Part 4

Here the men on duty take post; and, chewing the quid of "sweet and bitter fancies" patiently abide the moment when it may please the canvass-back to give his bosom to the breeze, and quit one river for the other. Half a dozen Retrievers, of a mixed breed, lay lounging on the grass in front of this line of watch-boxes, awaiting the moment when work should be cut out for their Sagacities. These were admirably trained to their vocation, as I had an opportunity of judging whilst a looker-on here. On the occasion of a small flight, a couple of long shots were made, and a duck winged slightly: it made a good downward slant, and fell forty yards from the shore into the Seneca: at the same moment in dashed four dogs after it, helter-skelter: there was a little sea on, and the object of their search at first unseen by them: a wave of the hand from the sportsman was the signal by which their line was regulated, and for this one of the four would occasionally look back. The wounded bird, on being neared, dived, followed by the foremost dog; the others staunchly pursuing the line of their under-course, directed by the air-bubbles rising to the surface: in a little time, up came the duck ahead of its pursuers, and the dog close upon it; being hard pressed, down again went the duck, and down went another dog; and for several times was this repeated, until the chase was nearly a mile from the beach, when the dogs were recalled from a pursuit which is rarely successful unless the game has received some bodily wound, or has a limb broken,--so active and so strong are these birds in the water.

At two o'clock we sat down to a most capital dinner,--a joint of roast-beef, fine fish, and Canvass-backs, that had been on the wing within a couple of hours, together with the Red-head, Teal, and two or three other specimens; all excellent in their way, but not comparable for delicacy, fat, or flavour with that inimitable work of nature the right Canvass-back duck of these waters, where the wild celery on which they love to feed abounds, and to which they owe the delicate aromatic flavour so prized by the _gourmand_.

At five o'clock P.M., after witnessing some sport, S----r gave the word to mount, and off we set for Mr. Oliver's. An hour's ride brought us within his domain, where lofty deer-fences, blackthorn hedge-rows, well-made drives, and carefully cultivated land, formed a striking change from the wild but beautiful forest-country through which we had ridden.

We first came upon the farm-yard and offices of the estate, all well-arranged and in good order: here we left our horses, and walked on to the house,--a plain sporting-lodge, without any outward appearance or pretension. It is well situated upon a gentle eminence overlooking a couple of fine reaches of the Gunpowder river; on the land side the deer-park spreads away to the forest, being divided from the lawn by an invisible fence.

Himself an ardent lover of the sports of the field, Mr. Oliver, for a time, took infinite pains to cultivate a legitimate taste for it; but, I believe, without much success, although he pursued his plans on a scale and at a cost not often imitated in this country. Indeed, to say truth, men of fortune have little encouragement here to be liberal in this way; since, when a gentleman has surrounded himself with all the appliances to sporting, it is next to impossible to bring them fairly into play; or, however social his own spirit may be, yet harder to find persons possessing the time and taste for their enjoyment.

The worthy old sportsman gave me a grievous list of difficulties which he had encountered from a desire to promote on this fine estate the breed of certain animals and birds. Keepers were provided from Europe with first-rate characters; but they found all their ancient habits were to be unlearned here, and were soon completely at fault.

The foxes killed his pheasants; the neighbouring farmers, or boatmen from the rivers, had decoyed his dogs and shot down his deer; and, after a hopeless struggle, he had given up his hounds: the deer alone he managed to domesticate and increase, his stock at present amounting to four hundred head.

No spot could have been better chosen for an experiment of this kind, as the whole estate lies within a natural ring-fence, bounded by deep waters on two sides, and cut off from all neighbours on the other by a belt of close forest. Under other laws, time would be afforded for the regular improvement of this domain, and the plans of the founder might be carried out by his successors; but, as it is, the present worthy possessor once laid beneath the turf, the object of all his pains-taking and labour will, in all probability, be cut up into small farms, or be allowed once more to degenerate into forest, as may appear most profitable to his heirs.

This plan may be decidedly the most advantageous for the community at large, and I have no doubt is, since it works well here; but it has a chilly and depressing effect on the mind when viewed by one who would desire--and who does not?--to live in the creations which owe their existence to his labour or his taste, and who would revisit in the spirit the pleasant place enjoyed by his children, for whose dear sakes it was first projected.

After supper our spirited old host gave the hour of muster for five o'clock A.M., and we severally sought our beds in order to make the most of the brief time left for sleep. Much as I love a fox-hunt, I freely confess that this early rising did seem a mighty hard bargain.

_28th._--Not choosing to be laggard, as the thing was to be done, I was first afoot for the honour of Britain;--the whole party, indeed, were exceedingly punctual;--and after a hearty breakfast, away we rode for cover, with a slight crisping of frost under hoof, and a warm-looking sky just opening over head, heralding a sun that gave promise of making woodland and meadow smoke again within the next hour or two; at present, however, the air was nippingly shrewd, to say the least of it, and set me to blowing my fingers like a trumpeter. At the end of about an hour's ride the dogs were laid on, and almost immediately hit off the scent, and went away merrily through the wood at a slashing rate. The rider is here kept wide awake by the vicinity of the trees, many of which are spreading and low-branched, requiring a quick eye and some suppleness to keep one's hat from getting hurt when going "the pace," and, by St. Hubert! these hounds in woodland appear anything but slow.

Many dark dells and lovely open glades did we thus hurrah by, and across, with barely a glimpse in passing. In one place the path was completely blocked up by two forest-trees, apparently but recently rooted up; they had been rent from the earth, and flung here from opposite sides, as though a mere stack of rushes, in the pride of their vigour and in the full bloom of their beauty; and here they lay to wither boll, and branch, and leaf.

A whirlwind had evidently descended on this very spot probably within a few days; I say descended, for the whole circumference of the circle devastated did not exceed twenty yards at most. One other tree, yet fixed in the soil, presented an awful example of the might of the tornado. It was a chestnut of the largest size, the trunk near the base being seven or eight feet in circumference; it reclined at what seemed to have been the very focus of the whirlwind; its roots yet clung to earth; but, through the resistance thus offered, the tree had been literally twisted round and round, until it was split into laths, the trunk having the appearance of a great bundle of saplings peeled and twined together by the hand of a Titan, as lads twist withy-wands; the sturdy limbs and spreading branches, although little broken, were wound about and knotted together in a way so curiously complicated as hardly to be made comprehensible without the aid and evidence of sight.

Attracted by this singular forest wreck, I took to moralizing like the melancholy Jaques, though in a strain not quite so well worthy of record; and, losing sight of my company, was for some time thrown out. When I caught the dogs up, it was found Reynard was fairly gone to earth in an inaccessible ravine; so we even left him of necessity to his repose, which had been tolerably well earned by a rattling burst of full six miles on end.

In half an hour after we found again, when we got a second run, which, with a couple of short checks, held us in sport for an hour and a half, with a similar result.

By this time the day was growing smoking hot, whilst the dogs and horses were anything but fresh; so it was agreed to collect our, by this time, scattered forces, and turn the rein once again for the Lodge. To the sound of "merrie horn and loud halloo" we took our way through the pathless forest, picking up now a strayed hound and now a man astray, until, by the time home was reached, all our company was well accounted for; and so ends my last fox-chase in America.

Let me here insert that my hospitable host never followed hound again: he on this day, I remember, regretted to me that a pain in his chest, with a growing difficulty of respiration, prevented his riding as he had once done; within a few weeks after he died, leaving a gap in the hospitality of Baltimore that will be felt by hundreds. Mr. Oliver was one of a class of excellent open-house men, of which class there are specimens to be found in every part of this Union, men whose frank hospitality is of itself sufficient to keep up the reputation of the country amongst strangers: many of these yet live, and I trust will long live, to the lasting honour of the States.

By birth, the subject of this notice was an Irishman; but his affections, his sympathies, his prejudices, were all on the side of his adopted country, which in his eyes had no equal in the world. It was amusing to hear him speak of his visits to Europe: to England only did he cede the right even of comparison; and on the subject of our wines he was quite a sceptic, although he had dined at the best tables, and spoke most warmly of his entertainers. He protested against the wines of England being at all comparable to those of America; nay, I remember he was heretic enough to deny us the supremacy of a rump-steak, and raised his voice against the majesty of Dolly's.

I would not have so much heeded his advancing this heterodox doctrine before Americans, had he not at the same time come well prepared to prove himself qualified to give judgment by producing, hot-and-hot, a steak that even I was compelled to admit might have been entered as A.1. at Lloyd's.

They possess in the States generally as good beef as need be desired; but, strange to say, with this exception, I have rarely met a tolerable steak, according to our idea of the matter; the secret of which is, the meat is not kept, is full of blood and fibre, and, although excellent of flavour, is not easily disposed of by those who reject the bolting principle, and desire to adhere to the more toilsome plan of mastication.

_29th._--Quitted the pleasant banks of the Gunpowder, and, with my old sporting companion, returned to Baltimore. Same day, embarked on board steam-boat for an excursion as far as Petersburg, Virginia, _via_ Norfolk; we had a fine day and night whilst steering through this great bay of the Chesapeake: went to bed late in consequence.

_30th._--Coming out of the cabin this morning at an early hour, found we were off the old fort, Point Comfort. Fort Calhoun, a work on which enormous outlay has been made, is not yet completed: the great difficulty appears to be the unstable nature of the bank on which the works are placed: upon the elevation of the _terre-plain_ alone, nearly four thousand cubic yards of sand have been employed; all of which is shipped from the main, and deposited within the fort. It is computed that, by the time this place is fitted to receive a garrison, one hundred thousand tons of stone will have been expended on the works and breakwater which are required as an exterior support to the pressure from within.

The completion of this truly great military work must, in a great measure, depend upon the decrease of the subsidence to which the soil is liable, and for which it is necessary to pause after every year's addition of pressure, in order to proportion such a resistance as may restore the equilibrium and secure the foundation. When I was here, one of these pauses in the engineering department had place; but it was said, the President had intimated his design of passing the hot season upon this spot, when the works would be vigorously resumed under his inspection.

Sailing up the Elizabeth river, so famous in the gallant Raleigh's story, we reached Norfolk at eight o'clock A.M., when a portion of our living freight was quickly transferred to the Virginia steamer for Charleston; another portion, to which I was attached, being, with similar promptitude, handed over to the Pocahontas ditto, bound for Richmond, the capital of Virginia. In less than an hour we were sailing back through the well-closed harbour of Norfolk; whence, crossing the Elizabeth river, we entered, in a couple of hours, the noble stream now rightly called, after its legitimate sovereign, the Powhatan, but better known as the James's river,--"a great sinking in the poetry of the thing," though Jamie also was a king, "but no more like his brother," &c.

Upon the southern banks rise a constant series of fine bold bluffs, mostly crowned with forest trees of great beauty, now dressed in that rich-coloured foliage so often lauded by poet and painter, but as yet, I fancy, never done full justice to. Scott and Turner, those inspired illustrators of nature, might have done this: as it is, I hope America will, before many years are past, find, amongst her own sons, pens and pencils worthy to give her beauties to the admiration of the Old World.

We arrived off the original city founded in the "Old Dominion," having some passengers to land upon the beach, now almost as wild as when first trodden by the adventurous foot of the bold Captain Smith. Within a few yards of the landing-place stood the first Christian church erected on this mighty continent: I grieve to add, this interesting altar to the true God no longer bears his holy word: a dilapidated, but sturdy-looking square tower of brick, alone remains to mark the site of church and city; indeed, without timely care is bestowed by some gentle, generous spirit, even this most interesting memorial will speedily disappear. At present this forms one of the very few objects to which the term picturesque may properly be applied, existing in the States; and, linked as it is with the recollections of its gallant founders, I confess it laid strong hold of my imagination, absorbing my eyes and interest as long as I could keep it in view.

The low, unhealthy site of this city proved, after a prolonged struggle, the cause, I believe, of its total desertion. Elizabeth Town, its near neighbour and once rival, is, I have been informed, fast verging to a similar condition.

Scattered along the banks on both sides of the river, are several mansions raised in the old times by the wealthy planters of the "Old Dominion," the remembrance of whose liberal expenditure and open hospitality still does honour to their state. These houses have a strong resemblance to the English squirearchical dwellings of the last century, being generally large square brick buildings, commonly flanked by low disproportioned wings; they have all hospitable-looking entrances, and flights of steps made with reference to the number and free access of the visitors rather than in keeping with the size of the house; their steep, many-chimneyed roofs are usually surrounded by a showy balustrade, and their appearance imposing and respectable, bespeaking affluence and good housekeeping.

One or two of these mansions stood upon fine open lawns of some extent, which swept down until their grass mingled with the waters of the gently-flowing river, offering a slope of great natural beauty, studded with clumps of goodly trees; the whole, however, having that most melancholy air of neglect that seemed to say their best days were "the days that are gone."

Under the existing law of the States those days may not be expected ever to return; and such places as are here alluded to cannot be kept up in families whose possessions, however ample originally, must be parcelled out at the demise of each inheritor, until, like poor Sir Lucius, the "mansion-house and the dirty acres" having slipped through the not over-tenacious fingers of the Virginian proprietor, the family honour and the family pictures will alone be left.

In reverting again to the subject of this law, which I confess I have only viewed under its most melancholy aspect, I must add that it is by no means unpopular here, being, in fact, perfectly accordant with both reason and justice, and probably, as far as the commonwealth is concerned, for the best; yet cannot I look without regret on this oblivion of the once gentle of the land, and the scattering of the children of those brave men whose blood and labour redeemed the wilderness, or won it from the savage and his prey.

Quitted the Pocahontas at City-point; wherefore so called I know not, since here is neither city nor point that I could discover, but only a few buildings, and a fine natural wharf at which two noble ships were lying taking in tobacco and cotton.

Whilst waiting at the landing-place amidst the bustle incident to shifting baggage, landing passengers, and packing carriages, I witnessed a wedding assemblage that amused me highly, and was no bad sample of slavery in the Old Dominion.

From a large hut close to where we were set ashore poured forth a bevy of beauty of all colours, from the deepest jet up to the quadroon just tinged with amber. They were for the most part dressed in white, many having expensive scarfs of gay colours, and all wearing wreaths and bouquets of the most beautiful flowers, tastefully arranged and put on. I had only time to learn that it was a wedding-party, and to "guess" at the bride. I hit upon a plump, roguish-looking little devil, having a skin like new copper, teeth of pearl, and eyes black as "Kilkenny's own coal." She was, I observed, the centre of the many-tinted circle, and wore, moreover, a wreath composed of the pearl-like wax-berry in her jetty hair.

These, as I was informed, were all slaves; certainly a merrier-looking party I never saw of white folk, and, for this occasion, their chain was literally hidden under wreaths of roses; for a day, at least, they were very happy, and who amongst the freest can count on what the morrow may bring forth!

This was the first glance I had been allowed of the Virginian agricultural slave, and I was not ill pleased to be presented with the bright side of a condition which, to the mind of the philanthropist of every land, is sufficiently painful without the exaggerations of the political quack, or the fanatic outcry of the sectarian bigot seeking to preach a crusade of extermination against men whose slaves form their only inheritance, himself meantime, for the most selfish ends, daily planning how best to enslave the mental part of those whose credulity and weakness expose them for a prey.

There are few proprietors, at this day, more to be pitied than the large planters of Virginia and the Carolinas; as high-spirited, generous a race as may anywhere be encountered, but much weighed down of late by the pressure of circumstances which they cannot control, and which every year threatens to render more heavy, unless, through some miraculous interposition, the growing causes be removed or checked. The very slave property, for the inherited possession of which they are abused, is becoming in many cases a burthen. Their more southern rivals can grow cheaper, and, having a fresher soil, produce larger crops and outsell them in the market; whilst, with a slave population, they have no chance of ever becoming manufacturers.

From City-point, a well-horsed coach took us fourteen miles, under two hours, to the busy little city of St. Petersburg; where, over a cup of tea, and a good Virginy coal fire, I reviewed this journey of a couple of days, which had afforded me many subjects for admiration and reflection. I smoked my cigar, and, at an early hour, retired to my bed, of which I had a choice, there being three in the room, although, at this time, exclusively appropriated to me. I soon was fast asleep, dreaming confusedly of Captain Smith, Pocahontas, Lord Cornwallis, Queen Elizabeth, Powhatan, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Sir George Cockburn.

IMPRESSIONS OF PETERSBURG.

VIRGINIA.

"And here I am," said I to myself, on waking, and finding the high sun dancing the hays over the floor, as his beams stole in through the _jalousies_ of my windows.

"Here I am in Virginia, the scene of so much suffering and so much gallantry,--the Eldorado of Raleigh, the refuge of the Cavalier, and the birth-place of George Washington."

After walking through the little city, I next betook me to the bank of the gentle Apotomax, up which stream, we read, Captain Smith was first conveyed by his captors, and close by high-water mark was he landed, preparatory to his being burned _pour amuser le roi_.

The tide flows just above the town; and to this spot I strolled, and sat me down where the velvet sward rests on the stream. "And to this very spot, perchance," said I, "did the canoes of the warriors of Powhatan bring their most dreaded, and, consequently, best esteemed enemy, to die the death of a thrice-honoured Brave, or, in terms more homely, to be put to as much torture as the utmost of savage ingenuity could devise; and this prolonged as far as the nature of the captive might endure."

A RHAPSODY.

"And as I sat, the birdis harkening thus, Methought that I herd voicis suddainly." CHAUCER.

Here, closing my eyes on the sloops, lighters, and schooners lying at no great distance, and barring my ears against the cries of busy carmen and wharfingers, and the clanging of steam-engines, I calmly set about surveying in my mind's eye the group which ready imagination conjured up in colours, if not as true, at least as glowing, as the by-gone reality.

About rose the forest-crowned slopes,--for this is a region of hill and dell,--with small green belts of meadow drawn between: along the river glided, with an arrow-like track, the light canoes, when, as they touch this sylvan harbour, the until now well-suppressed joy of victory bursts out in exulting shouts and yells wildly terrific;--the solitude is awakened, the slumbering villages are roused, and the well-known cry of Indian triumph comes back from every teeming hill; whilst the roused deer springs trembling, from his covert, and the fierce panther crouching seeks his gloomiest lair.

The adventurous captain, to whom peril was as a household word, and fear a term unknown, is now unbound, and led on shore, walking with a free step among his captors and with a cheek unblanched, casting proud scornful looks upon forms and faces which might have scared the devil; for the roused Indian--cowed as is his present nature by a hard-bought conviction of his inferiority--is yet a fearful object to behold when decked in paint and plume and all his horribly fantastic war array.