in appearance, the base being supported by crotched stakes, and the walls and roof were made of rafts, sedge and earth, which soon decayed. When Smith left Jamestown for England in 1609 the place contained about sixty houses, and was surrounded by a stockade. Smith early saw the necessity of raising food, and determined to begin the growing of maize, or Indian corn.
Consequently, early in 1608 he prevailed upon two Indians he had captured to teach the method of planting the corn. Under their direction a tract of about forty acres was planted in squares, with intervals of four feet between the holes which received the Indian corn for seed. This crop grew and was partly harvested, a good deal of it, however, being eaten green. Thus the Indian invented the method of corn-planting universally observed in the United States, and this crop of forty acres of 1608 was the first crop of the great American cereal grown by white men. Wheat brought out from England was first planted at Jamestown in 1618 on a field of about thirty acres, this being the first wheat crop grown in the United States.
Captain John Smith, before he left Jamestown, estimated that there were about fifty-five hundred Indians within a radius of sixty miles around the colony, and in his works he enumerates the various tribes.
Describing their mode of life, he wrote that they grew fat or lean according to the season. When food was abundant, he said, they stuffed themselves night and day; and, unless unforeseen emergencies compelled them to arouse, they dropped asleep as soon as their stomachs were filled. So ravenous were their appet.i.tes that a colonist employing an Indian was compelled to allow him a quant.i.ty of food double that given an English laborer. In a period of want or hardship, when no food was to be had, the warrior simply drew his belt more tightly about his waist to try and appease the pangs of hunger. The Indians, when the colonists arrived, were found to divide the year into five seasons, according to its varying character. These were, first, Cattapeuk, the season of blossoms; second, Cohattayough, the season when the sun rode highest in the heavens; third, Nepenough, the season when the ears of maize were large enough to be roasted; fourth, Taquetock, the season of the falling leaves, when the maize was gathered; and fifth, Cohonk, the season when long lines of wild geese appeared, flying from the north, uttering the cry suggesting the name, thus heralding the winter.
The colony was very unfortunate, and in 1617 was reduced to only five or six buildings. The church had then decayed and fallen to the ground, and a third church, fifty by twenty feet, was afterwards built. Additional settlers were sent out from England in the next two years, and the Virginians were granted a government of their own, the new Governor, Sir George Yeardley, arriving in the spring of 1619. The Company in London also sent them a communication "that those cruell laws, by which the ancient planters had soe long been governed, were now abrogated in favor of those free laws which his majesties subjects lived under in Englande." It continued by stating "That the planters might have a hande in the governing of themselves yt was granted that a generall a.s.semblie should be held yearly once, whereat to be present the governor and counsell with two burgesses from each plantation, freely to be elected by the inhabitants thereof, this a.s.semblie to have power to make and ordaine whatsoever laws and orders should by them be thought good and profitable for their subsistence." The Governor consequently summoned the first "House of Burgesses" in Virginia, which met at Jamestown, July 30, 1619, the first legislative body in America. Twenty-two members took their seats in the new church at Jamestown. They are described as wearing bright-colored silk and velvet coats, with starched ruffs, and as having kept their hats on as in the English House of Commons. The Governor sat in the choir, and with him were several leading men who had been appointed by the Company on the Governor"s Council. They pa.s.sed various laws, chiefly about tobacco and taxes, and sent them to England, where the Company confirmed them, and afterwards, in 1621, granted the "Great Charter,"
which was the first Const.i.tution of Virginia.
The colonists got into trouble with the Indians in 1622, and having killed an Indian who murdered a white man, Jamestown was attacked and the inhabitants ma.s.sacred, three hundred and forty-five being killed.
Governor Butler, who visited the place not long after the ma.s.sacre, wrote that the houses were the "worst in the world," and that the most wretched cottages in England were equal, if not superior, in appearance and comfort to the finest dwellings in the colony. The first houses were mostly of bark, imitating those of the Indian; and, there being neither sawmills to prepare planks nor nails to fasten them, the later constructions were usually of logs plastered with mud, with thatched roofs. The more pretentious of these were built double--"two pens and a pa.s.sage," as they have been described. As late as 1675 Jamestown had only a few families, with not more than seventy-five population. Labor was always in demand there, and at first the laborers were brought out from England. There was no money, and having early learnt to raise tobacco from the Indians, this became the chief crop, and, being sure of sale in England, became the standard of value. Tobacco was the great export, twenty thousand pounds being exported in 1619, forty thousand in 1620 and sixty thousand in 1622. Everything was valued in tobacco, and this continued the practical currency for the first century. They imported a lot of copper, however, with which to make small coins for circulation. As the tobacco fluctuated in price in England, it made a very unstable standard of value. Gradually, afterwards, large amounts of gold and silver coin came into Virginia in payment for produce, thus supplanting the tobacco as a standard.
THE VIRGINIAN PLANTERS.
Land was cheap in Virginia in the early days. In 1662 the King of Mattapony sold his village and five thousand acres to the colonists for fifty match-coats. During the seventeenth century the value of land reckoned in tobacco, as sold in England, averaged for cleared ground about four shillings per acre, the shilling then having a purchasing power equal to a dollar now. It was at this time that most of the great Virginian estates along James River were formed, the colonists securing in some cases large grants. Thus, John Carter of Lancaster took up 18,570 acres, John Page 5000 acres, Richard Lee 12,000 acres, William Byrd 15,000 acres, afterwards largely increased; Robert Beverley 37,000 acres and William Fitzhugh over 50,000 acres.
These were the founders of some of the most famous Virginian families.
The demand for labor naturally brought Virginia within the market of the slave trader, but very few negroes were there in the earlier period. The first negroes who arrived in Virginia were disembarked at Jamestown from a Dutch privateer in 1619--twenty Africans. In 1622 there were twenty-two there, two more having landed; but it is noted that no negro was killed in the Jamestown ma.s.sacre. In 1649 there were only three hundred negroes in Virginia, and in 1671 there were about two thousand. In the latter part of the seventeenth century the arrivals of negro slaves became more frequent--labor being in demand.
The records show that the planters had great difficulty in supplying them with names, everything being ransacked for the purpose--mythology, history and geography--and hence the peculiar names they have conferred in some cases on their descendants. In 1640 a robust African man when sold commanded 2700 pounds of tobacco, and a female 2500 pounds, averaging, at the then price of tobacco, about seventeen pounds sterling for the men. Prices afterwards advanced to forty pounds sterling for the men. In 1699 all newly arrived slaves were taxed twenty shillings per head, paid by the master of the vessel.
As the colony developed, the typical dwelling became a framed log building of moderate size, with a big chimney at each end, there being no cellar and the house resting on the ground. The upper and lower floors were each divided into two rooms. Such a house, built in 1679, measuring forty by twenty feet, cost twelve hundred pounds of tobacco.
Finally, when more prosperity came in the eighteenth century, the houses were developed and enlarged into more pretentious edifices, built of bricks brought out from England. These were the great colonial houses of the wealthy planters, so many of which exist until the present day. The most prosperous time in colonial Virginia was the period from 1710 until 1770. The exports of tobacco to England and flour and other produce to the West Indies made the fortunes of the planters, so that their vast estates and large retinues of slaves made them the lordly barons whose fame spread throughout Europe, while their wealth enabled them to gather all the luxuries of furniture and ornament for their houses then attainable. It was in these n.o.ble colonial mansions, surrounded by regiments of negro servants, that the courtly Virginians of the olden time dispensed a princely hospitality, limited only by their ability to secure whatever the world produced.
The stranger was always welcome at the bountiful board, and the slave children grew up amid plenty, hardly knowing what work was. This went on with more or less variation until the Civil War made its tremendous upheaval, which scattered both whites and blacks. But the typical Virginian is unchanged, continuing as open-hearted and hospitable, though his means now are much less. To all he has, the guest is welcome; but it is usually with a tinge of regret that he recalls the good old time when he might have done more.
HAMPTON ROADS AND FORTRESS MONROE.
The constantly broadening estuary of the James a.s.sumes almost the proportions of an inland sea, and in the bays encircled by the low sh.o.r.es are planted the seed oysters, which are gathered by fleets of small vessels for transplanting into salt-water beds. In front, near the mouth of the river, is thrust out the long point of Newport News, with its grain elevators and shipyards, dry-docks and iron-works, the great port of the James River, which is the busy terminal of railways coming from the West. Here is a town of thirty thousand people. It was almost opposite, that in the spring of 1862 the Confederate ram "Merrimac" (then called the "Virginia"), armored with railroad rails, came suddenly out from Norfolk, and sank or disabled the American wooden naval vessels in Hampton Roads; the next day, however, being unexpectedly encountered by the novel little turret iron-clad "Monitor," which had most opportunely arrived from the upper Hudson River, where Ericsson had built her. The "Merrimac" was herself soon disabled and compelled to retire. This timely and dramatic appearance of "the little Yankee cheese-box on a raft" made a sudden and unforeseen revolution in all the naval methods and architecture of the world. Around the point of Newport News the James River debouches into one of the finest harbors of the Atlantic Coast, Hampton Roads, named from the town of Hampton on the northern sh.o.r.e. This is the location of a Veteran Soldiers" Home, with two thousand inmates, an extensive Soldiers" Cemetery, and of the s.p.a.cious buildings of the Normal and Agricultural Inst.i.tute for Negroes and Indians, where there are eight to nine hundred scholars, this being a foundation originally established by the Freedmen"s Bureau, the chief object being the training of teachers for colored and Indian schools.
The little peninsula of Old Point Comfort, which makes the northern side of the mouth of the James and juts out into Chesapeake Bay, has upon it the largest and most elaborate fortification in the United States--Fortress Monroe. It is related that when Newport and Smith first entered the bay in 1607, and were desirous of ascending the James, they coasted along the southern sh.o.r.e and found only shallow water. Starting out in a boat to hunt for a channel up which their ships could pa.s.s, they rowed over to the northern sh.o.r.e and discovered deeper water entering the James, close to this little peninsula, there being twelve fathoms depth, which so encouraged Smith that it confirmed him in naming the place Point Comfort. This channel, close insh.o.r.e, could be readily defended, as it was the only pa.s.sage for vessels of any draft, and consequently when the colony got established at Jamestown they built Fort Algernon at Point Comfort to protect the entrance to the James. In 1611 this fort was described as consisting of stockades and posts, without stone or brick, and containing seven small iron guns, with a garrison of forty men.
After the British invasion of Chesapeake Bay, in 1814, when they burnt the Capitol and White House at Washington, it was quickly decided that no foreign foe should be again permitted to do such a thing, and that an elaborate work should be built to defend the entrance to the bay.
General Simon Bernard, one of Napoleon"s noted engineers, offered his services to the United States after the downfall of the Emperor, and he was placed in charge, with the duty of constructing, at the mouth of James River, a fortification which would command the channel into that river and to the Norfolk Navy Yard, and at the same time be a base of operations against any fleet attempting to enter the bay and menace the roadstead. Bernard built in 1819, and several following years, an elaborate fortress, with a broad moat and outlying water-battery, enclosing eighty acres, the ramparts being over two miles in circ.u.mference. It was called Fortress Monroe, after the then President James Monroe, of Virginia. Out upon an artificial island, known as the Rip-raps, built upon a shoal some two miles off-sh.o.r.e, and in the harbor entrance, the smaller works of Fort Wool were subsequently constructed, and the two make a complete defense for the Chesapeake Bay entrance. During all the years this fortress has existed it has never had occasion to fire a gun at an enemy, but its location and strength were invaluable to the North, who held it during the Civil War. It is the seat of the Artillery School of the army. To the southward, at the waterside, are the hotels of Old Point Comfort, which is one of the favorite seaside watering-places of the South. In front is the great Hampton roadstead, usually containing fleets of wind-bound vessels and some men-of-war.
NORFOLK AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD.
Over on the southern side of Chesapeake Bay is the Elizabeth River, in reality a tidal arm of the sea, curving around from the south to the east, and having Norfolk on its northern bank and Portsmouth opposite.
The country round about is flat and low-lying, and far up the river are Gosport and the Navy Yard, the largest possessed by the United States. There are probably sixty thousand population in the three towns. The immediate surroundings are good land and mostly market gardens, but to the southward spreads the great Dismal Swamp, covering about sixteen hundred square miles, intersected by various ca.n.a.ls, and yielding cypress, juniper and other timber. It is partly drained by the Nansemond River, on which, at the edge of the swamp, is the little town of Suffolk, whence the Jericho Run Ca.n.a.l leads into Lake Drummond, a body of water covering eighteen square miles and twenty-one feet above tidewater. Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe has woven much of the romance of this weird fastness and swamp into her tale of _Dred_. The Dismal Swamp Ca.n.a.l, twenty-two miles long, and recently enlarged and deepened, pa.s.ses through it from Elizabeth River to the Pasquotank River of North Carolina, and the Albemarle Ca.n.a.l also connects with Currituck Sound. This big swamp was first explored by Colonel William Byrd, of Westover, in 1728, when he surveyed the boundary between Virginia and North Carolina.
All about the Norfolk wharves are cotton bales, much timber, tobacco and naval stores, and immense quant.i.ties of food and garden products, not forgetting a profusion of "goobers," all awaiting shipment, for this, next to Savannah, is the greatest export port for food and other supplies on the Southern Atlantic. The "goober," or peanut, is the special crop of this part of Virginia and Carolina. The cotton compresses do a lively business in the cotton season, the powerful hydraulic pressure squeezing the bale to barely one-fourth its former size, and binding it firmly with iron bands, thus giving the steamers increased cargo. In the spring the shipment North of early fruits and vegetables is enormous, vast surfaces being devoted to their growth, the strawberry beds especially covering many acres. The oyster trade is also large. The settlement of Norfolk began in 1680, and in 1736 it was made a borough. Portsmouth was established later, but the starting of the navy yard there, which has become so extensive, gave it great impetus. Portsmouth claims that in the Civil War, in proportion to size, it sent more soldiers to the Southern armies and had more dead than any other city. The capacious naval hospital and its fine grove of trees front Portsmouth towards the harbor. Norfolk has St. Paul"s Church, founded in 1730, as its chief Revolutionary relic--an ancient building, with an old graveyard, and having in its steeple the indentation made by a cannon-shot, when a British fleet in 1776 bombarded and partly burnt the town. An old-fashioned round ball rests in the orifice; not, however, the one originally sent there by the cannoneers. Relic-hunters visiting the place have a habit of clandestinely appropriating the cannon-ball, so the s.e.xton, with an eye to business, has some on hand ready to put into the cavity, and thus maintain the old church"s patriotic reputation. A novel sight in Norfolk is its market, largely served by negroes--old "mammies" with bright bandannas tied about their heads and guarding piles of luscious fruits; funny little pickaninnies who execute all manner of athletic gyrations for stray pennies, queer old market wagons, profusions of flowers, and such a collection of the good things of life, all set in a picture so attractive that the sight is long remembered.
THE EASTERN Sh.o.r.e.
Northward from Old Point Comfort and Hampton Roads the great Chesapeake Bay stretches for two hundred miles. It bisects Virginia and Maryland, and receives the rivers of both States, extending within fourteen miles of Pennsylvania, where it has as its head the greatest river of all, the Susquehanna, which the Indians appropriately called their "great island river." Its sh.o.r.es enclose many islands, and are indented with innumerable bays and inlets, the alluvial soils being readily adapted to fruit and vegetable growing, and its mult.i.tudes of shallows being almost throughout a vast oyster bed. It has, all about, the haunts of wild fowl and the nestling-places of delicious fish.
These sh.o.r.es were the home--first on the eastern side and afterwards on the western--of the Nantic.o.kes, or "tidewater Indians," who ultimately migrated to New York to join the Iroquois or Five Nations, making that Confederacy the "Six Nations." From Cape Charles, guarding the northern entrance to the Bay, extends northward the well-known peninsula of the "Eastern Sh.o.r.e," a land of market gardens, strawberries and peaches, which feeds the Northern cities, and having its railroad, a part of the Pennsylvania system, running for miles over the level surface in a flat country, which enabled the builders to lay a mathematically straight pair of rails for nearly ninety miles, said to be the longest railway tangent in existence.
Chesapeake Bay is now patrolled by the oyster fleets of both Virginia and Maryland, each State having an "oyster navy" to protect its beds from predatory forays; and occasionally there arises an "oyster war"
which expands to the dignity of a newspaper sensation, and sometimes results in bloodshed. The wasteful methods of oyster-dredging are said to be destroying the beds, and they are much less valuable than formerly, although measures are being projected for their protection and restoration under Government auspices. We are told that a band of famished colonists who went in the early days to beg corn from the Indians first discovered the value of the oyster. The Indians were roasting what looked like stones in their fire, and invited the hungry colonists to partake. The opened sh.e.l.ls disclosed the succulent bivalve, and the white men found there was other good food besides corn. All the sites of extinct Indian villages along the Chesapeake were marked by piles of oyster sh.e.l.ls, showing they had been eaten from time immemorial.
The English colonists at Jamestown were told by the Indians of the wonders of the "Mother of Waters," as they called Chesapeake Bay, about the many great rivers pouring into it, the various tribes on its sh.o.r.es, and the large fur trade that could be opened with them; so that the colonists gradually came to the opinion that the upper region of the great bay was the choicest part of their province. Smith explored it and made a map in 1609, and others followed him, setting up trading-stations upon the rivers as far as the Potomac and the Patuxent. Soon this new country and its fur trade attracted the cupidity of William Claiborne, who had been appointed Treasurer of Virginia, and was sent out when King James I. made it a royal province, the king telling them they would find Claiborne "a person of qualitie and trust." He was also agent for a London Company the king had chartered to make discoveries and engage in the fur trade.
Claiborne, in 1631, established a settlement on Kent Island, the largest in the bay, about opposite Annapolis, and one hundred and thirty miles north of the James, which thrived as a trading station and next year sent its burgesses to the a.s.sembly at Jamestown.
CALVERT AND MARYLAND.
Sir George Calvert, who had been private secretary to Lord Cecil in Queen Elizabeth"s reign, and also held office under King James, upon retiring was created Baron of Baltimore in Ireland, and purchased part of Newfoundland, which he called Avalon. He sent out a colony and afterwards visited Avalon; but, being discouraged by the cold climate, he abandoned the colony, and persuaded the next king, Charles I., to give him land on both sides of Chesapeake Bay north of the Potomac.
Before the deed was signed, however, Baron Baltimore died, and his son, Cecilius Calvert, succeeded him and received the grant. This was one of the greatest gifts of land ever made, extending northward from the Potomac River, including all Maryland, a broad strip of what is now Pennsylvania, all of Delaware, and a good deal of West Virginia.
The charter made the grant a Palatinate, giving Lord Baltimore and his heirs absolute control of the country, freedom to trade with the whole world and make his own laws, or allow his colonists to do this. The price was the delivery of two Indian arrows a year at the Castle of Windsor, and one-fifth of all the gold and silver found. This grant was dated on June 20, 1632, and the name first intended by Calvert for his colony was Crescentia; but in the charter it was styled _Terra Mariae_, after Queen Henrietta Maria, or "Mary"s Land." The expedition came out the following winter, leaving the Isle of Wight in November in two vessels, named the "Ark" and the "Dove," under command of Leonard Calvert, Cecil"s brother, there being two hundred emigrants, nearly all Roman Catholics, like their chief, and mostly gentlemen of fortune and respectability. While the colony was Catholic, Cecil Calvert inculcated complete toleration. In his letter of instructions he wrote: "Preserve unity and peace on shipboard amongst all pa.s.sengers; and suffer no offence to be given to any of the Protestants; for this end cause all acts of the Roman Catholic religion to be done as privately as may be;" and he also told his brother, the Governor, "to treat all Protestants with as much mildness and favor as justice would permit," this to be observed "at land as well as at sea." In March, 1633, they entered the Chesapeake and sailed up to the Potomac River, landing at an island and setting up a cross, claiming the country for Christ and for England.
The "Ark" anch.o.r.ed, and the smaller "Dove" was sent cruising along the sh.o.r.e of the Potomac above Point Lookout, "to make choice of a place probable to be healthfull and fruitfull," which might be easily fortified, and "convenient for trade both with the English and savages." The little "Dove" sailed some distance up the Potomac, examining the sh.o.r.e, and encountered various Indians, who were astonished when they saw the vessel, diminutive, yet so much larger than their canoes, and said they would like to see the tree from which that great canoe was hollowed out, for they knew nothing of the method of construction. The colonists talked with the Indians, having an interpreter, and Leonard Calvert asked a chief: "Shall we stay here, or shall we go back?" To this a mysterious answer was made: "You may do as you think best." Calvert did not like this, and decided to land nearer the bay, so his vessel dropped down the river again, and they finally landed on a stream where they found the Indian village of Yoacamoco. The Indians were very friendly, sold part of their village for some axes and bright cloth, gave up their best wigwams to Calvert and his colonists, and in one of these the Jesuit fathers held a solemn service, dedicating the settlement to St. Mary; and thus was founded the capital of the new Palatinate of Maryland. Under Calvert"s wise rule the colony prospered, kept up friendliness with the Indians, enjoyed a lucrative trade, and, after a long struggle, ultimately managed to make Claiborne abandon the settlement on Kent Island, which became part of Maryland. To the northward of them was the estuary of the Patuxent River, meaning "the stream at the little falls." St.
Mary"s County is the peninsula between the Patuxent and the Potomac, terminating at Point Lookout, and a quiet and restful farming country to-day. Leonardstown, on the Patuxent, named after Leonard Calvert, is the county-seat; but the ancient village of St. Mary"s, the original colony and capital, afterwards superseded by Annapolis, still exists, though only a few scattered bricks remain to mark the site of the old fort and town. At St. Inigoe"s is the quaint colonial home of the Jesuit fathers who accompanied Calvert, and its especial pride is a sweet-toned bell, brought out from England in 1685, which still rings the Angelus. At Kent Island scarcely a vestige remains of Claiborne"s trading-post and settlement.
THE MARYLAND CAPITAL.
The settlers of Maryland were not all Roman Catholics, however, for Puritan refugees came in there. Above the Patuxent is the estuary of the Severn River, and here, in a beautiful situation, is Annapolis, the capital of Maryland, which has about eight thousand inhabitants, and was originally colonized in 1649 by Puritans driven from the James River in Virginia by the Episcopalians in control there. The settlement was at first called Providence, and Richard Preston, the eminent Quaker, was long its commander. Afterwards it was named Anne Arundel Town, after Lady Baltimore, which still is the name of its county, although the town came to be finally known as Annapolis, from Queen Anne, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, who gave it valuable presents. It is now best known as the seat of the United States Naval Academy, which has a fine establishment there, founded by George Bancroft, the historian, when he was Secretary of the Navy, in 1845. Its ancient defensive work, Fort Severn, has been roofed over, and is the Academy gymnasium. The city was made the capital of Maryland in 1794, the government being then removed from St. Mary"s, and the State Capitol is a ma.s.sive brick structure, standing on an eminence, with a lofty dome and cupola, from which there is a fine view of the surrounding country and over Chesapeake Bay. In the Senate Chamber General Washington surrendered his Commission to the American Colonial Congress which met there in December, 1783, and in it also a.s.sembled the first Const.i.tutional Convention of the United States, in 1786. In front of the building is a colossal statue of Chief Justice Taney, of the Supreme Court of the United States, a native of Maryland, who died in 1864. Annapolis formerly had an extensive commerce and ama.s.sed much wealth, until eclipsed by the growth of Baltimore, and now its chief trade, like so many of the towns of the Chesapeake, is in oysters.
THE MONUMENTAL CITY.