Part 8

“The falls of James River, which obstructed its navigation from the distance of seven miles above Richmond, heretofore imposed the necessity of employing land carriage for that space. At present a canal, running parallel with the course of the river for those seven miles, connects the communication by water, and opens a navigation which extends without interruption 200 miles above Richmond. I have seen one of the two mills at Richmond. It stands below the falls of the river, receives a great power of water, and turns six pair of stones. It is a fine mill, and unites the advantages of all the new inventions: the cogs of the wheels are clumsily executed. It costs a yearly rent of near $6,000 to Monsieur Chevalier, a Frenchman from Rochefort, heretofore director of the French paquets to America, and now settled in Virginia. Flour mills are more numerous at Petersburg than at Richmond, and the mills there are also upon a good construction. The exportations of Petersburg are more considerable than those of Richmond, although generally speaking, the produce it receives is inferior in quality. Tobacco, for instance, which sells at Richmond for $6 or $7 the hundred weight, does not fetch quite $5 at Petersburg. City Point, or Bermuda Hundred, is the spot where the custom house is established for these two places. At half a mile from the custom house stands the habitation of Mr. D. Randolph, who is fully entitled to the reputation which he enjoys of being the best farmer in the whole country.

“The inspection of tobacco in Virginia, and especially on James River, is esteemed to be conducted with a degree of exactness and severity, which contributes as much as the real superiority of the article itself to keep up its price in the market. The hogsheads are broken at the warehouse, and examined in every direction and in every part. The tobacco is then repacked in its hogshead, which is branded with a hot iron, marking the place of inspection and the quality of the contents. The planter receives a certificate of the particulars. It is by selling this ‘tobacconote’ to the merchant that the planter sells his tobacco. The civil laws of Virginia have struck me as wisely ordained. The State of Virginia has no public debt, except $100,000, in which she was found debtor to the Union on the settlement of the accounts of the States with the general government; and a claim made on the part of France for arms and military stores furnished during the war. From the condition of the finances of the State of Virginia it follows that the taxes are by no means heavy. The counties impose no taxes, unless when they have bridges, prisons or courthouses to build. The slave laws are much milder here than in any of the other countries through which I have hitherto traveled.

“On the 20th of June Mr. Guillemard and myself set out for the mountains; Monticello, the habitation of Mr. Jefferson, was the object of this part of our journey. Messrs. Graham & Havens, merchants of Richmond, and owners of a coal mine at Dover, near by, were so kind as to conduct us thither. This mine is scarcely wrought. There is not one person throughout America versed in the art of working mines. The country between Dover and Goochland Courthouse, where we stopped at night, is more variegated than before; you find there more heights, and some fine prospects, especially on Mount Pleasant, which commands a wide extensive vale entirely cleared, and full of houses and clumps of trees. This day was a court day at Goochland. It was near 9 o’clock at night when I arrived. At the inn the company easily discerned that I was a Frenchman. There arrived a large bowl of grog, and we drank one after another, toasting the French, France, America, Virginia, and M. de la Fayette, whose name they mentioned with enthusiasm. In spite of my little disposition for drinking, I was obliged two or three times to drink in my turn, for it was absolutely necessary to empty the bowl. It was with great difficulty I prevented the arrival of a second. The road grows duller after you leave Goochland Courthouse. The plantations become constantly less frequent and less extensive. Inns are very scarce on this road; the next is nearly seventeen miles distant from that where we passed the night. I went a mile farther on, to stop at one which I knew was kept by a Frenchman. After having spent nearly the whole day there, we went ten miles farther on to an ordinary, where we stopped for the night, and the next day proceeded to Monticello.

“Mr. Jefferson’s house commands one of the most extensive prospects you can meet with; when finished by his new plan, it will certainly deserve to be ranked with the most pleasant mansions in France or England. He has divided all his land under culture into four farms, and every farm into seven fields of forty acres. His system of rotation embraces seven years. Mr. Jefferson possesses one of those excellent threshing machines, which a few years since were invented in Scotland. He has a drilling machine, invented in his own neighborhood. Mr. Jefferson, in common with all landholders in America, imagines that his habitation is more healthy than any other; that it is as healthful as any in the finest parts of France. In private life Mr. Jefferson displays a mild, easy, and obliging manner, though somewhat cold and reserved; he possesses a stock of information not inferior to that of any other man. His daughters have been educated in France, where they became acquainted with my family. Fifteen hundred leagues from our native country, in another world, and frequently given up to melancholy, we fancy ourselves restored to existence when we hear our family and our friends mentioned by persons who have known them.

“We arrived at Staunton by the road through Rockfish Gap. The most frequented road to the Sweet, Warm and Hot Springs at Greenbriar, and from thence to Kentucky, passes through Staunton. Eight inns are established there, three of which are large. Hemp, which grows very fine, is cultivated throughout the whole of this country. Wheat in this region is mowed with the sickle, as in Europe, and is infected with the rot. On the other side of the Blue Mountains they mow with the scythe. From Staunton we passed by Keyssel Town, Newmarket, Strasburgh (formerly called Stover’s Town), and Newtown, to Winchester. Winchester sends to Alexandria the whole produce of the upper country, and draws from Baltimore, but especially from Philadelphia, all sorts of dry goods. Upwards of thirty well-stocked stores, or shops, have been opened at Winchester. The town contains ten or twelve inns, large and small, which are often full. In the course of last year upwards of 4,000 persons passed through the place, going to settle in Tennessee or Kentucky. Landed property in the vicinity of Charlestown is more divided, perhaps, than in any other part of Virginia. Very few of the planters possess more than 2,000 acres of land, and few even so much. Alexandria is, beyond all comparison, the handsomest town in Virginia, and, indeed, is among the finest in the United States. Alexandria carries on a constant trade with the West India Islands, and also some with Europe. There is a bank at Alexandria, the only one in Virginia. The establishment of a bank at Richmond was authorized by the Legislature of Virginia in December, 1792, but the subscriptions not filling it does not exist.[L]

“The roads are in general good throughout this State; and although the inns are sometimes bad, yet upon the whole they are better than in the other States. Those in the back country, where I have traveled, are preferable to the inns in many of the most inhabited parts of New England.”

_XI._

_JOHN DAVIS OF SALISBURY._

_1801-1802._

_The Sailor Turned Author--Vice-President Burr--Washington in 1801--Cherokees--Gadesby’s--Colchester--Occoquan--Romantic Situation--Tavern Luxuries--Eloquence and a War-Dance--Parson Weems--Scholarship Per Se--Frying Pan--Newgate--Mr. Ball--‘To Virginia.’_

In the year 1798 John Davis came to America. He had been very much of a traveler, had lived in the East Indies, had crossed the equator several times and doubled the Cape of Good Hope more than once. Davis came from Salisbury, in England. He deserves a place in the biographical dictionaries, but is not found there. Having been a sailor before the mast for eleven years, he became a desultory man of letters, of considerable literature, who paid his way while in this country by potboiling for New York and Philadelphia booksellers and by teaching in South Carolina and Virginia.[M] He brought with him across the Atlantic a library of 300 volumes, French, Latin and English. These books he read. For statistics, commerce, land speculations, Davis cared nothing whatever. He was an impressionist and not to be disregarded as a poet. His work, therefore, is distinct among these early travels which are usually records of fact as fact, and as such are extremely valuable. However a man sees, let him write.

Thomas Jefferson, who was pleased to accept the dedication to him of this volume, supposed that it would be of a statistical sort. “Should you in your journeyings have been led to remark on the same objects on which I gave crude notes some years ago, I shall be happy to see them confirmed or corrected by a more accurate observer,” wrote President Jefferson from Monticello.

Davis accepted the acceptance and published a book as little like the “Notes on Virginia” as any book could well be. The author had read Horace and believed as that poet did that his work was going to last. “That this volume will regale curiosity while man continues to be influenced by his senses and affections, I have little doubt,” was the statement of John Davis in his preface. “It will be recurred to with equal interest on the banks of the Thames and those of the Ohio. There is no man who is not pleased in being told by another what he thought of the world and what the world thought of him.” There is a good deal of truth in both the particular and the general observation. We have not yet taken the time to review our history with much care. Whenever that is done, John Davis, of Salisbury, citizen of the world, more or less, should find readers again after a hundred years.

Having translated for bookseller Caritat, in New York (at Aaron Burr’s suggestion), “The Campaign in Italy of General Buonaparte,” and afterwards having spent a winter as tutor in the family of Mr. Drayton, of South Carolina, Davis came back to the North, wrote a novel called the “Wanderings of William,” for Thompson, of Philadelphia, and, nevertheless, being in want of ready money, applied to Mr. Burr, now Vice-President, for a recommendation that might lead to government employment. The Vice-President very obligingly promised the indigent author a place in the Treasury Department. Davis set out for Washington, which at that time had only begun to emerge. The village of 1801 is thus described, as if by Goldsmith: “Washington, on my second journey to it wore a very dreary aspect. The multitude had gone to their homes, and the inhabitants of the place were few. There were no objects to catch the eye but a forlorn pilgrim forcing his way through the grass that overruns the streets, or a cow ruminating on a bank, from whose neck depended a bell, that the animal might be found the more readily in the woods. I obtained accommodations at the Washington Tavern, which stands opposite the Treasury. There I found seven Cherokee chiefs. They came to be instructed in the mode of European agriculture.” Presenting himself to Secretary Gallatin immediately after the Cherokee chiefs had descended the Treasury stairs, Davis was told by the Secretary that the Vice-President had made a mistake, and that there was no consulship or any other office to be had. Another instance of the startling difference between promise and fulfilment.

“Finding a schooner at Georgetown ready to sail for Alexandria, I put my trunk on board of her, and left without regret the Imperial City. The wind being contrary, we had to work down the Potomac. The river here is very beautiful. Mason’s Island forms one continued garden; but what particularly catches the eye is the Capitol, rising with sacred majesty above the woods. It was easier landing at Alexandria in America than Alexandria in Egypt; and I found elegant accommodations at Gadesby’s hotel. It is observable that Gadesby keeps the best house of entertainment in the United States. The splendour of Gadesby’s hotel not suiting my finances, I removed to a public-house kept by a Dutchman.

“To what slight causes does a man owe some of the principal events of his life. I had been a fortnight at Alexandria, when, in consequence of the short advertisement I had put in the _Gazette_, a gentleman was deputed to wait on me from a Quaker, on the banks of the Occoquan, who wanted a Tutor for his children. The following evening I left Alexandria on horseback to visit the abode of Mr. Ellicott. Having crossed the bridge [at Colchester], which is built over the Occoquan, I alighted at the door of the tavern.

“Having ordered supper, I gazed with rapture on the Occoquan River, which ran close to the house, and, gradually enlarging, emptied itself into the capacious bosom of the Potomac. The fishermen on the shore were hawling their seine, and the sails of a little bark, stemming the waves, were distended by the breeze of night. The seaboy was lolling over the bow, and the helmsman was warbling a song to his absent fair.

“The next day I proceeded to Occoquan; but so steep and craggy was the road that I found it almost inaccessible. On descending the last hill, I was nearly stunned by the noise of two huge mills, whose roar, without any hyperbolical aggravation, is scarcely inferior to that of the great falls of the Potomac, or the cataract of Niagara. My horse would not advance; and I was myself lost in astonishment.

“Friend Ellicott and his wife received me with an unaffected simplicity of manners, whom I was happy to catch just as they were going to dinner. An exquisite Virginia ham smoked on the board, and two damsels supplied the guests with boiled Indian corn, which they had gathered with their own hands. Friend Ellicott, uncorrupted by the refinement of modern manners, had put his hat to its right use, for it covered his head.

“Our agreement was soon made. Quakers are men of few words. Friend Ellicott engaged me to educate his children for a quarter of a year. He wanted them taught reading, writing, and arithmetic. Delightful task! As to Latin or French, he considered the study of either language an abuse of time; and very calmly desired me not to say another word about it.

“No place can be more romantic than the view of Occoquan to a stranger, after crossing the rustic bridge, which has been constructed by the inhabitants across its stream. He contemplates a river urging its course along mountains that lose themselves among the clouds; he beholds vessels taking on board flour under the foam of the mills, and others deeply laden expanding their sails to the breeze; while every face wears contentment, every gale wafts health, and echo from the rocks multiplies the voices of the waggoners calling to their teams.

“No walk could be more delightful than that from Occoquan to Colchester, when the moon was above the mountains. You traverse the bank of a placid stream over which impend rocks, in some cases bare, but more frequently covered with an odoriferous plant that regales the traveller with its fragrance. So serpentine is the course of the river that the mountains, which rise from its bank, may be said to form an amphitheatre; and nature seems to have designed the spot for the haunt only of fairies; for here grow flowers of purple dye, and here the snake throws her enamelled skin.

“After clambering over mountains, almost inaccessible to human toil, you come to the junction of the Occoquan with the noble river of the Potomac, and behold a bridge, whose semi-elliptical arches are scarcely inferior to those of princely London. And on the side of this bridge stands a tavern, where every luxury that money can purchase is to be obtained at a first summons; where the richest viands cover the table, and where ice cools the Madeira that has been thrice across the ocean.[N] The apartments are numerous and at the same time spacious; carpets of delicate texture cover the floors; and glasses are suspended from the walls in which a Goliah might survey himself. No man can be more complaisant than the landlord. Enter but his house with money in your pocket, and his features will soften into the blandishments of delight; call and your mandate is obeyed; extend your leg and the boot-jack is brought you.

“On the north bank of the Occoquan is a pile of stones, which indicates that an Indian warrior is interred underneath. The Indians from the back settlements, in traveling to the northward, never fail to leave the main road, and visit the grave of their departed hero. If a stone be thrown down, they religiously restore it to the pile; and, sitting round the rude monument, they meditate profoundly; catching, perhaps, a local emotion from the place.

“A party of Indians, while I was at Occoquan, turned from the common road into the woods to visit this grave on the bank of the river. The party was composed of an elderly Chief, twelve young War Captains, and a couple of Squaws. Of the women, the youngest was an interesting girl of seventeen; remarkably well shaped, and possessed of a profusion of hair, which in colour was raven black. She appeared such another object as the mind images Pocahontas to have been.

“The Indians being assembled round the grave, the old Chief rose with a solemn mien, and, knocking his war-club against the ground, pronounced an oration to the memory of the departed warrior. No orator of antiquity ever exceeded this savage chief in the force of his emphasis, and the propriety of his gesture. Indeed, the whole scene was highly dignified. The fierceness of his countenance, the flowing robe, elevated tone, naked arm, and erect stature, with a circle of auditors seated on the ground, and in the open air, could not but impress upon the mind a lively idea of the celebrated speakers of ancient Greece and Rome.

“Having ended his oration, the Indian struck his war-club with fury against the ground, and the whole party obeyed the signal by joining in a war-dance--leaping and brandishing their knives at the throats of each other, and accompanying their menacing attitudes with a whoop and a yell, which echoed with ten-fold horror from the banks of the river. The dance took place by moonlight, and it was scarcely finished, when the Chief produced a keg of whiskey, and having taken a draught, passed it round among his brethren. The squaws now moved the tomahawks into the woods, and a scene of riot ensued. The keg was soon emptied. The effects of the liquor began to display itself in the looks and motions of the Indians. To complete the scene, the old warrior was uttering the most mournful lamentations over the keg he had emptied; inhaling its flavour with his lips, holding it out with his hands in a supplicating attitude, and vociferating to the bye-standers, ‘Scuttawawbah! Scuttawawbah! More strong drink! More strong drink!’

“About eight miles from the Occoquan mills is a house of worship, called Powheek Church; a name it derives from a Run that flows near its walls. Hither I rode on Sundays and joined the congregation of Parson Weems. I was confounded on first entering the church-yard at Powheek to hear

‘_Steed threaten steed with high and boastful neigh._’

Nor was I less stunned with the rattling of carriage-wheels, the cracking of whips, and the vociferations of the gentlemen to the negroes who accompanied them. But the discourse of Parson Weems calmed every perturbation.

“After church I made my salutations to Parson Weems, and having turned the discourse to divine worship, I asked him his opinion of the piety of the blacks. ‘Sir,’ said he, ‘no people in this country prize the Sabbath more seriously than the trampled-upon negroes. They are swift to hear; they seem to hear as for their lives.--How, sir, did you like my preaching?’ ‘Sir,’ cried I, ‘it was a sermon to pull down the proud and humble the haughty.’

“I had been three months at Occoquan. My condition was growing irksome. I, therefore, resigned my place to an old drunken Irishman, who was traveling the country on foot in search of an Academy. I remonstrated with Friend Ellicott on the impropriety of employing a sot to educate his children. ‘Friend,’ said he, ‘of all the schoolmasters I ever employed, none taught my children to write so good a hand, as a man who was constantly in a state that bordered on intoxication. They learned more of him in one month than of any other in a quarter. I will make trial of Burbridge.’”

Davis returned to New York, collecting a few dollars at Philadelphia, due him from sales of “The Wanderings of William.” In April, 1802, he was at Washington again, where Congress was in session. “I watched an opportunity to make the Vice-President my salutations as he came out of the Capitol. He demonstrated no little pleasure to see me; and his chariot being at the steps, he took me home with him to dine.” The House of Representatives was then sitting in a detached temporary building. Davis thought John Randolph the most eloquent in debate. After a few days in Washington, the itinerant passed on to Prince William County, where he had been engaged as tutor by Mr. Ball at twenty-five pounds the quarter. At Frying Pan, in Prince William County, Davis inquired the way. “How far, my boy,” said I, “is it to Frying Pan?” “You be in the Pan now,” replied the boy.

“Frying Pan is composed of four log huts and a meeting-house. It took its name from a curious circumstance. Some Indians, having encamped on the run, missed their frying pan in the morning, and hence the name was conferred on the place. I did not stop at Frying Pan, but prosecuted my walk to Newgate, where in the piazza of the tavern I found a party of gentlemen from the neighboring plantations carousing over a bowl of toddy and smoking segars. No people could exceed these men in politeness. On my ascending the steps to the piazza every countenance seemed to say: This man has a double claim to our attention because he is a stranger. In a moment there was room made for me to sit down; a new bowl was called for, and every one who addressed me did so with a smile of conciliation. The higher Virginians seem to venerate themselves as men. Whatever may be advanced against Virginians, their good qualities will ever outweigh their defects; and when the effervescence of youth has abated, when reason asserts her empire, there is no man on earth who discovers more exalted sentiments, more contempt for baseness, more love of justice, more sensibility of feeling, than a Virginian. At Newgate my pilgrimage was nearly at an end, for Mr. Ball’s plantation was only distant eight miles.”