Part 2

Travelling always with my father, who was a merchant, it was natural that I should become acquainted with merchants. But I remember very few of them. Mr. Daniel H. London, who was a character, and Mr. Fleming James, who often visited his estate in Roanoke, and was more of a character than London, I recall quite vividly. I remember, too, Mr. Francis B. Deane, who was always talking about Mobjack Bay, and who was yet to build the Langhorne Foundry in Lynchburg. I thought if I could just see Mobjack Bay, I would be happy. According to Mr. Deane, and I agreed with him, there ought by this time to have been a great city on Mobjack Bay. I saw Mobjack Bay last summer, and was happy. Any man who goes to Gloucester will be happy. More marked than all of these characters was Major Yancey, of Buckingham, “the wheel-horse of Democracy,” he was called; Tim. Rives, of Prince George, whose face, some said, resembled the inside of a gunlock, being the war-horse. Major Y.’s stout figure, florid face, and animated, forcible manner, come back with some distinctness; and there are other forms, but they are merely outlines barely discernible. So pass away men who, in their day, were names and powers--shadows gone into shadow-land, leaving but a dim print upon a few brains, which in time will soon flit away.

Arrived in Lynchburg, the effect of the canal was soon seen in the array of freight boats, the activity and bustle at the packet landing. New names and new faces, from the canal region of New York, most likely, were seen and heard. I became acquainted with the family of Capt. Huntley, who commanded one of the boats, and was for some years quite intimate with his pretty daughters, Lizzie, Harriet and Emma. Capt. H. lived on Church street, next door to the Reformed, or as it was then called, the Radical Methodist Church, and nearly opposite to Mr. Peleg Seabury. He was for a time connected in some way with the Exchange hotel, but removed with his family to Cincinnati, since when I have never but once heard of them. Where are they all, I wonder? Then, there was a Mr. Watson, who lived with Boyd, Edmond & Davenport, married first a Miss ----, and afterwards, Mrs. Christian, went into the tobacco business in Brooklyn, then disappeared, leaving no trace, not the slightest. Then there was a rare fellow, Charles Buckley, who lived in the same store with Watson, had a fine voice, and without a particle of religion in the ordinary sense, loved dearly to sing at revivals. I went with him; we took back seats, and sang with great fervor. This was at night. Besides Captain Huntley, I remember among the captains of a later date, Captain Jack Yeatman; and at a date still later his brother, Captain C. E. Yeatman, both of whom are still living. There was still another captain whose name was Love---- something, a very handsome man; and these are all.

In 1849, having graduated in Philadelphia, I made one of my last through-trips on the canal, the happy owner of a diploma in a green tin case, and the utterly miserable possessor of a dyspepsia which threatened my life. I enjoyed the night on deck, sick as I was. The owl’s “long hoot,” the “plaintive cry of the whippoorwill;” the melody--for it is by association a melody, which the Greeks have but travestied with their _brek-ke-ex_, _ko-ex_--of the frogs, the mingled hum of insect life, the “stilly sound” of inanimate nature, the soft respiration of sleeping earth, and above all, the ineffable glory of the stars. Oh! heaven of heavens, into which the sick boy, lying alone on deck, then looked, has thy charm fled, too, with so many other charms? Have thirty years of suffering, of thought, of book-reading, brought only the unconsoling knowledge, that yonder twinkling sparks of far-off fire are not lamps that light the portals of the palace of the King and Father, but suns like our sun, surrounded by earths full of woe and doubt like our own; and that heaven, if heaven there be, is not in the sky; not in space, vast as it is; not in time, endless though it be--where then? “Near thee, in thy heart!” Who feels this, who will say this of himself? Away thou gray-haired, sunken-cheeked sceptic, away! Come back to me, come back to me, wan youth; there on that deck, with the treasure of thy faith, thy trust in men, thy worship of womankind, thy hope, that sickness could not chill, in the sweet possibilities of life. Come back to me!--’Tis a vain cry. The youth lies there on the packet’s deck, looking upward to the stars, and he will not return.

The trip in 1849 was a dreary one until there came aboard a dear lady friend of mine who had recently been married. I had not had a good honest talk with a girl for eighteen solid--I think I had better say long, (we always say long when speaking of the war)--“fo’ long years!”--I have heard it a thousand times--for eighteen long months, and you may imagine how I enjoyed the conversation with my friend. She wasn’t very pretty, and her husband was a Louisa man; but her talk, full of good heart and good sense, put new life into me. One other through trip, the very last, I made in 1851. On my return in 1853, I went by rail as far as Farmville, and thence by stage to Lynchburg; so that, for purposes of through travel, the canal lasted, one may say, only ten or a dozen years. And now the canal, after a fair and costly trial, is to give place to the rail, and I, in common with the great body of Virginians, am heartily glad of it. It has served its purpose well enough, perhaps, for its day and generation. The world has passed by it, as it has passed by slavery. Henceforth Virginia must prove her metal in the front of steam, electricity, and possibly mightier forces still. If she can’t hold her own in their presence, she must go under. I believe she will hold her own; these very forces will help her. The dream of the great canal to the Ohio, with its-nine mile tunnel, costing fifty or more millions, furnished by the general government, and revolutionizing the commerce of the United States, much as the discovery of America and opening of the Suez canal revolutionized the commerce of the world, must be abandoned along with other dreams.

One cannot withhold admiration from President Johnston and other officers of the canal, who made such a manful struggle to save it. But who can war against the elements? Nature herself, imitating man, seems to have taken special delight in kicking the canal after it was down. So it must go. Well, let it go. It knew Virginia in her palmiest days and it crushed the stage coach; isn’t that glory enough? I think it is. But I can’t help feeling sorry for the bull frogs; there must be a good many of them between here and Lexington. What will become of them, I wonder? They will follow their predecessors, the batteaux; and their pale, green ghosts, seated on the prows of shadowy barges, will be heard piping the roundelays of long-departed joys.

Farewell canal, frogs, musk-rats, mules, packet-horns and all, a long farewell. Welcome the rail along the winding valleys of the James. Wake up, Fluvanna! Arise, old Buckingham! Exalt thyself, O Goochland! And thou, O Powhatan, be not afraid nor shame-faced any longer, but raise thy Ebenezer freely, for the day of thy redemption is at hand. Willis J. Dance shall rejoice; yea, Wm. Pope Dabney shall be exceeding glad. And all hail our long lost brother! come to these empty, aching, arms, dear Lynch’s Ferry!

I have always thought that the unnatural separation between Lynchburg and Richmond was the source of all our troubles. In some way, not entirely clear to me, it brought on the late war, and it will bring on another, if a reunion between the two cities does not soon take place. Baltimore, that pretty and attractive, but meddlesome vixen, is at the bottom of it all. Richmond will not fear Baltimore after the rails are laid. Her prosperity will date anew from the time of her iron wedding with Lynchburg. We shall see her merchants on our streets again, and see them often. That will be a better day.

Alas! there are many we shall not see. John G. Meem, Sam’l McCorkle, John Robin McDaniel, John Hollins, Chas. Phelps, Jno. R. D. Payne, Jehu Williams, Ambrose Rucker, Wilson P. Bryant, (who died the other day,) and many, many others will not come to Richmond any more. They are gone. And if they came, they would not meet the men they used to meet; very few of them at least. Jacquelin P. Taylor, John N. Gordon, Thos. R. Price, Lewis D. Crenshaw, James Dunlop--why add to the list? They too are gone.

But the sons of the old-time merchants of Lynchburg will meet here the sons of the old-time merchants of Richmond, and the meeting of the two, the mingling of the waters--Blackwater creek with Bacon Quarter branch--deuce take it! I have gone off on the water line again--the admixture, I should say, of the sills of Campbell with the spikes of Henrico, the readjustment, so to speak, of the ties (R. R. ties) that bind us, will more than atone for the obsolete canal, and draw us all the closer by reason of our long separation and estrangement. Richmond and Lynchburg united will go onward and upward in a common career of glory and prosperity. And is there, can there be, a Virginian, deserving the name, who would envy that glory, or for a moment retard that prosperity? Not one, I am sure.

Allow me, now that my reminiscences are ended, allow me, as an old stager and packet-horn reverer, one last Parthian shot. It is this: If the James river does not behave better hereafter than it has done of late, the railroad will have to be suspended in mid-heaven by means of a series of stationary balloons; travelling then may be a little wabbly, but at all events, it won’t be wet.

G. W. BAGBY.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.