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SKETCHES
FROM OLD VIRGINIA

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COLONEL BROOMSEDGE: "LITE AND SIT AWHILE. "— />«£?«
80.
SKETCHES

FROM

OLD VIRGINIA

BY
A*v.^^ BRADLEY

iLonKon
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1897
AU Rights Reserved

Richard Clay and Sons, Limited,
london and bungav

PREFACE

Several of the enclosed studies have appeared in
whole, or part, in Macmillan's Magazine at various
times. The following, however, were published in other
periodicals, namely " The Doctor," " Mar'se Dab," and
" Plantation Memories " in Blackwood. An " Old
Virginian Foxhunter " and " Quail Shooting '' in the
Badminton Magazine ; and " On the Old Bethel Pike "
in the Fortnightly Review, under a slightly different
title. I have to thank Messrs. Blackwood, Messrs. Long
man, and Messrs. Chapman and Hall for their courtesy
in allowing me to include the above papers in this
book. The fact of this latter being a collection of studies
written, for the most part, independently of one
another, and at various times, will, I trust, sufficiently
account for an absence of method or continuity that
is under such circumstances inevitable.
So far as they go, however, they recall, I think, many
of the characteristics of a generation that is rapidly

viii PREFACE
passing away, and has at any rate long ceased to
represent modern Virginia.
They relate chiefly to the period covered by the
fifteen years or so following the war, when the whole
adult population had been brought up under the
institution of slavery, both white and black, while the
former almost to a man had actually taken part, as
individuals, in the great struggle that terminated it.
The Civil War, with its far-reaching consequences,
succeeded in utterly dislocating the rural economy of
the South, but it could not change the personalities,
the habits, the traditions, and methods of thought of
the men who had grown up under the system it
destroyed. I offer, therefore, no apology for the comparative
remoteness for the most part, of my period. Indeed,
this appears to me to furnish a perhaps somewhat
needed excuse for the republication of these slight
illustrations of it.
For what neither war nor legislation could accom
plish of a sudden, time with its slower and surer hand
has effectually done. Another generation, who have no
personal knowledge of the slavery and ante-bellum
period, has arisen. Its members have had to adapt
themselves to the ways of life followed by other
democratic communities engrossed in trade and agri
culture. Virginia, in short, no longer possesses any
particular social features that would make it of
special interest to an outsider ; to one from Europe at
any rate. Its material progress has happily been
considerable, though not so great as some of its
Sister States further South or that its friends and

PREFACE ix
well-wishers had perhaps hoped for having regard
to its central position and former predominance.
But this is a matter wholly alien to the point of view
from which these Sketches were written. So I do not
think I need offer any excuse for having allowed, what
seemed to me during a residence of a great many
years in the Old Dominion, and several subsequent
visits, the more picturesque, humorous, and pathetic
side of its life to find expression in the studies here
collected. One word in regard to the dialect passages. I
have purposely avoided any elaboration in spelling
the vernacular, whether of negro or " poor white" where
such occurs, but have endeavoured to give the general
sound and sense of this without taxing the application
of readers who, as a body, are showing, I am told,
unmistakable signs of revolt at being referred to
appended glossaries even by distinguished and
popular authors.
A. G. B.

CONTENTS

PAGE
INTRODUCTION  I
THE DOCTOR  4I
AN OLD VIRGINIA FOXHUNTER  70
ON THE OLD BETHEL PIKE  90
PARKIN THE SADDLER  Ill
THE "poor whites" OF THE MOUNTAINS  1 36
THE VIRGINIA QUAIL  157
MAR'SE DAB AFTER THE WAR  179
TWO EPISODES ON RUMBLING CREEK  212
SOME PLANTATION MEMORIES  241
A TURKEY HUNTER  265

SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA

INTRODUCTION
Before introducing to the reader, to the English
reader at any rate, so many old friends and well-
remembered scenes from Virginian Hfe, it seems to me
that it would be not wholly amiss to give some slight
historical account of the Old Dominion itself. I am
perfectly aware of a certain incongruity in prefacing
sketches of so light a character with anything in the
shape of a historical essay. An author, however, may
be allowed perhaps some license in this particular so
long as he distinctly labels such a chapter with an
unmistakable title. For no reader of a light work, I
take it, considers himself bound to read the intro
duction. And that there is perhaps even less occa
sion than usual in this case, so far as the continuity of
this little book is concerned, I will frankly admit.
Having thus, I trust, made my peace with those who
have no curiosity whatever regarding the past history
of Virginia, I will remind those who have that this
State and Massachusetts are not merely our two most
B

2 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
ancient and interesting colonies, but from their loins
have sprung, not wholly, but in a great measure, those
two diverse types of Anglo-American known as
Northerner and Southerner. The Western type, it
is true, has lately appeared upon the scene, and has
partially diverted both attention and significance from
the old line of cleavage. But this is a mere detail
when one considers that only thirty years ago as
many millions of men, representing on the one side
the traditions of Virginia, on the other that of Massa
chusetts, with more or less fidelity, shook the world
for four years with the bloodiest strife of modern
times. Nothing, however, could well be more different
within the limits of a single race than the men who
originally settled Virginia and those who undertook
the sterner task of subduing the cold soils and facing
the fierce climate of New England. The latter were
not merely Puritans, but aggressive and intolerant
Sectarians. Politically, too, they were republicans,
and never even professed a partiality for kings and
princes. They developed their country upon lines
that were both democratic and gregarious ; social
equality, or something like it, survived longer than
probably it has ever done among educated com
munities in the history of the world. To public
opinion, dominated by a Calvinistic Church, every
man had more or less to submit himself or go. The
time that was not spent in extracting a living from a
not too generous soil, or in fighting Indians, was given
over to the hearing of interminable sermons and of
religious exercises, in which the Old Testament in its

INTRODUCTION 3
literal sense was the daily model. The high average
of character and education, of industry and vigour,
tell their own tale, and the history of New England is
perhaps more really interesting than that of Virginia.
But to the modern Englishman there is something
unspeakably distasteful in the narrow religious bigotry
and tyranny that seemed to stamp every bit of
colour, every spark of gaiety out of life. One renders
ungrudging respect to the sturdy pluck and industry,
and admires the hardihood which, even in the seven
teenth century, swept with home-built ships the distant
shores of Africa, or landed the produce of America
in Spanish and Italian ports. The one was slave-
hunting and the other was smuggling, it is true, but
what a relief, after all, it must have been to get away
from those village deacons for so long a period. And
when, too, one thinks of that audacious attack of
volunteer soldiers and sailors upon Quebec, bearding
the redoubtable Frontenac himself in his own impreg
nable stronghold, it is all very inspiring ; and so is the
thought of the first capture of Louisburg and the
legions which so cheerfully poured out to battle in
later days when the French were on the warpath. One
is almost tempted to entertain flippant and unworthy
suspicions that the alacrity with which the colonial
New Englander was ready to go to the ends of
the earth was not wholly unconnected with the
restrictions and the gloom of his home life. There is
really good authority for supposing that when away
upon these jaunts the excellent Yankee made up for
lost time. From the militia camps upon Lake George,
in the Seven Years' War, the chaplains complained B 2

4 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
in letters, still extant, that the swearing was terrific,
learnt no doubt from the British regiments, who had
in fact just come from Flanders. Wolfe also testifies
that his sturdy New Englanders were incorrigible
should a cask of rum accidentally fall in their way.
But to be serious and to return to the subject in
hand, how wholly different was the early settlement
and after development of Virginia 1 Of the first
failures to establish a colony, few people know much.
Of Captain Smith, however, and John Rolfe and the
romantic episode of Pocahontas which mark the
second and successful effort, almost every one knows
something, though of the number of Virginians who
to-day boast of the blood of the Indian Princess, no
one has ever pretended to an accurate knowledge.
This of course all happened in the opening years of the
seventeenth century. By 1640 or thereabouts, when
the early struggles were well over, life in Virginia had
become quite easy, save for an occasional Indian war.
Almost from the first, under the rule of the London
Company, and afterwards under the crown, the de
velopment of the colony ran strictly upon English
and even aristocratic lines. Practically all the
colonists were Englishmen, and, nominally at least,
members of the English Church. Among a majority
of plain folk went a fair sprinkling of cadets, beyond
a doubt, from good English families. A legend exists
among the more uninformed circles of modern
Virginia, that quite a considerable portion of the
population are, in some mysterious fashion, sprung
from the loins of the "British nobility.'' I only
mention this as a curious and ineradicable super-
¦t

INTRODUCTION 5
stition that the stranger would be quite sure to en
counter frequently during a sojourn in the country.
And sometimes the superstition would appear in most
humorous garb. It is not unnatural that a people
who have been now for some generations out of
touch with England and English social life, should
have a confused notion of what were the privileges
and position of the very small band which formed the
British peerage in the seventeenth century. That a
nobleman's son (except for an occasional freak) would
bury himself permanently, even when ruined, in the
American Vilderness, or place the Atlantic between
himself and those hundred paths to fame, distinction,
or at least a congenial competence in Europe to be
had in those days for the asking by the higher aris
tocracy, is a fallacy of course too absurd to traverse.
The squirearchy of the Stuart period were of
course quite another matter, and the origin of the
fable is no doubt due to the considerable number of
gentlemen born who were among the earlier settlers.
How these fared in the first hard struggle for exist
ence with their more numerous companions of other
classes no one really knows. We do know, however,
that towards the middle of the century there were a
large number of colonists owning considerable estates,
and lifted above the common herd, both in social
esteem and influence. The natural desire of English
men to surround themselves with broad acres and
found families had a great opportunity in Virginia,
and the early Virginians took full advantage of it.
The authorities encouraged the tendency, and every
body connected with the colony wished to make it as

6 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
nearly like England as possible. The English Church
was jealously established, and the law of entail and
primogeniture took firm root. That no Englishman
of distinction left the country for a permanent settle
ment in Virginia we know of a certainty from our
English records. So it really seems to me a very
unimportant matter as to what proportion of those
who early acquired land and influence were related to
country squires and what were not. One of the
seventeenth century governors writes home complain
ing of the mania for appropriating the title of
gentlemen prevalent among people of no former
account who had acquired estates. The fact remains
that something like an aristocracy very rapidly came
into existence, and was constantly being reinforced ;
and, moreover, that the seventeenth century is quite
sufficiently remote to give most respectable antiquity
to those families who were gentry then, whether
natural or self-made, and have been so ever since.
And these survivals, moreover, are nothing like so
numerous as a stranger might be led to infer, if, in
his simple innocence, he believed all the claims to
ancestral dignity that he heard. The real old meaning
of the terms F.F.V. (first families of Virginia) was
limited, and entitled to every consideration. The
modern adaptation is sometimes elastic enough to
make the bones of such departed worthies as Mr.
Byrd of Westover, or Colonel Randolph of Tuckahoe,
or Mr. Carter of Shirley rattle in their coffins. The
influx of Royalist settlers into the colony after the
downfall of Charles the First, though many returned
at the restoration, gave fresh impetus to conservative

INTRODUCTION 7
English notions. Those that came were of all con
ditions, but many gentlemen were among them, as
well as others who had sufficient money saved from
the wreck to purchase land. An entire regiment,
indeed, of eighteen hundred men crossed the Atlantic
in a body. Virginia was not without people who
sympathised with the parliament, or thought it would
be safer to appear to do so, and throughout the war the
colony had been greatly disturbed by the squabbles,
occasionally bloody ones, of the rival factions. The
support of the English government with occasional
warships, it should be said, gave strength to the small
commonwealth party, and made converts. The re
storation, however, was hailed with rapture and great
demonstrations in Virginia. Amid the firing of cannon
everybody shook hands, and the quasi-parliament
men were forgiven, returning readily to that faith in
kings and princes which was the natural creed of
Virginia. A robe of home-spun and home-grown
silk was sent over to the Merry Monarch for his
coronation, the arms of Virginia were quartered on
those of Great Britain, and every one was happy. A
rude awakening came, however, to these enthusiastic
loyalists beyond the sea when one day the news
arrived that their loving monarch had made a present
of most of the colony to a couple of court favourites,
Culpepper and Arlington, who seemed to be under
the fond belief that these sturdy squires and yeomen,
these patriarchs of the woods, would recognise them as
the overlords of their estates. Great was the uproar.
A deputation went to England, and the easy-going
king, who would have parted with half the British

8 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
Empire for a little money or a new mistress, was
quite surprised at the storm he had raised. With
characteristic indolence, however, he revoked the
whole business, and only wished to hear the last of
the matter. But the Virginians had received a lesson
they did not forget. Few people, very few indeed in
England I am sure, remember that a few years after
this, and exactly a hundred before the American War
of Independence, the colony of Virginia rose in arms
against the government of Charles the Second. The
rebellion was fomented and led by a young English
gentleman, a Mr. Bacon, who had purchased an
estate upon the present site of Richmond, was son of
the squire of Friston Hall in Norfolk, a graduate of
Cambridge, and highly connected in the colony itself
The ostensible grievance was the refusal of Sir
William Berkeley, the governor, to grant him a com
mission to fight the Indians who had been murdering
settlers, his own overseer among others, but the real
causes of discontent lay deeper. There is no space
here to speak of them, but it is sufficient to say that
if it had not been for Charles the Second's monstrous
conduct and flippant ingratitude towards the colony,
and for Bacon's great talents and ambition, no move
ment would have been dreamt of. As it was, the
whole country, from its western frontier to the sea,
was in arms. The governor had behind him some of
the highest, and many of the lowest, of the popula
tion. The mass of freeholders, however, sympathised
with Bacon, and great numbers joined his standard.
The Indians were first defeated, and then loyalists
and rebels confronted each other. There were several

INTRODUCTION 9
thousand well-armed men, horse and foot, in the field,
and the militia of the various counties under their
lieutenants either demonstrated in force or joined issue
on one side or the other. Jamestown, the capital, was
besieged and burnt, and Sir William Berkeley driven
across to the shores of Accomac. Bacon, however,
at this critical moment died of fever, and with his
death the spirit of rebellion, which had only aimed at
putting down abuses, withered. Berkeley got the
upper hand, and on the arrival from England of a
mixed battalion of the Coldstream and Grenadier
guards the colony was easily pacified, and this really
dramatic and significant incident closed. The old
governor, whose vehement loyalty to his king had
urged him to the impolitic course which so disturbed
the colony, got little thanks from his master. Having
hanged in chains a number of the most prominent
revolutionists, he left for England, amid the execra
tions of the Virginians, to claim his reward. The
king refused even to see him, merely remarking,
" That old fool has killed more men in yonder naked
country than I have for the murder of my father."
The "old fool," who for thirty of his thirty-five
years' rule had been immensely popular in the colony,
died a few months afterwards of a broken heart. He
it was who, in a notable memorandum, thanked God
that there were no printing presses or schools in
Virginia. In his day, and for a long time afterwards,
the Colonial Council, or Upper House, wore red robes
of state, while the House of Burgesses sat in the same
building, and on occasions of moment were summoned
to the Bar, while old Governor Berkeley, from his

IO SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
throne beneath the royal arms, thundered his
sentiments at the whole assembly. His widow, Lady
Berkeley, married again in Virginia, and her name
may still be seen upon the fragments of a tomb
beneath the ruined tower that almost alone marks
the site of Jamestown. Long before the close of the
seventeenth century, Virginian society had settled
itself upon permanent and established lines. Tobacco
was the one great article of export and commerce.
The large planter was the unit around which every
thing else revolved. His existence had been made
possible by the large importation of labour, both of
convicts and of respectable indented servants from
Britain, and still more as the years went on, by the
purchase of African negroes brought to his doors
by British or New England traders. Below this
aristocracy came a much greater number of mere
farmers or yeomen, men owning land and perhaps
some servants, white and black, but possessing no
social advantages or education. Below these again
came the landless whites, servants, small tenants and
others, and lastly, as a caste apart, the negro slaves.
The cleavage between the gentry class and the rest
of the community, was emphasised by the entire
absence of popular education. The sons of the former
went very largely to the English universities, or failing
that were taught by imported tutors. But for even
the middling sort there was, till much later times,
no education at all, while the retention of land in
large tracts was fostered by primogeniture and entail.
Counties were created on the seaboard from the very
beginning, and were multiplied as settlements crept

INTRODUCTION ii
inland. Each county had its lieutenant, its militia,
and its magistrates, organised upon English principles.
The whole early settled portion of Virginia was inter
sected with navigable creeks and rivers. The great
planter had his special wharf upon his own plantation,
up to which every year sailed an English ship bring
ing necessaries and luxuries from his commission
merchant in London, Bristol, or Glasgow, and re
turning with the year's crop of tobacco. The face of
this Eastern country was gently undulating and
fairly fertile, the climate genial and healthy, save for
the agues, to which after all Englishmen at home
were more or less accustomed in those days. Nearly
every crop which could be grown in England, grew
then in Virginia with equal excellence in addition to
the native products of maize and tobacco. The latter,
however, became an absolute passion from the earliest
times with the Virginians, to the great detriment of
all other industries. Fine horses, however, besides
other cattle were imported, and horse-racing
became the stock amusement both of the country
gentry and the lower classes. All the old English
games too were played at country gatherings, while
the deer and the fox were hunted, and fighting-cocks
were part of every planter's establishment. The big
plantations were like oases in the vast wilderness of
forest with which primitive Virginia was clothed.
The tidal rivers served as highways, while only bridle
paths led through the woodlands that often intervened
for miles between each estate. The more considerable
houses were built of brick imported from England,
and were upon the style of the smaller manor houses

12 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
of the period. The majority, however, were of wood,
but in either case were surrounded by quite a village
of outhouses and negro cabins, interspersed with
orchards and paddocks. After Bacon's rebellion the
capital was moved to Williamsburg, which during the
hundred years of its supremacy, till the war against
England, that is to say, never rose to be more than a
large village of one wide street. Here, however, was
the governor's palace and the House of Assembly, and
hither during the session flocked the aristocracy of
the colony ; the burgesses to quarrel in the house, as
they invariably did, with the royal governor, and the
ladies to dance or show off the latest fashions sent
from London at the viceregal routs. Strong church
men in a political sense as were the Virginians, in the
actual practice of their religion circumstances have
for all time been greatly against them. Counties were
divided into parishes, in each of which a church was
built, and endowed with a tax laid upon the
population, and payable like everything else in
tobacco. Churchwardens, vestrymen, and clerks,
were all there in full dignity of office, but the great
difficulty was the parsons. These were sent over
ready made from England, and were of the most
dubious description, and lived chiefly at free quarters
in the planters' houses. As boon companions, or
even as instructors to the children, they seem to have
been more edifying than in the pulpit of their
rustic churches in the woods. Early in the eighteenth
century the great inconvenience incurred by native can
didates for orders, and by the imported clergy awaiting
priest's orders, in having to cross the Atlantic for

INTRODUCTION 13
ordination, stimulated the new large and flourishing
colony into a desire for a bishop of its own. With
this in view a deputation was sent to England to
wait upon the minister of the day and lay the case
before him. The great man seems to have kept the
delegates cooling their heels in his ante-room for
several days, and when at last, as the story goes, he
admitted them to an audience he received their
appeal in a most crushing and contemptuous fashion.
At length one of the Virginian spokesmen plucked
up courage, and asked him if he thought that
Virginians had not souls to be saved as well as
Englishmen. " D  n your souls ! " was the exalted
person's reply, " go home and grow tobacco."
So the bishop question was disposed of, and postponed
sine die. In spite, however, of the slovenly condition
of the Church in Virginia, the ruling classes were as
bitter as ever against dissenters till, as time went on,
such opposition became useless. Those of the common
people who had any sense of religion at all, drifted
away from a Church that had no vitality, and was,
moreover, so entirely aristocratic in tone. Among a
population, too, scattered, such as this was, over so
wide an area, laws of this kind could not be enforced,
and in course of time became a dead letter, except in
so far as the collection of tithe was concerned. Nor
must it be supposed that what I have called the
aristocracy of Virginia were as securely placed or as
humbly deferred to by the yeomanry and lower class
as the squirearchy of Great Britain. There was, in
fact, a great deal of democratic feeling below the
surface and beyond a doubt much jealousy. The

14 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
poor were taxed much more highly than the rich,
though the latter were the beneficiaries of such
taxation. For it was they that chiefly filled both
houses of the legislature, whose members were not
only paid most liberal salaries, but often got allowances
for the keep of servants and horses as well. There
were numerous government offices, too, all highly paid,
many of them sinecures, but all enjoyed by the ruling
class. Upon the top of this came the Church dues,
and lastly, though only landholders were allowed to
vote, land itself was held comparatively free of all
taxation. A safety valve, however, for what dis
content this state of things created, and we are
speaking of nearly two hundred years ago it must be
remembered, lay in the great back country which
intervened between the older counties and the
Alleghany Mountains. A better climate and generally
richer soil too, made this a refuge not merely for the
discontented and the lawless, but for young men of
good birth who, under the laws of primogeniture, were
constantly pushing westward, with little or no
patrimony, and were a valuable element in the
rougher and more democratic communities, out of
which these back counties were originally formed. So
Virginia, from Bacon's rebellion in 1676 onwards till
the revolutionary war in 1776, led upon the whole a
placid, happy, prosperous existence, rich rather in the
material things of life than in actual money. Popula
tion increased, chiefly from within, for with the excep
tion of indented servants and African negroes,
immigration was inconsiderable, save for one notable
exception. Of this last I must crave permission to say

INTRODUCTION 15
somewhat more than a few words, seeing that it was
part of a great movement which left an indelible mark
both on Great Britain and America. The immense
emigration of Irish Roman Catholics to America is
quite a modern affair. It had not begun in the
eighteenth century, nor did it reach serious proportions
till after the famine of 1849. Though land hunger
was its catch word in Tipperary and Mayo, it has had
little hunger for the rich lands of America. No class
of emigrants indeed to the United States have ever
done so little pioneering or so consistently flinched
from facing the prairie and the forest. It is in towns
the modern Irish emigrant is chiefly to be found, and
greatly dominating the sort of local politics under
which Americans for two generations have groaned.
About the year 1720, however, another class altogether
of Irish emigration was moving in. It came from the
north-east, was wholly Presbyterian, and by blood
chiefly Scottish. These people were of a kind who
cared nothing for towns and little for politics, as
understood by the modern Irish, and whose mission
was to colonise the wilderness. They had already,
indeed, tamed one wilderness, for in a little over a
century they had transformed Ulster from a semi-
barbarous waste into a well-cultivated, thriving
province. They had also proved an invaluable bulwark
of the English power in Ireland ; the famous Siege of
Derry being, of course, the most memorable instance
of their heroism. And they were now to have their
reward. It will be remembered how secure was the
Protestant ascendency throughout most of the
eighteenth century in Ireland. Bitterly as the

i6 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
Catholic Celt felt his position, his power of resistance
had been crushed at the Boyne, and he lay practically
supine for nearly a century beneath the heel of the
Protestant gentry and the Irish Church. The latter
was at this time one of the greatest ecclesiastical
shams to be found perhaps in history. There were
more bishops in proportion to communicants, and
bishops, too, with very large incomes for which, as a
rule, they did almost nothing, than in any Church
that has ever been known. Pluralism among the in
cumbents, too, was rampant ; and when one of these
by interest or jobbery had secured a sufficient number
of livings to give him a comfortable income, he was
accustomed to take himself off to Dublin, Bath, or
Tunbridge Wells, leaving an unfortunate curate on a
miserable pittance, to grapple with the work of two
or three parishes, often many miles apart. It would
be interesting to know what precise fraction of the
money wrung from Roman Catholics was actually
paid to the men who vainly but honestly endeavoured
to do the Church's work. The Government's attitude
towards Papists and potential rebels was at least
intelligible. But it now seemed to most even of the
dominant party a grievous scandal that the loyal
Presbyterians of Ulster should still be debarred the
rights of citizenship because they adhered to a creed
which the British Government actually upheld by
law as the established Church in Scotland. A bill to
grant them equal rights with their Episcopal fellow
countrymen was brought in with the general ap
proval both of Ireland and England. But to the
dozen or fifteen sainted men who enjoyed the

INTRODUCTION 17
fat bishoprics of this remarkable establishment, it
seemed a terrible thing that a Presbyterian should sit
in Parliament or hold a commission in his Majesty's
service. That these were the men who had defended
Derry, that they were passionately loyal. God-fearing,
and law-abiding above all other Irishmen, and of most
vital necessity to the country, was nothing. These
absentee bishops of absentee rectors and tumble-down
half-empty churches, thought that the very heavens
would fall if such a fearful thing came to pass. They
mustered thick in the Irish House of Lords, and they
threw their very souls into the righteous crusade.
Wonderful things were sometimes accomplished upon
College Green as we all know, and the bishops upon
this occasion in the teeth of public opinion carried
the day. The Protestant Nonconformists who had
even before this begun to flit, took the verdict as
final, and prepared to leave their homes by thousands.
It is said that in twenty years a hundred thousand
of these virile Puritans crossed the Atlantic, with
what effect on Ireland's future who, indeed, can
estimate. They sailed by shiploads to Philadelphia
and Charlestown, avoiding with singular consistency
the Puritan commonwealths of New England. For
half the century they kept pouring their steady stream
through these two seaports. They did not stop, how
ever, about the towns, but worked their way, for the
most part, through the settlements to the Alleghany
mountains, which like a lofty wall, formed the western
barrier of every colony, from Pennsylvania to Carolina.
These mountains were then the extreme limit of
Anglo-Saxon enterprise. No settler's axe had yet
c

i8 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
touched those virgin forests, and the dreaded Indian
still looked upon them as his happy hunting ground.
The Scotch-Irish exiles, however, seemed determined
not to place their liberties a second time in the
power of any government, and threw themselves
with consummate courage upon those romantic high
lands that had even by the colonial backwoodsmen
been hitherto regarded as beyond the pale of safety.
And all along the fertile foothills and valleys of the
great range the northern immigrants spread south
ward ; while the southern immigrants, who had tra
versed the Carolinas, spread northward, till in the course
of years they joined forces and were clustering more
thickly on the western frontier of Virginia than at any
other point. Here in the beautiful Shenandoah valley,
between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies, long
before Virginian settlement had reached it, were
scattered the lonely clearings of the Scotch-Irish, and
the German Lutherans, who followed in their wake. A
second generation became the best Indian fighters and
hunters on the continent, and it was they who opened
the way to Kentucky, who founded Tennessee, and who
were first upon the banks of the Ohio. Equally
handy with axe, plough, or rifle, rough and uncouth,
thrifty and close-fisted, they differed as much from
the easy-going Virginia squire, as men who
speak the same language could very well differ from
each other. These, however, were the first settlers
of the western parts of the colony, and upon it
they set their stamp so indelibly, that to this day,
within a morning's ride, you may find two people and
two counties scarcely more like each other than are

INTRODUCTION 19
Limerick and Antrim, Devonshire or Durham. East
of the Blue Ridge everything even now is
characteristic of the old Virginian traditions: big
dwelling houses and poor ramshackle farm buildings,
uncared-for roads and a beautiful country, sadly
scarred on the surface by generations of slovenly
treatment. You will find too on the one side an
easy-going, somewhat thriftless, but generous, well-
mannered, and hospitable people. Yet within ten
miles, though an integral part of Virginia and for a
hundred years intimately associated with its trials
and triumphs and institutions, you will come upon a
district whose people live for the most part in unpreten
tious houses, but whose farm buildings are large and
well- painted, roads excellent, and fields well tilled. A
thrifty and industrious folk, whose manners are as
nearly ungracious and whose habits as far removed
from hospitality as could very well be possible in the
Southern States. This great valley is to-day by far
the finest portion of Virginia, and this is partly due to
the fact that it was one of the great nurseries of
that virile Scotch- Irish race whose qualities their
neighbours regard with more respect perhaps than
actual affection. The active part these people took
against the mother country in the War of Indepen
dence is of course a matter of history. Washington
had an immense admiration for the hardy borderers
with whom he had camped and hunted, and fought
so much in his youth. But a small portion, however,
of these mountaineers were available as a matter of
fact for Washington's armies. Fortunately for him
another method had just been discovered in Ireland
C ?

20 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
for expelling the cream of her population and sending
them over to fight against England in America. The
crippling of the linen trade was of course England's
crime, but every student of Irish history will also
recall the lamentable clearances by Lord Donegal,
and other large proprietors, when their long leases
fell in during the middle of the last century. It will
be remembered how they turned out hundreds of
Scotch Presbyterian tenants to make room for
western Celts who promised higher rents, or would
pay bigger fines. Whether indeed these short
sighted landlords or the frenzied bishops of former
days conferred the most lasting injury on their
country, is of no consequence here.
Virginia, at any rate, together with the rest of North
America, benefited enormously by the influx of this
hardy race, over whose movements I have, perhaps,
already lingered too long.
The Seven Years' War began prematurely in
America, and, after a few preliminary skirmishes
between Washington with his Virginia riflemen and
the French, was formally inaugurated by Braddock's
fatal fight in 1755. That Isandlwana of the eighteenth
century paralysed Virginia from end to end, and
staggered even England. British regiments, for the
first time since the former century, had landed in the
colony, making love to the ladies, and somewhat
damping the loyal ardour and friendly feelings of the
gentlemen by the hauteur of their bearing and their
misplaced contempt for provincial soldiers. When
the shattered remnants of Braddock's beaten army
came staggering back over the Alleghanies, leaving

INTRODUCTION 21
the bones of the stubborn bull-dog who commanded
them, and of sixty officers and seven hundred men, to
be picked by wolves on the banks of the Monongahela,
there was great dismay, both in the log homesteads
of the back counties and in the far-off manor houses
of the Tide water region. Washington, as every one
knows, had been there at the head of five hundred
Virginia riflemen, the only men upon that fatal field
who understood the game of war as played in the
American woods, and whom Braddock, with loud
oaths, and a free use of the flat of his sword, tried to
beat into close formation, as he had beaten his poor
red-coats. Most of the Virginians fell ; Washington's
coat was shot through in several places, and two
horses killed under him, but he was reserved, as we
know, for greater things. The Indians, egged on by
the French, swarmed over the western frontier of
Virginia, and, amid scenes of fire and blood, swept
through the clearings of the bold Scotch-Irish bor
derers, crossed the Blue Ridge, and fell upon the
back-counties, that had almost forgotten what Indian
fighting was like. Even the planters in their distant
manor-houses began to think the days of their grand
fathers and great-grandfathers had returned, and
trembled. Two years of terror and bloody skirmish
ing reigned upon the border. But as soon as French
Canada saw that it was no longer a case for aggression
on the English colonies, but a matter of fighting for
its own existence, the tide of battle rolled northward.
Wolfe and Quebec fell together, and a great sigh of
relief went up from Virginia. Its borderers reckoned
up their dead by hundreds — men, women, and children.

22 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
The squires and farmers of the old settlements, who
had not taken much part in the great struggle, while
thanking God that they were Englishmen at such a
glorious moment, gave thanks also that they would be
harassed no more for supplies, and waggons, and
contributions from the British Generals at Phila
delphia, and rejoiced that they had heard the last of
the French.
The white population of Virginia was by this time
something like a quarter of a million, while the
negroes, who had increased with great rapidity,
were not, perhaps, very far short of that number.
And the scattered method of Virginian settlement
filled up, after a fashion, the whole space between
the mountains and the sea, which constitutes, even
to this day, the entire region that is typically
Virginian in character and tradition. The manner
of life had in no way altered. There were more
squires and more yeomen, more " poor whites "
and more negroes. That was all. The upper
class had gained something in dignity, from long
privilege, and from their constant connection with
England had kept abreast of the times to an extent
that surprised the few European travellers who per
sonally witnessed the isolation of their lives. The
middling class, the ordinary farmers, had gained
somewhat, perhaps, in education, but were the strange
mixture of roughness and courtesy, shrewdness and
simplicity of kindliness and barbarism that puzzled
Captain Anburey, who lived two years among them
in 1778, and elicited, a few years later, almost the
same expressions from that observant traveller, Mr.

INTRODUCTION 23
Weld. The lower class were almost unredeemed
savages. Their chief pastime was in personal com
bats of a sort in which biting and kicking and gouging
were the main methods of attack. Many of these
rustic ruffians trained their nails to a prodigious
length, and sharpened them at the ends, with a view
to gouge out their opponent's eye more neatly and
deftly. Biting off the nose, too, was another test of
skill, and worse performances, which will not bear
relation. Nor were these isolated instances of bar
barity, but the common habit of the lower classes.
No court-day or race-meeting would have been com
plete for these folk without one or more edifying
spectacles of the kind, which were carefully arranged
beforehand. The gentry had, of course, no part in
such matters. They did not interfere, because it was
not their policy to trouble their heads in any way
about the habits of their inferiors with a white skin,
nor was their position of that secure kind in which
such interference would have been tolerated.
These savage performances are the theme of every
contemporary writer who has given us pictures of the
southern colonies in these days. I have, indeed, my
self talked to numbers of old men who can remember
these barbarous fights which, in the mountain
counties, lingered on far into this century.
Then there were the Scotch-Irish and those who
had rallied round them, far away upon the frontier,
who though politically in Virginia, were practically at
this time beyond both her laws and social influence.
These men had brought with them a keen sense of
religion and a respect for education. Their descend-

24 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
ants, in spite of a certain ferocity and lawlessness
engendered by the hardships and dangers of their
daily lives, had by no means wholly lost this. Their
ministers girded up their loins and went out to battle
with their flocks. In their rude log houses, thrust far
into the forest wilderness, the family Bible found a
a place among the long rifles, and deer horns,
and Indian scalps, that decorated their walls. A
story describes two of these daring hunters in the
wilds of the then scarcely trodden Kentucky forests,
reading Gullivet's Travels to one another by the camp
fire at night.
The immense increase of the negroes was already
beginning to be something of a problem to the more
educated of the class who owned them. It was not
customary, nor at that time very easy, to sell them,
nor was the price as yet very tempting, while on
many plantations, even then, there were a greater
number than were required to do the work.
Now, however, came the great War of Independence
against the mother country which, for the time, upset
all minor considerations and disposed of all domestic
questions. Except for the fact that they had been so closely
allied with the English troops in the late French wars,
separation from the mother country implied no very
great wrench to the men of New England. But the
sentiments of Virginia had always been so very dif
ferent, that neither a close study of the facts, nor a
knowledge of the people, seem to me to fully explain
the leading part they took in bringing on the war.
If the middle and lower classes had inspired the

INTRODUCTION 25
movement, and compelled their superiors to follow,
the situation would be much more readily con
ceivable. But it was the aristocracy of Virginia that
led, and the others followed, willingly enough no
doubt, but that is not the point. The opening of the
revolution found Virginia, if not actually the largest
or wealthiest colony, the most influential at any rate,
and most certainly the leader of opinion in the south.
Nowhere else, either north or south, was there such
a numerous class of educated gentry. The first
orator, and the first soldier in America, were both
Virginians. And the famous Patrick Henry, who
swayed men in such a fashion never before or since
equalled, upon the western continent, threw his whole
power against the mother country in the councils and
on the platforms of his native colony. He was
sufficiently well connected to be not wholly distasteful
to the upper classes, and at the same time sufficiently
needy and plain of speech and garb, to pose as a man
of the people. Possibly the Virginians might have
risen in any case, but in the forefront of all their con
sultations is this tall, gawky country lawyer, with his
flashing eyes and hawk-like face, holding them
spellbound, and urging them with impassioned
eloquence to draw the sword. The most sacred spot
in the modern Richmond, is the old wooden church,
which the negro hackman still points out with his
whip to the inquiring tourist as " de place whar old
Partick Henry spoke de famous piece of liberty or
def " Of the first few years' fighting, Virginia took
a comparatively small share. War, for a long time,
was waged almost wholly in the north, and it was

26 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
only the Virginian troops that actually marched to
join Washington's army, who came in contact with its
horrors. The greater part of the people, at any rate,
stayed at home, and learnt what it was to have no
market for their tobacco, and be forced to receive
payment of dues in paper money that sank danger
ously near to the point of worthlessness. What
men on their lonely plantations thought in their heart
of hearts as the war progressed no one will ever
know. Some were, beyond a doubt, uncompromising
rebels, others equally stubborn Tories. It is probable
that a far greater number between these two extremes
were doubtful or indifferent, nor is it possible that
both in Virginia and Maryland there should not
have been an undercurrent of profound regret and
sadness at the rupture, and this of a kind more
widespread and more deep than was called for in the
northern colonies.
Yet when the war itself with heavy and devastating
hand fell on Virginia, we hear of fewer active loyalists,
by far, than in either New York or in the Carolinas.
There is, indeed, no doubt that the revolution struck
a blow at the old colonial aristocracy, from which it
never recovered ; a certain number were of course
loyalists whose estates were ultimately confiscated
and themselves driven penniless into exile, while
many were permanently ruined by the destroying
hand of Cornwallis' armies. At the same time Vir
ginia came out of the conflict as one of the first and
most patriotic States in the new Confederation, with
her great son Washington a head and shoulders above
any engaged in that unhappy struggle. And by

INTRODUCTION 27
Washington's side stood most of the leading men in
Virginia. This was no class war. The province had
fought against alien armies under the leadership
of its natural chiefs. There was nothing internally
subversive whatever in the movement. Yet close
upon its heels there followed a democratic wave which
seemed aimed at the very class who had furnished the
most prominent patriots. Primogeniture and entail
were swept away by the Virginian legislature, likewise
the Church of England as an establishment. These
measures taken alone were perhaps not unnatural,
but it does seem extraordinary that the upper classes,
who had no intention whatever of turning Presby
terians or Methodists, allowed their parish churches
to be infamously desecrated, the communion plate
stolen, and the whole machinery of the episcopal
Church paralysed for nearly a generation, because the
mass of the people looked on it as symbolical of
English ascendency. Public worship in Virginia
from the earliest times to the present day has been
singularly lacking in beauty and vitality. But this
episode in its history is peculiarly discreditable, both
to those who were the aggressors, and to those who
tamely suffered such things to be.
When the war was over society shook down again
into something like the old lines, though an inde
pendence of manner was assumed by the common
people which, if neither offensive nor aggressive, was
yet a marked change from the Colonial period. The
aristocracy grew more numerous, less relatively
wealthy, and less exclusive. For great numbers of new
families sprang from " plain people " into " quality "

28 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
as prosperity returned. This new blood, with the
admirable example of the old colonial families as its
standard, did not greatly turn from its old grooves a
society which, if in some ways singularly narrow and
provincial, evolved out of its picturesque simplicity a
remarkable list of able men. It is worthy of note
that in the period following the war Washington,
Jefferson, Madison, and Patrick Henry, all men of
world-wide fame, were living on their estates in Vir
ginia at the same time. The centres of population
and influence had shifted westward somewhat. Even
thus early travellers tell us of old manor houses on
the eastern shore standing deserted amid worn-out
wastes of broomsedge, sassafras, and scrub pines.
Jamestown, the first capital, had been long given
back wholly to the wilderness. A ruined church-
tower, a few broken tombstones, and the remains of
a powder magazine, alone mark the spot upon the
banks of the broad James, where the first English
parliament met upon American soil.
Williamsburg, too, with its single street, was soon
politically deserted, and had little left to boast of
but the college of William and Mary, a foundation
second only to Harvard in antiquity, but dis
tinguished for nothing else. This reminds me, how
ever, that the Virginians at last got their Bishop,
and it was at this college he first took up his resi
dence. Richmond, nearer the centre of the state,
had become the capital, perched upon high hills at
whose feet the broad James, after some miles of rocky
rapids, subsides into a tidal river. Its site has been
the admiration of many travellers, and the centre, as

INTRODUCTION 29
we all know, of some of the heaviest fighting of
modern days.
Life in Virginia during the early part of this century
did not greatly alter under the new dignity of the
foremost province of a rising nation. The State had
passed, it is true, through a short " silly season " just
after the French revolution, for Jefferson, with all his
ability, was crazy on some points, and this same French
revolution was one of them. He entertained feather-
headed French republicans, and even encouraged
Virginian freeholders, of all people upon earth, to don
caps of liberty and cut capers, till Washington almost
wept with vexation that any of his countrymen could
be persuaded to make of themselves such lamentable
buffoons. Jefferson, though a respectable landowner
of Albemarle county and most influentially con
nected, and withal a scholar and familiar figure in
Parisian society, was a prodigious democrat and in
many ways most unlike the typical Virginian of his
class. His knowledge, however, was most wide and
varied, and he was a great promoter of education. At
Charlottesville he founded a state university, which
has ever since held a good provincial position, and
been a great boon to poor students beyond a doubt, if
a dubious one to the wealthier who had hitherto been
compelled to go to the great universities of Europe
or the North.
The period which followed the achievement of inde
pendence was a stirring and stormy one for Virginia.
Bankruptcy, chaos, disintegration hung for years
over the new and still doubtful union. The new con
stitution had been made and fought over. The

30 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
relationship of the young republic to European
countries, who were by turns cajoling and threatening
her, had to be adjusted. A hundred problems that
required statesmanship to solve had to be solved, and
this, too, while the world was in an electrical condition
with the wars following on the French revolution. It
was not till after the close of the wanton war with
England, into which the third Virginian president, Mr.
Madison, had plunged j, the nation while the mother
country. was in her great life and death struggle with
the tyrant of the world, that the Americans really
settled down to their own affairs. The pretext for
this war was the impressment of American seamen by
British warships, one good enough for a patriotic
school text-book perhaps, but by no means so plain
to a serious student of that period ; nor was this casus
belli even mentioned in the treaty of peace two years
later. To half America, at any rate, including New
England, this war seemed a monstrous and wanton
act. One party, however, for various reasons, wanted
it, and I am sorry to say that Virginia led that
party, and Mr. Madison, as chief magistrate of
the great liberty-loving republic of the west, extended
a helping hand to the enslaver of half Europe
and the would-be enslaver of all of it. Canada,
however, was the immediate object of attack,
in whose forests thousands of expelled American
loyalists had taken refuge and begun life afresh with
extraordinary courage and fortitude. Seldom surely
in history was defeat so richly deserved, as in
the series of very ignominious ones the American
armies that fell on Canada received from the small

INTRODUCTION 31
handful of settlers and soldiers who defended it.
These little-known campaigns are quite curiosities of
military history, while the extraordinary bombast of
the invading generals' proclamations to their troops
are probably the most humorous things of their kind
now extant in print. It is no wonder that the
bravery with which the Americans fought their naval
duels and repulsed the attack by land on New
Orleans is generally made to obscure the greater
and more important operations in the north which
for the most part so signally failed. The war of
1 812-14, however, was not without good effects; for
it cleared the air at any rate, and the country settled
down again to its own domestic concerns.
Life in Virginia went on very much upon its old
lines. Its leisured class continued to supply not the
giants of former days perhaps, any longer, but
many leading politicians to the national councils. It
produced also some distinguished lawyers, and a large
number of excellent officers to the army and navy of
the United States. The towns continued to be small
and unimportant, and trade, excepting the manufac
ture of tobacco, and banking, to be carried on chiefly
by the Jews or foreigners. Country life still con
tinued to be everything in Virginia, and as the estates
of the gentry class, owing to subdivision, were smaller
than of old, and consequently nearer together, social
intercourse grew more and more the passion of the
Virginian's life. He travelled very little, and all social
touch with England was destroyed by the revolutionary
war, and was never afterwards even to the slightest ex
tent regained. Yet, in spite of the political antagonism

32 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
to Great Britain which Virginia generally mani
fested from the revolution onwards, in private life,
paradoxical though it sounds, the better people still
cherished much of the old affection for the mother
country, and nowhere in America would an English
visitor have been more welcomed than in the Old
Dominion. Most of the middle and lower class
belonged now to other denominations, but the upper
had got their episcopal Church back again, though
it had of course to be supported by voluntary con
tribution. The clergy, if they were not very vigorous or
accomplished, were profoundly respectable, and lived
upon sufficient incomes in comfortable rectories sur
rounded by glebe lands, with not very much to do
but officiate on Sundays and eat a friendly meal from
time to time with their hospitable and prosperous
parishioners. Negro slavery, as I have said, was in
herited by the Virginians. Whether they liked it or
not, they had to accept it. By about 1830 thinking
men were getting somewhat anxious on the subject, for
these coloured dependants had increased so immensely
in numbers that it seemed likely they would soon eat
some of their masters out of house and home. Land,
upon the other hand, had generally been deteriorating
in fertility through the reckless cultivation of tobacco
and its subservient crops, accompanied by the
exigencies of negro slavery. In semi-tropical or
tropical countries, especially where there was not
much conscience, this form of labour was cheap.
But in a temperate climate of moderate fertility it
was most uneconomical. The Virginian was saddled
with his negroes, among whom were many useless old

INTRODUCTION 33
men and women, as well as crowds of young children.
He had to feed, clothe, house them, and call in the
doctor when they were sick, to say nothing of occa
sional presents of money, which was the customary
habit with good masters ; nor could men of character,
without losing caste, sell their own people. These
latter represented capital, of course, but locked up,
unavailable capital. They conferred dignity no doubt, if
owned in sufficient numbers, but it must be remem
bered that the slave-owners were not a special class in
a social sense. Both the gentry and the plain farmers
owned slaves, though the former in much greater
numbers. In 1850 out of 347,000 slave-owners in
the whole South, only 8,000 owned more than fifty
negroes, or, roughly speaking, ten families. While
174,000 owned five negroes or less, or, by the same
estimate, one family. A hundred head of all sexes
and ages would have represented the belongings of
a gentleman of substantial property, though there
were exceptional instances of five or ten times that
amount. About the period I have mentioned things
were in fact getting somewhat strained in Virginia ;
not in the Scotch-Irish districts to the west, where
tobacco was little grown and negroes not widely
owned, but in the old planting country between the
Blue Ridge and the sea.
The better-class were careless, perhaps, rather than
actually extravagant. Things were left chiefly to
overseers, though the Virginian country gentleman
was an intelligent, capable man, ready-witted, and
quite equal to most emergencies, as circumstances
have proved. Slavery, however, in a region really
D

34 • SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
unsuitable for the institution, made him the failure,
as a rural economist, that the face of his country
has always, more or less, plainly shown him to be.
Though almost everything was grown or made within
the plantation fence, a lavish hospitality, however,
simple, makes inroads upon a property worth only a
few thousand pounds, and, except in the Shenandoah
Valley and a few other favoured districts, the bulk
of the land was only worth, at a rough average,
some £2 to ;^5 an acre. About 1830, however, un
looked-for conditions arose that had a most stimu
lating effect upon Virginia, namely, a large demand
for negroes from the states to the southward, such as
Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi.
This was chiefly due to the cotton-planting industry,
now developing at a great rate. In these regions, for
the most part, negroes were not the hereditary ap
pendages of families as in Virginia, where the com
fort and well-being of their slaves was a matter of
wholesome pride. In fact, much of the country was
comparatively new, and the men that worked it new
men. In the cotton country, as well as in the sugar
and the rice fields, slave labour was extremely profit
able, and those who had negroes worked them more
after the hard fashion of the story books. Down south
the overseer's whip really cracked, and the flogging-
post was a very prominent institution. Slaves grew
old quickly, and died. Even Sundays on the Missis
sippi was not always a holiday. With the exception
of certain notable districts the planters, as a class,
were immeasurably inferior in traditions and habits
and civilisation generally, to those of Virginia and

INTRODUCTION 35
Maryland. The demand for negroes from these
states grew brisk, and continued so till the civil war.
When one part of the country was overburdened with
labour it did not quite know what to do with them,
and another part wanted it badly and had the money
to pay, the result was inevitable. But it must not
be for a moment supposed that respectable Virginians
put their surplus negroes up to auction and sold them
away down south. The feeling against deliberate
sales for money remained as strong as ever. But still,
paradoxical as it at first sounds, Virginia became the
chief of what was known as the " raising " States,
and a large revenue flowed in every year in return for
strong, healthy Ethiopians, who went down to toil in
the cotton fields and the sugar estates of men whose
aims and instincts were wholly commercial, whose
breeding was generally common, and who had little
or no regard for public opinion. A very different
matter these poor fellows found it from working corn
rows or harrowing wheat land, splitting fence-rails or
burning plant beds, with much sociable conversation in
the wholesome fields and woodlands of easy-going
Virginia. How it came about that this steady export of
negroes was maintained requires some telling.
In the first place it had always been considered
legitimate to sell a negro who was incorrigible, and
one impervious to punishment. In former days it had
not perhaps been always easy to do so. Now, however,
any sort of a man who was capable of work fetched
a fair price ; and they had a system of discipline in
the far south which made personal character a
D 2

36 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
matter of comparatively little moment. Then again
the slave dealer was everywhere in evidence, getting
" bunches of hands " together to take south, tempting
slave owners and paying far higher prices than had
ever been paid before. There were of course, too,
unscrupulous men in Virginia as everywhere else,
who cared nothing for other people's opinion, and
would sell anything that fetched a price. There
were many, also, who were desperately pressed for
cash, and had not principle enough to resist the
money bags shaken in their faces, for negroes that
were of no equivalent use to them. Lastly, there
was one very common source, though an unintentional
and lamentable one, by which Virginian negroes
found their way south in considerable numbers, and
brought a large amount of money back into the state.
Slaves had by this time become much the best security
for money in the south, better even than land, for
they were instantly convertible into cash or could be
always hired out for their wages, whereas land in
Virginia could not even in the palmiest days be
readily disposed of at short notice, for there was so
much of it, and could rarely be satisfactorily let.
The land-owners as a class were inclined to exceed
their income, and borrowing became fatally easy
when slave property increased so much in value.
Confidence in paper, based on land and negroes was
absolute. But like mortgages in all countries the un
expected would often happen, and foreclosure would
bring an estate, negroes and all, to the hammer.
Neighbours would, it is true, on such occasions, buy in
the slaves if possible, and then little hardship was

INTRODUCTION 37
incurred. Indeed individual sales were constantlymade
with the slaves' consent, or often at their own wish, to
suit their convenience, or matrimonial views. But in
these sheriffs' sales there was not always money to
put up against the brisk bidding of the dealers,
and there were sad scenes all round, among both
black and white, over which we will not linger.
In the fifties began the mutterings of the storm
that broke with such terrific fury in the following
decade. The southern people had dominated
national politics at Washington for most of the century,
and Virginia had led the south. When at length,
however, they found themselves being overwhelmed
by the numerical and industrial growth of the north
and their power slipping away, it caused irritation,
natural enough, if illogical. Much friction had been
engendered between the two sections by their
directly conflicting interests and their different
views generally of life. The brotherly feelings of
1776 had absolutely vanished. The two sections,
speaking generally, knew astonishingly little of one
another, and what they did know they did not
like. Slavery, though abolition was not then
thought of as a political question, was an unceas
ing bone of contention. As civilisation swept
rapidly westward and new states and territories
were opened out, the burning question arose whether
it was to be permitted in them or not. No
impartial person who had ever looked upon an
old free state and an old slave state side by side
from an agricultural and economic point of view,
could possibly have two opinions on the subject.

38 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
The northern settlers who were pushing westward
held naturally only one, and that very violently, and
of course this view was the right one. The Virginians
and other southern slaveholders, however, maintained
that the soil of the United States belonged as much
to them as to New Yorkers or New Englanders,
which was undoubtedly true ; nor did they see any
reason why they should not carry their domestic
institutions with them. And this was an important
matter, as slave-holders were constantly emigrating
from the worn-out lands of the older states to the
fat prairies of the new.
The personal rancour created by all these questions
counted for almost as much as the questions them
selves. Such an amount of bad language has never
probably been used in the history of journalism as
these two sections of the now dis-united states
showered on each other, for many years previous to
the war, and the venom was extended to social and
political intercourse in the only city, Washington,
where the representatives of the two parties met.
Virginians, who had been by no means, as we have
said, enthusiastic for slavery, got tired of being
vilified at home and abroad for holding opinions
which, as a class, they did not hold, and for commit
ting atrocities that they did not commit. They were
worried, one might almost say, by intemperate
abolitionists into becoming ardent champions of an
institution of whose drawbacks they had formerly
been outspokenly conscious, and had been more than
once almost ready to abolish. So, on the other hand,
the old families of New England, the most culti-

INTRODUCTION 39
vated class in America, many of whom came down
from an unbroken line of well-educated and dis
tinguished ancestors, grew tired of being stigmatised
as low-born shopkeepers by vulgar tobacco-chewing
editors in the swamps of Mississippi or Arkansas.
Nor could the men of a race, who had done more
hard fighting in their history than any other in
America, remain wholly impervious to such epithets
as "white-livered curs," or "chicken-hearted cowards,"
which were being continually showered upon them. Vir
ginians, perhaps, did not take much part in this besotted
nonsense. Nor by any means did they howl for war
like the hot-heads of South Carolina and her sister
states. Virginia as a matter of fact was divided
within herself upon the subject. But all her best
people had a profound reluctance to draw the
sword against the Union which their ancestors had
done so much to establish, and in whose govern
ment they had taken so prominent a part. Numbers
of her sons were in the United States army and
navy. They were, it is true, then as always, Virginians
first and Americans afterwards, and whatever steps
the government of their native state elected to take,
her children, east of the Alleghanies at any rate,
would follow almost to a man, and we all know
the decision that was come to. But none the less
there was real grief among nearly all of those
whose opinions were most worthy of respect, that
things had come to such a pass. Possibly, too,
Virginia better understood the formidable nature of
the contemplated struggle than the federation of
states to the south of her, who forced on the issue,

40 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
Neutrality, however, was impossible to the Old Do
minion, for she lay between the combatants. The
time came when she was compelled to take the
field. Her soil became the cockpit of the contending
armies, and was ravaged from end to end, and her
slaves forcibly freed. But her sons covered them
selves with glory, and if one may say so, out of a host
where all were valiant, will be for ever remembered
as the bravest of the brave.

THE DOCTOR: AN OLD VIRGINIA FOX
HUNTER.
Now the Doctor was a Southerner of the old school.
Nor was he merely a North Carolinan, a Tennesseean,
a Kentuckian, or a Georgian — not any, thank you 1
No ; our friend was a Virginian — a real "old-fashioned,
blue-blooded, whole-souled, open-handed Virginian."
And this he was by virtue of eight or nine generations
of forebears who had fought, physicked, speechified,
fox-hunted, raised negroes and tobacco, in that im
mortal commonwealth. No day passed but the
Doctor, in his simple fashion, unconsciously thanked
God that he was a Virginian. For did not virtue,
valour, honour, gallantry select the Old Dominion in
the days of the Stuarts as their special depot, from
whence, in modified streams, these qualities might be
diffused over the less fortunate portions of the Western
world ? To the unsophisticated Englishman, to the
ignorant Frenchman or German, an American is an
American. If he is not rampantly modern, sensation
ally progressive, and furiously material, he is nothing
at all. But the Doctor would scarcely ever speak or
think of himself as an American, except in the same
sense that an Englishman might call himself a

42 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
European. The Doctor was, every moment of the
day, and every day in the year, a Virginian above
everything ; and, as I have already said, he felt
thereby that a responsibility and a glory above that
of other mortals — American mortals, at any rate —
had been conferred upon him by the accident of his
birth. I may add, moreover, that he was unquestion
ably non-progressive, that he was decidedly not
modern, while to the end of his days he was so re
actionary that the sound of a railway irritated him ;
and, finally, that he was, beyond a doubt, eminently
picturesque. The Doctor was about sixty-five at the time of
which I write. He had never set foot outside Vir
ginia, and never wanted to. That a country, however,
or climate, or people, or scenery existed that could
be mentioned in the same breath with the old
Cavalier colony, never for one moment was accounted
within the bounds of possibility by that good and
simple soul.
And yet, paradoxical as it may seem, the Doctor
was proud of his descent from pure English stock.
" None of your Scotch or Irish, or Scotch-Irish, for
me. No, I thank you, sir. My folks," he was fond ot
relating, " were real English stock, who came over
'way back in early colonial days, and settled on the
York River. They were kin to the nobility." What
ever may have been the accuracy of this last claim
the Doctor's patronymic in Virginia genealogy was
above reproach. Nor should I like it to be supposed
that my old friend was given to blustering about
either his State or his descent, Your fire-eating,

THE DOCTOR 43
blowing, swaggering Southerner belongs either to a
lower social grade, to the more frontier States of the
South, or, to a greater degree perhaps than either, to
the fertile imagination of the writers of dime novels.
The Doctor was a Virginian. His thoughts and his
habits, which were peculiar and original, were simply
those of Virginians of his class and generation some
what strongly emphasised. He was just and un
assuming, kindly and homely. There was about him
a delightful old-fashioned, if somewhat ponderous
suavity of manner, that the rest of the Anglo-Saxon
race have long, long out-grown. To even hear a
married female that was not black addressed as
otherwise than " Madam " positively pained him. As
for the children, the Doctor had a separate greeting
for every one of them, let his host's quiver be ever so
full. Ay, and generally something more than that ;
for the Doctor's capacious pockets were known by the
little ones to be almost as inexhaustible in the way of
chincapins, hickory-nuts, and candy, as his well-worn
saddle-bags were of less inviting condiments.
The Doctor's belief in his country (and by his
country of course I mean Virginia) was the religion
in which he was born. He would never have dreamt
of intruding it on you. International comparisons he
could not make, for he had never been out of the
State. I feel perfectly sure, however, if the Doctor
had travelled over every corner of the earth, that his
faith was of that fundamental description which was
proof against mere sights and sounds. He would
have returned to the shade of his ancestral porch,
temporarily staggered, perhaps, but still unconvinced

44 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
that any land or any people could compare with old
Virginia. Once more in his cane-bottomed rocking-chair in
the shady porch ; once more within sight of the
blue mountains, the red fallows, and the yellow pine-
sprinkled sedge-fields of his native land, he would
quickly recover from the temporary shocks that had
irritated him. The sublime faith in " the grand old
Commonwealth " would return, and he would thank
God more fervently than ever he was a son of
Virginia : not because of her present or her future —
for he considered the Virginia he belonged to died
with slavery — but on account of her people and her
past. The Doctor, happily, had been spared all these
trials, and his faith remained pure and unimpaired.
The only capital he had ever visited was the charming
little city of Richmond, where every third man or
woman he met was his cousin ; where most of society
in his day called one another by their Christian
names, dined in the middle of the day, and sat out on
chairs in the street after supper. Richmond was a
snug and pleasant place no doubt ; but its atmosphere
would have tended to confirm, not to shake, the
Doctor's homely faith.
He had only a moderate property — two farms — ol
which we shall speak anon. But then he was a
Patton ; and as everybody south of the Potomac
knows, the Pattons are one of the first families in the
State, — none of your modern and self-dubbed F.F.V.'s
who make the term a laughing stock are they, but
real old colonial people, whose names are written on
almost every page of their country's history. Besides

THE DOCTOR 45
this. Judge Patton, the Doctor's father, was one of the
greatest jurists south of Washington—" in the world,"
Virginians said ; but as a compromise we will admit
he was one of the first in America, and quite distin
guished enough to reflect a social halo over his im
mediate descendants, supposing even they had not
been Pattons.
The original Patton mansion was burnt down in
1840. Nothing was left but the office in the yard,
where in those days our friend the Doctor pursued
his medical investigations and entertained his
bachelor friends. The judge was a busy man, and
much absent. He was always "laying out to build
him a new house " ; but death " laid him out "
while the scheme was still in embryo. The Doctor,
who, as only son, became proprietor, had his hands
too full, what with negroes, and farming, and phy
sicking, and fox-hunting, to carry it out till the war
was upon him, and with its results put an end, as he
thought at the time, to everything which makes life
sweet. It must not, however, be supposed that the Doctor
and his father had gone houseless or camped out
since 1840. Not at all. From the old brick office
whose isolation had saved it from that memorable
conflagration, there had grown — I use the word,
advisedly, as applicable to Virginia architecture — ¦
there had grown a rambling structure, whose design,
rather than whose actual weight of years, gave it an
appearance venerable enough to command the respect
and admiration of summer tourists from New York
and Philadelphia. It was not often such apparitions

46 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
passed that way, but when they did, they would
almost always pull up at the Doctor's, front gate and
gaze through it with that admiration and respect that
Northerners are inclined to pay to anything in their
own country that recalls the past.
" Oh, isn't that too quaint for anything ! " the ladies
that sometimes accompanied them never failed to
remark. " That's a real old ramshackle Virginia
house, by thunder 1 and a pretty heavy old fossil in
side it, you bet ! " said the more observant of the
gentlemen. The Doctor would have gloried in such criticism
had he heard it. He hated Yankees ; he hated your
new-fangled houses ; he hated railroads ; he hated
towns ; he hated breech-loading guns : sights and
sounds and things that he was not familiar with at
five-and-twenty, he would have none of when he was
between sixty and seventy.
The Doctor's house was unconventional to be sure,
while weather and neglect of paint or whitewash had
given it an air of antiquity to which it had no real
claim. It lay a hundred yards back from the road,
and appeared to consist of four or five small houses
of varying dimensions, and occupying relationships
towards one another of a most uncertain kind. Two
of these leaned heavily together, like convivial old
gentlemen " seeing one another home." The rest lay
at respectful distances from each other, connected
only by open verandas, through which the summer
breeze blew freshly, and lovingly fanned the annuals
that spread and twined themselves along the eaves.
Almost every style of Virginia rural architecture

THE DOCTOR 47
found place in this homely conglomeration of edifices
which even " old man Jake," the negro, who has for
twenty years looked after the Doctor's horses and
stolen his corn, used to describe as " mighty shacklin',
and lookin' like as if they'd bin throwed down all in
a muss." It was, however, a real old characteristic Virginia
house of its kind. There were squared chestnut-logs,
black with rain and sun, against which the Venetian
shutters of the windows banged and thumped in gusty
spring days as against walls of adamant. These same
logs were got out of the woods and squared, the
Doctor would tell you, in days " when men had plenty
of time and plenty of ' force ' (i.e., slaves) to do those
things properly." Then there were walls of pine
weather-boarding, erected at a period when, the same
authority would have informed you, " folks began to
saw and season their lumber five or ten years before
they started to build." There were roofs of wooden
shingles slanting and sloping in every direction —
black, rotting, and moss-grown here, white and garish
there, where penetrating rains had forced the slow
and reluctant hand of repair. Dormer-windows
squinted at you from above, patched as to their
shattered panes with local newspapers of remote
date, and speaking of stuffy attics behind, where
hornets, yellow-jackets, and " mud-daubers '' careered
about in summer-time over the apple-strewn floors.
Then there was the old brick office before mentioned
— relic of a distant past : of a period when the Vir
ginia planters, though surrounded by the finest clay,
were so absorbed in tobacco that they sent to England

48 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
for their bricks. It is probable, however, that these
particular bricks were produced upon the spot. At
any rate, their comparative antiquity and presumably
mellow tone have been ruthlessly effaced, for this is
the only part of the Doctor's mansion that he has
selected for a coat of whitewash. It is used for pro
fessional purposes, and is known by the Doctor's
patients as the " sujjery." I know it is hopeless to try,
by a bald description of timber and bricks and mortar,
to give any idea of how the Doctor's rambling home
stead appealed to the sense of the picturesque, and to
the affections of those of us who were familiar with it
and with its inmate. Nor should the surroundings be
forgotten. The stately oaks that towered high above
the quaint low buildings, and covered with leaves and
debris the greater portion of that domestic enclosure
which in those parts was known as the yard. The
straggling branching acacias that grew close to the
house, and spread their tall arms above the roof,
littering it in autumn with showers of small curly
leaves, and choking the wooden gutters (for the Doctor
considered tin piping as a modern heresy) with frag
mentary twigs. The fresh green turf that had matted
and spread for 150 years around this house and the
more imposing one that preceded it. The aged box-
trees that had once, no doubt, in prim Dutch rows
lined some well-tended gravel-path, but now cropped
up here and there upon the turf, like beings that had
outlived their time and generation. The clustering
honeysuckles, bending their old and rickety frames
to the ground. The silver aspens before the door,
whose light leaves shivered above your head in the

THE DOCTOR 49
most breathless August days. The slender mimosa,
through whose beautiful and fragile greenery the first
humming-birds of early June shyly fluttered ; and the
long row of straw hives against the rickety fence,
where hereditary swarms of bees — let well alone —
made more honey than the Doctor and all his neigh
bours could consume.
The Doctor's front gate too! Ho\v well I re
member it 1 And the short avenue of stunted cedars
leading across the turf to where the front porch of
the old house once stood. I speak thus feelingly of
the gate because it was such a real old Virginia
arrangement, and in fruitless endeavours to open
it I and my horse have so often had to jump — for our
skins, if not our lives, as it suddenly collapsed and
fell forward with a prodigious crash on to the high
road. The Doctor's gate had no doubt commenced
life with two hinges and a latch. Most of the time
I knew it, however, it was poised upon a single hinge,
and that the lower one, and was kept upright by two
ponderous twelve foot fence rails being leaned up
against it. To look at that awful barrier you would
have supposed that the Doctor was the most in
hospitable instead of the most sociable of men. To
achieve a passage through that gate with dignity
and safety required assistance. Most of the Doctor's
friends — nobody walked, it must be remembered, in
Virginia — used to hang about outside and shout till
some of the hands came and removed the obstacle.
You couldn't have left your horse outside and walked
across the lawn, for the " guard dog " was a fearsome
feature of Virginia rural life, and of the Doctor's
E

50 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
premises a whole pack of hounds, if they were at
home, regarded themselves as the responsible,
custodians. All the years I knew the Doctor he
was going to fix that gate — and I believe he woke
up every morning with the fullest intention of doing
so. But he never did it. One or two of his intimate
friends used to pull the snake fence down on one
side and ride through as a protest, declaring it was
a much easier matter than opening the gate. But it
was no good. Of course the Doctor's attitude towards
his gate was merely an exaggerated form of the
attitude taken up by many of his neighbours towards
dilapidations in general ; just as his reactionary
tendencies were those of most of his contemporaries
only emphasized with undue vigour.
It must not be supposed that the Doctor's establish
ment, though strongly typical in a sense, resembled to
any extent the real old Virginia mansion. The
Pattons, it will be remembered, had been burnt out,
and the present pile had been originally intended
only as a makeshift ; but it was such a makeshift as
would perhaps be seen nowhere out of Virginia. Of
the more substantial family mansions there were
several crowning the hills in the Doctor's neighbour
hood. Square blocks of brick, some many-windowed
and green-shuttered, with heavy porticoes supported
by rows of white fluted pillars stretching along their
face. Great wooden barns others, with acres of roof
and rows of dormer-windows, and crazy crumbling
porches, and stacks of red-brick chimneys clambering
up outside the white walls at the gable-ends, or any
where else where they come handy for that matter.

THE DOCTOR 51
There were plenty of these within range of the
Doctor's house and the limits of his practice, and
to the proprietor of almost every one the Doctor was
related. The stages of this relationship varied from
the unquestioned affinity of cousins and nephews, to
that which is described in Virginia by the com
prehensive and far-reaching appellative of " kin." To
be kin of the Pattons, moreover, was in itself a
desirable thing in Virginian eyes. Though the Doctor
lived in such an unpretentious residence, and worked
day in and day out as a country practitioner, there
were people in the neighbourhood holding their heads
pretty high, who were always pleased to remember
that their father's first cousin had married the old
Judge's brother.
With all the Doctor's quaint ideas and strong
prejudices, I have said that he was a thorough gentle
man. He was of the kind meant for use, and not for
show. Good heavens ! what would your dashing
British ^sculapius, in his brougham or well-appointed
dogcart, have said to my old friend's appearance
when setting out for a long winter day's work > I
can see him now, riding in at the gate on some wild
January day, bringing hope in his kindly face, and
good conservative time-honoured drugs in his well-
worn saddle-bags. A woollen scarf is drawn round
his head and on the top of it is crammed an old
slouch hat. A long black cloak, fastened round his
throat with a clasp, and lined with red flannel, falls
over the saddle behind. His legs, good soul, are
thickly encased in coils of wheat-straw, wound tightly
round them from his ankles upwards, a special
E 2

52 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
patent of his own. In his hand, by way of a whip, he
carries a bushy switch plucked from the nearest tree,
and upon one heel the survivor of a pair of spurs that
would have scarified a rhinoceros had they been sharp.
The Doctor had been a widower since the first year
of the war. After a fashion not uncommon, he had
buried his wife in the orchard. A simple marble
shaft in that homely quarter spoke of her virtues and
her worth to the colts and calves that bit the sweet
May grass around her tomb, and to the encroaching
swine that crunched the rotting apples as they fell in
autumn from the untended trees. The Doctor had
had two sons but both had fallen in the war. Who
he would " 'ar [heir, as a verb] his place to " was a
common subject of discussion among the negroes on
the property. His profession, no doubt, was his first
care ; but his heart was with his farms and his fox
hounds. The Doctor had practised over, or, as we
used to say there, " ridden " the south side of the
county for nearly forty years. He had studied
medicine with the intention only of saving the doctor's
bill in his father's household of eighty negroes. He
had soon, however, dropped into a regular practice,
and for the last five-and-twenty years, at any rate, no
birth or death within a radius of ten miles would
have been considered a well-conducted one without
his good offices. The Doctor's income, upon the well-
thumbed scroll of hieroglyphics that he called his
books, was nearly three thousand dollars a-year. He
collected probably about fifteen hundred. A con
siderable portion, too, of this fifteen hundred was
received in kind payments, not conveniently convert-

THE DOCTOR 53
ible, such as bacon, Indian corn, hams, wheat-flour,
woollen yarns, sucking-pigs, home-made brooms, eggs,
butter, bricks, sweet-potato slips, sawn plank, tobacco-
plants, shingles, chickens, baskets, sausage-meat, sole-
leather, young fruit-trees, raw hides, hoe-handles, old
iron. To utilise these various commodities, it would
have been necessary for the Doctor to have had a
farm, even supposing he had not already been the
fortunate proprietor of two. Indeed, a farm to a
'Southern country doctor is not only necessary as a
receptacle for the agricultural curiosities that are
forced upon him in lieu of payment, but for the
actual labour of those many dusky patients who can
give no other return for physic and attendance received.
You could see a bevy of these Ethiopians almost any
day upon the Doctor's farm, wandering aimlessly
about with hoes or brier-blades, chattering and
cackling and putting in a happy and a pleasant
day. The Doctor might have been called a successful
physician. He had no rivals. There were two
inferior performers in the district, it is true, who were
by way of following the healing art — small farmers,
who were reported to have studied medicine in their
youth. One of these, however, had not credit suffi
cient to purchase drugs, and the other was generally
drunk. So it was only their near relations, when not
dangerously indisposed, who patronised them — or
some patient of the Doctor's now and again, perhaps,
who took a fancy the latter was too " aristocratic,"
till he got badly sick, and returned with alacrity to
his allegiance. There is no doubt, I fear, but that

54 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
the Doctor practised on the lines of thirty years ago.
Tory to the backbone in every other department of
life, it was hardly to be expected that he should
have panted for light and leading in that branch of
learning in which he had no rival within reach.
Papers or magazines connected with the healing science
I never remember to have seen inside the Patton
homestead ; and yet, after a great deal of experience
of the good old man's professional care, I have a sort
of feehng that I would as soon place my life in his
hands as in the hands of Sir Omicron Pie !
What time the Doctor had to spare from physick
ing, I have said he devoted to farming and to fox
hunting. I should like to follow him for a bit on
his long professional rounds, and listen to his cheery
talk in homestead and cabin ; to help him fill his long
pipe, which he draws out of his top-boot when the
patient has settled down to sleep or quiet ; to hear
him once again chat about tobacco and wheat, politics
and foxes. I should like, too, to say something of
the Doctor's farming — heaven save the mark ! — on
his two properties ; the one " 'ard " him by his father
and the other one, the quarter place near by, that
" cum to him with his wife, ole Cunnel Pendleton's
daughter." I must only pause to remark, however, that the
Doctor farmed, as he did everything else, in the good
old Virginia fashion — or in what is now irreverently
known as the "rip an tar [tear] principle." He
didn't care anything about acres or estimates ; and
as for farm books, his professional accounts pestered
him quite enough. Of rotations, he neither knew

THE DOCTOR 55
nor wanted to know anything. His chief aim was
to plough and sow as much land as he. could scuffle
over with all the labour he could scrape together.
Of manuring, clovering, or fertilising he took Httle
account. If only he " pitched " a big crop, he was a
proud and happy man. When each recurring harvest
brought results more insignificant than the last, a
temporary disgust with the whole business used to
seize on the old gentleman, and he would swear that
the wheat crops had been of no account since the
war ; that tobacco had gone to the devil, and that he'd
quit fooling with a plantation for good and all. In
the eyes of those who knew him, however, such
tirades meant absolutely nothing. A Virginian of his
sort could no more have helped farming than he
could have altered any other of the immutable laws
of nature. A younger generation, and many indeed
of the older one, have learned wisdom and prudence
in the management of land since the abolition of
slavery. The Doctor, however, and the few left like
him, were bound to be land-killers of the genial good
old sort till they were laid under the once generous
sod they had so ruthlessly treated.
The Doctor's first care was of necessity his patients :
but there is no doubt, I think, that his real affections
were divided between his farms and his fox-hounds.
That he did his duty by the former was amply testi
fied to by the popularity he enjoyed. That he sig
nally failed in the treatment of his lands was quite
as evident. For while he healed the sores and
the wounds of his patients, the sores, the wounds, the
storm-rent gullies, the bare galls in his hillsides, grew

56 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
worse and worse. The maize-stalks grew thinner, the
tobacco lighter, the wheat-yield poorer, year by year.
One has heard of famous painters, who perversely
fancied themselves rather as musicians — of established
authors, who yearned rather to be praised as artists.
So the Doctor, who certainly had no local rival in his
own profession, seemed to covet fame rather as the
champion and exponent of a happily departing school
of Southern agriculturists. In this case, the income
derived from the profession just sufficed to make good
the losses on the farm. So, though the Doctor, in
spite of his household expenses being trifling, could
rarely lay his hand on a five-dollar bill, he managed
to keep, upon the whole, pretty free from debt. With
a scattered practice, and an agricultural hobby ex
tending over a thousand acres, including woods and
old fields " turned out " to recover, it may be a matter
of surprise that our old friend had leisure for a third
indulgence, especially one like fox-hunting, which is
connected in the British mind with such a large con
sumption of time. Nevertheless, the Doctor, like
most of his compeers, was passionately fond of the
chase, and, in spite of the war and altered times, had
kept hounds round him almost without a break since
he was a boy. It will be seen, however, that fox
hunting, as understood and followed by the Doctor,
was by no means incompatible with his more serious
avocations. Now, if the fashion in which the Doctor pursued
the wily fox was not orthodox from a Leicestershire
point of view, it was for all that none the less, perhaps,
indeed, so much the more genuine. Fox-hunting, for

THE DOCTOR 57
two centuries, has been the natural pastime of the
Virginia gentry ; but they imported the chase of the
fox and the customs pertaining to it from the mother
country at a period when such things were conducted
in a very different style from what they now are.
The hunting of the fox, as carried on in England
early in the last century let us say, offered, I take it,
a very different spectacle from that seen in the elab
orate and gorgeous cavalcades and the rushing fleet-
footed hounds that race to-day over the trim well-
drained turf of the shires. No foxes were killed in
those days in forty minutes, I'll warrant. Men
started their fox at daybreak, and pottered along,
absorbed in the performance of their slow hounds,
over the rushy, soppy, heathy country, from wood to
wood, for hours and hours. They were lucky then,
no doubt, if Reynard succumbed in time to admit of
their punctual appearance at that tremendous three-
o'clock orgie, which the poet Thomson has so
graphically laid before us.
In England nowadays, except among a chosen
few who understand and enjoy the science of hunting,
horsemanship is the alpha and omega of the chase.
With a large majority the latter is but a modified
form of steeplechasing when indeed it is not pursued
from motives wholly alien to a real love for either
horse or hound. With the Virginian, who was simply
a survival of other days, it was nothing of the kind.
The Doctor knew nothing of bullfinches or of post and
rails or five-barred gates, in a sporting sense ; but what
he did not know about a fox was not worth knowing at
all. As for his hounds, he could tell the note of each

58 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
at a distance when the music of the whole pack was
scarcely audible to the ordinary ear.
As far as I remember, the Doctor generally used to
keep about five couple of hounds. It is needless to
say he always swore they were the " best stock of
fox-dogs in the State." Jim Pendleton, his cousin
across the hill, and Judge Massey, on the north side
of the country, who also kept hounds, were quite
prepared to take an affidavit of the same kind with
regard to their own respective packs. The Doctor's
hounds lived as members of the family. A kind of
effort was spasmodically made to keep them from
appropriating the parlour, and so long as the weather
was mild, they were fairly content to lie in the front
porch, or in one of the many passages which let the
air circulate freely through the Patton homestead.
If the weather was cold, however, and the Doctor had
a fire in the parlour, the older and more knowing
dogs seldom failed to eventually gain a lodgment.
By persistently coming in at one door, and when
kicked out by the long-suffering M.F.H., going round
the house and slyly entering at the other, they in
variably conquered in the long-run, and established
themselves on the warm bricks of the hearth before
the great white-oak logs which blazed on the bright
brass and irons.
Of course it was not often that the Doctor and his
hounds were all at home together on a winter's day.
If the latter were not hunting with him, they were
out upon their own account — for, be it noted, they
were absolutely their own masters, as is the way
with Virginia fox-hounds. If the Doctor chose to

THE DOCTOR 59
accompany them and do a great deal of tooting and
some holloaing, I have no doubt a certain amount of
satisfaction animated the breasts of the pack. But
it made no difference whatever to the sporting
arrangements they had planned among themselves, or
to their general programme. Whatever happened,
they were bound to have their hunt. As the Doctor's
pride and joy was not in his own performances in the
saddle — for he never attempted any — but in the
achievements of his dogs, this want of discipline and
respect was no drawback whatever to his satisfaction.
The Doctor, I have remarked, could combine his
favourite sport with the exercise of his profession.
That is to say, if he were going out in any likely direc
tion, he would manage to keep his hounds around him
till he had dispatched his lamp-light breakfast, and
they would all start together. The pack, moreover,
was easily increased, for the Master had only to step
round to the back porch, which looked across the
valley to Cousin Jim Pendleton's place, and to
blow lustily on his tremendous cow-horn.
A very little of this music was sufficient to bring
the greater part of the rival pack scrambling in a
half-guilty way over the garden-fence. After a little
growling and snarling and snapping, the strangers
would settle down among the Doctor's hounds as if
they had been raised on the place.
See the Doctor attired for the chase emerging with
his hounds from that awful front gate of his, which is
being held up and open by the combined efforts of two
stalwart negroes. It is a mild and soft February
morning, at about the hour when the sun would be

6o SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
seen mounting over the leafless woodlands to the
east of the house, if it were not for the dark banks of
clouds chasing one another in continuous succession
from the south-west. The Doctor is not quite such
a scarecrow to-day. The weather is mild, and he
has left the coils of straw behind, having his stout
legs encased in grey homespun overalls. The long
Mexican spur is on his left heel. The black cloak
with the red lining is on his back. The slouch hat
upon his head, and spectacles upon his nose. A
high stand-up collar of antique build and a black
stock give the finishing-touch to a picture whose
" old-timiness," as the Americans say, would have
thrown a New England novelist into convulsions of
ecstasy. The Doctor this morning is combining business
with pleasure. He has to visit the widow Gubbins
who fell down the corn-house steps the week before
and broke her leg. But he has had word sent him
that there is a red fox in the pine-wood behind the
parsonage, hard by the Gubbins domicile. I need
not say the saddle-bags and the medicine bottles are
there ; but besides these, there is the great big
cow-horn which the Doctor carries slung round him,
and blows long blasts upon as he goes titupping,
down the muddy lane. These blasts are rather with
a view of personal solace than from any definite
aims. The Doctor loves the horn for its associations,
and goes toot-tooting down the soft red road, and
waking the echoes of the woods and fields mostly for
his own personal benefit and refreshment. Hector
and Rambler, Fairfax and Dainty, and the rest — little

THE DOCTOR 6i
wiry lean fellows of about two-and twenty inches —
hop over the big mud-holes, or creep round the dry
fence-corners waiting for the first bit of unfenced
woodland to trot over and commence the day's
operations. The Doctor, however, is determined, if possible, to
keep them in hand till they reach the haunt of that
aforesaid red fox who is said to be lurking in
the parson's wood. He hopes to be able to ex
ercise authority sufficient to keep these independent
dogs of his from getting on the trail of a ringing,
skulking grey fox in the first ivy thicket or open bit
of forest they come to. It is no manner of use,
however. The rutty, soppy road, soon after it leaves
the Doctor's estate, straggles unfenced through half a
mile of mazy woodland. Though it is a turnpike of
old coaching fame — a road the memory of whose once
bustling gaiety well-nigh brings tears to the eyes of
the old inhabitants — it is scarcely visible to the
rare waggoner or horseman in these degenerate times,
on account of the wealth of autumn leaves that hide
its rugged face. Into the wood plunge the eager and
undisciplined hounds, the dry leaves crackling and
rustling under their joyous feet as they scamper and
race amid the tall oak and poplar trunks, and one by
one disappear beyond the very limited horizon. The
Doctor toots and toots till not only the forest but
the hills and valleys beyond echo to the appeals of
the familiar cow-horn. Mighty little, however, care
the dogs for such tooting. They look upon it as a
harmless sign of encouragement, a pleasant accom
paniment to the preliminaries until the more serious

62 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
work begins. Nor do they care in the least when the
Doctor drops his horn and begins to holloa and shout
and storm — not they. He might as well shout and
storm at the wind. The Doctor gets very mad. He
doesn't swear — Virginians of his class and kind very
seldom do — but he uses all the forms of violent
exhortation that his conscience admits of, and that
belong to the local vernacular. He calls the whole
pack " grand scoundrels and villains." In a voice
grown husky with exertion, he inquires of their fast-
fading forms if they know " what in thunder he feeds
them for.?" He roars out to little Blazer, the only
one left within good speaking distance, that he'll
" whale the life out of him ; " whereupon little Blazer
disappears after the rest. So he finally confides to
the sorrel mare, who is ambling along under him at
the regulation five-mile-an-hour gait of the Southern
roadster, that those dogs of Cousin Jeems (the Doctor
says " Jeems," not because he doesn't know any
better, but because it is a good old Virginia way
of pronouncing the name) are the hardest-headed lot
of fox-dogs south of the Potomac river.
But hark ! there is a boom from the pine-wood, the
deep green of whose fringe can be seen far away
through the naked stems and leafless branches of the
oaks. The Doctor pulls up ; he " concludes he'll wait
a while and see what it amounts to, anyway. The
scoundrels are probably fooling after a rabbit, or, at
the best, struck the tail of a grey fox" (the most
common native breed, that won't face the open or run
straight). The Doctor draws rein at the edge of the
wood where the straggling forest road once more

THE DOCTOR 63
becomes a highway, fenced in from fields of young
wheat, pasture, and red fallow. He thinks the Widow
Gubbins can wait a bit, and that old red fox at the
parson's can lie over for another day.
" That's old Powhatan, cert'n and sure ; and that's
a fox of some sort, I'll sw'ar," remarks our old friend
to the sorrel mare, who pricks up her ears as another
deep note comes echoing from the valley below.
It is late in February ; and though February in
Virginia is practically the same dead, colourless, leaf
less, budless, harsh winter month it is with us, yet
there are sometimes days before it closes that seem to
breathe of a yet distant spring with more witching
treachery than the greatest effort that period can
make in our more methodical clime. And this is one
of them. The soft and balmy air is laden, it is true,
with no scent of blossoms or opening buds. The
odour of smouldering heaps of burning brush and
weeds, or of tardily burnt tobacco plant beds, is all
that as yet scents the breeze. But after a month of
frost and rain and snow and clouds, the breath is the
breath of spring, and the glow of the sun, now burst
ing through the clouds, seems no longer the sickly
glare of winter. The soft Virginia landscape, swell
ing in gentle waves of forest, field, and fallow to the
great mountains that lie piled up far away against the
western sky, is naked still and bare, save for the
splashes of green pine-woods here and there upon the
land. But there is a light in the sky and a feel in
the air that seems almost to chide the earth for its
slow response. The blood courses quicker through
the veins of even easy-going Virginia farmers at the

64 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
thoughts of seeding-time. The negro's head comes
up from under his shoulders and his hands from his
pockets, where they have each respectively spent most
of the winter, and the air becomes laden with those
peculiar dirges that mark the Ethiopian's contentment
of mind at the prospect of warm weather and of his
limbs once more becoming " souple." The soft breeze
begins to coat the tops of the damp furrows with a
thin powdery crust that in a few days' time will be
converted into that March dust so universally beloved
of farmers. The young wheat, smitten and scorched
and beaten almost out of recognition, lifts its head
once again and spreads a carpet of tender green to the
sun. The early lambs, beginning to think that after
all they were not sent into the world to shiver behind
straw stacks, frisk and gambol in the fields. The
blacksmiths' shops at the cross roads and the Court
house villages are thronged with coloured labourers
and tenants, whose masters, now seeding-time is upon
them, have suddenly remembered that every plough
in the place is out of fix, and not a harrow has its
full complement of teeth. The light breeze from the
south-west moans softly in the pines ; but among the
deciduous trees not a withered shred of foliage is left
for it to stir, and the silence is complete. The freshly
awakened sunlight streams softly down between the
leafless branches and the rugged trunks of oak and
chestnut, hickory and poplar, and plays upon the
golden carpet of wasted leaves that hides the earth
beneath them.
The Doctor, as he stands at the edge oi the forest,
would ordinarily upon such a day be deep in

THE DOCTOR 65
agricultural reveries of a most sanguine nature. But
he is now waiting for one more note of evidence that
there is a prospect of what he would call " a
chase " — hesitating as to the Widow Gubbins.
Suddenly there is a great commotion in the wooded
valley beneath, and in a few seconds you might be in
a Leicestershire spinny, so busy and joyful are the
little pack with their tongues. " That's a fox, any
way," says the Doctor to the sorrel mare ; " and,
likely as not, a red." Two small farmers, jogging
down the road, pull up their horses and yell with the
peculiar shrill scream that is traditionally as much a
part of Virginia fox-hunting as the familiar cries of
the British hunting-field are with us. The Doctor,
though his voice is not what it was thirty years ago,
catches the infection, and, standing up in his wooden
leather-capped stirrups hallooes at his hounds in
what he would call " real old Virginia fashion."
" By G — d ! it's a red," says one of the small
farmers, who has perched himself on the top of the
fence, so as to look down over the sloping tree-tops
on to the opposite hill.
" The dogs are out of the wood, and are streakin' it
up the broom-sedge field yonder — dawg my skin if
they ain't 1 "
This is too much for the Doctor.
" Pull down the fence, gentlemen, for God's sake !
and we'll push on up to the old Mathew's graveyard
on top of the hill. We shall see right smart of the
chase from there. I know that old fox ; he'll
go straight to the pines on Squire Harrison's quarter
place." F

66 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
The four or five top rails are tossed off the snake
fence ; but the Doctor can't wait for the remaining
six. The long spur is applied to the flank of the
sorrel mare, the apple switch to her shoulder. Amid
a crashing and scattering of rotten chestnut-rails, the
Doctor, cloak and spectacles, saddle-bags, pills,
medicine-bottles, and overalls, lands safely in the
corn-stalk field upon the other side. The two farmers
follow through the fearful breach he has made, and
they may soon all be heard upon the opposite hill
cheering and yelling to the hounds, which by this
time are well out of reach of such encouraging sounds.
Neither the country, nor the horse, nor the Doctor, are
adapted for riding to hounds ; nor, as I have before
intimated, has the latter any idea of doing so. The
good man wants to hear as much as possible — to see
as much as possible — of the chase ; but when he
neither sees nor hears a great deal — which, when a
strong red fox goes straight away, is generally the
case — he will still take much delight in collecting the
details from other sources.
If his hounds eventually kill their fox half-way
across the country, friends and neighbours, who became
accidental witnesses of various stages of the chase,
and each of whom did their share of hallooing and
cheering, will send round word to the " old Doctor,"
or " call by " the next time they pass his house, and
cheer his heart with praises of his dogs. The Doctor
will probably have bandaged Mrs. Gubbins's leg, and
be half-way home by the time the death-scene takes
place, in some laurel thicket, miles and miles away from
the corner where we left our friend bursting through

THE DOCTOR 67
the fence. Not more than half-a-dozen, probably, of
the fourteen or fifteen hounds with which the Doctor
started, will assist at the finish. Two or three of
the puppies will have dropped out early in the day,
and come home hunting rabbits all the way. Three
or four more are perhaps just over distemper, and
will fall in their tracks, to come limping and crawling
home at noon. Rambler and Fairfax, however,
having assisted at the finish, and being perhaps the
most knowing old dogs of the lot, will have trotted
round to old Colonel Peyton's close by. They are
mighty hungry — for Virginia hounds won't touch foxes'
flesh — and they succeed in slipping into the log-
kitchen in the yard, while Melindy the cook is outside
collecting chips, and abstracting from the top of the
stove an entire ham. The said ham was just
prepared for the Colonel's supper ; but in foxhunting
all is forgiven. So after a little burst of wrath he
reckons they are the old Doctor's dogs, shuts them up
in the granary, and gives them a cake of corn-bread
apiece. The following day is Saturday, and the
Colonel's son, home from school for a holiday, thinks
it an opportunity for a rabbit-hunt in the pines
behind the house not to be missed. So Rambler
and Fairfax are introduced to the proposed scene of
action in the morning. After condescending to an
hour of this amusement, they hold a canine consulta
tion, and start for home, where they finally arrive
about sundown, to be made much of by the Doctor,
who has already heard of the finish from a negro who
was splitting rails close by.
The Doctor's satisfaction is quite as great as if
F 2

68 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
he had cut down a whole Leicestershire field in the
fastest thing of the season. His heart warms towards
those under-sized, harsh-coated, slab-sided little
friends of his as he stands watching the negro woman
breaking up their supper of hot corn-bread with
buttermilk as a treat — on the back porch. They
have all come in by this time, and scuffle and growl
and snap around the board as the food is thrown to
them. The knowing ones take advantage of such an
evening as this to assert, with more than usual
assurance, their right of entry to the house. The
Doctor has had his supper, and hopes that no ominous
shout from the darkness will, for this night at any
rate, call him to some distant sick-bed. He has
drawn up his one-armed rocking-chair to the parlour
fire, and by the kerosene lamp is poring over the last
oration on free trade by that grand old Virginia
gentleman and senator, Mr. Jefferson Randolph Beverly
Page. Conscious, as it were, that some extra indulgence
is deserved on this night, the dogs begin to crawl in.
One by one, beginning with the oldest and wiliest and
ending with the timidest puppy, they steal into the
room and become grouped in the order of their
audacity from the glowing bricks of the hearth
outward to the door. Nor to-night has the Doctor
kicks or cuffs or anathemas for the very worst of
them. The log fire is crackling in the wide chimney, and
the light of the flames flicker over the quaint low-
ceilinged room with its whitewashed walls, black
wainscoting, and homely decorations ; over the antlers

THE DOCTOR 69
on the door, that recall some early exploit of the
Doctor's in West Virginia wilds ; over the odds and
ends of old silver on the sideboard, that have been
saved from the wreck of the Patton grandeur ; over
the big oil-painting of the famous jurist, and the
dimmer, smokier visages of less distinguished but
remoter ancestors, who believed in the divine right of
kings and knew nothing of republics and universal
suffrage. Here, however, surrounded by his dogs, we
must take leave of the Doctor, or rather I should say
of this picture of him, for the good old man himself
has been laid this many a year by his wife's side under
the orchard turf Nor do I even know to whom he
ar'd his place. But on whoever or whatever this dubious
blessing may have fallen, I will undertake to say that
he bears very little resemblance to his predecessor, who
was the product of a social condition that has for a
generation ceased to exist and of a period that is
irrevocably dead.

AN OLD VIRGINIA FOXHUNTER
While the Pattons, as I have already indicated,
were indelibly associated with Berkeley County and
have lived there ever since it was created in Queen
Anne's reign, everybody knows that the older and
more easterly county of Sassafras has never been
without Broomsedges since time was in Virginia. It
was a Broomsedge indeed who was county lieutenant
of Sassafras during Bacon's rebellion and took the
county militia out with him against poor old Governor
Berkeley, who, when he got back into power again,
hanged so many leading Virginians, including Colonel
Broomsedge, that even his master, Charles II., for
whose sake he had done it, called him an old fool for
his pains.
The present Colonel Broomsedge of Locust Grove,
whom I propose introducing to the readers, had also
tried his hand at rebellion, as will be shown, and a very
much bigger one, but he had come out of it with a
whole skin if with a very much reduced estate. It
was not, however, as a retired military man I wished
to introduce the Colonel, but as a foxhunter of a still
more serious and ardent description than the Doctor

AN OLD VIRGINIA FOXHUNTER 71
himself For the Colonel gave himself up wholly to
the sport and made it in fact the business of his life ;
troubling himself about Httle else. He was probably
thp last landowner in Virginia that after the war
continued to devote himself so entirely to the Sport
of Kings.
Now there have been two schools of foxhunting in
America, and these are as widely sundered from
each other in origin and method as the Poles. The
one is exotic, a modern importation, and greatly
flourishing ; the other is ancient, comparatively
indigenous, and practically extinct. The latter had
been from remote times a part of the social life of the
older slave States ; the former has its habitat in
regions more or less contiguous to the great cities of
the North, whence it draws its supporters and
devotees. The hounds, the huntsmen, the whips are
English ; the whole turn-out is as faithful a repro
duction of Leicestershire or the Blackmore Vale as
circumstances will allow. The gentlemen are ir
reproachably clad by London tailors or by tailors
imported from London, and are admirably mounted ;
and that a goodly proportion of them are bold and
accomplished horsemen is universally conceded by
adequate judges who have seen them race over the
adamantine pastures and stiff timbers of Pennsylvania
or New York. Ladies, too, in such gatherings are as
much to the fore, both in numbers and even in
equestrian skill, as their British sisters ; and there are
drags and smart traps galore at the meets, and
dapper grooms with second horses. Nothing, in
short, is wanting — not even, as some ill-natured

72 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
curmudgeons would, perhaps, like to suggest, the
desire and the ability to go.
Upon the rapid and successful development of
foxhunting in the Eastern States, American society is
upon every account to be congratulated. But my
old friend Colonel Broomsedge, of Sassafras County,
Virginia, had no sort of congratulations for his fellow-
sportsmen at the North — a section he had never
visited, and had no desire in the world ever to visit.
He used to sniff and snort and almost rage at the
pictures of the Genesee or Long Island meets in
that most admirable and sport-encouraging journal,
Harpef's Weekly, which we used to take him over —
not, I am afraid, without some spice of mischief in
the intent. " D — d Yankee contraptions ! " " Thun-
deration tomfoolery 1 " were the mildest terms the
Colonel could find relief in. And he was church
warden, too, and read the lessons in the Episcopal
Church, and was anything but what Uncle Ephraim,
his huntsman, called a " swarin' man."
The violence of the Colonel's epithets was due
chiefly to political and social hatred, and to have fully
understood it a knowledge of the Virginia of twenty
years ago would have been necessary. But, putting
this aside, if you had been privileged to see the
Colonel, as I have so often seen him, jogging out at
daylight on a wintry morning with his five or six
couple of weedy-looking little hounds, and tooting on
his big cow-horn to let the odd members of the pack
who lodged about in the neighbourhood know he was
on the warpath, you would have understood, I think,
why he pitched the Harper's about the verandah,

AN OLD VIRGINIA FOXHUNTER 73
and blew such fierce clouds of smoke from his long
reed-stemmed clay pipe.
It was soon after the close of the war that I first
knew the Colonel. On the strength of his former
militia rank he had held a command at the opening
of that great struggle. But his ardour, I was always
given to understand, exceeded his discretion as a
strategist, and his years, which were even then in
their sixth decade, furnished the authorities with a
good excuse for relegating him to the safer shades of
the commissariat department.
At the surrender of Lee, however, he sat himself
down in his old home of Locust Grove, and on the
i,S00 acres of very indifferent land which surrounded
it. And when he did so, the Colonel, like most of his
friends, thought that the world, so far as he was
concerned, had practically come to an end.
He had owned about a hundred negroes, more or
less, and it was they rather than the ancestral acres
on which he supported them that constituted his
chief wealth. And now they were gone ; that is to
say, as a moneyed property they were gone. Other
wise, most of them remained as freemen in the same
cabins they had inhabited as slaves. It is doubtful
whether, when their chains were struck off by Lincoln's
proclamation, they or the Colonel were the more
bewildered. The latter, as was customary with most
of his class in Virginia, had been the most benign of
masters. If there had been any tyranny on the
plantation at all, it was old Uncle Gabriel, who had
been a sort of house steward ever since the old Judge's
days, that was the tyrant, and its victim had been the

74 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
Colonel. The word " freedom," indeed, as applied to
Gabriel, would have been an immense joke ; and his
master was accustomed to declare that, when he called
all the negroes together and told them they were free,
the only genuine throb of liberty which was felt in the
assemblage was felt beyond a doubt by himself in
relation to the long tyranny of Uncle Gabriel.
But the Colonel's joy was premature. Old Gabriel
stuck to him, and lectured him, and tyrannised over
him, and called him " Marse' Bob," till he died, and
had the biggest negro funeral I ever saw, with the
Colonel as chief mourner, looking five years younger
than he had done at any period since the war.
When, in 1865, the ruined South began life afresh,
none of the Colonel's people wanted to leave him. A
free nigger, to them, had been a stray nigger without
a master — an object of contempt to such as belonged
to a family of quality like the Colonel's. Such ideas
were very soon modified ; but, for a time at any rate,
there was little migration. Formerly the Colonel had
found them in food, clothes and medical attendance,
not to speak of small presents of money from time to
time. Now, however, the estate was parcelled out
among the various families, and conducted upon what
political economists denominate the Metayer system,
but what the Colonel's negroes called " wukin' on
sheares." This arrangement suited the Colonel down to the
ground. It would furnish, for his time at any rate,
the actual necessaries of life. He had no children.
His wife, good soul, had had a long innings of both
the social pleasures and domestic burdens of the

AN OLD VIRGINIA FOXHUNTER 75
slavery period. For it was upon women of her
position that the latter fell most heavily ; and,
altogether, " the Colonel's lady " was perhaps not sorry
to be able in her old age to relinquish them.
During those horrid years of war, when half a
million of men were butchering one another on the
soil of Virginia, and when even the quiet shades of
Locust Grove were startled from time to time by the
distant roar of guns or the red light of battle in the
sky, there was not much foxhunting, as may be well
imagined. The pack, which had been the pride of
the Colonel's heart, and the terror of Sassafras County
foxes, had sadly decayed : four or five old dogs and
a few riotous young ones, to whom fox, rabbit, or coon
came equally handy, were all that remained. But by
the time I first knew the Colonel he had resuscitated
his pack, and had discovered that life, after all, was
still worth living. If half of his neighbours had been
killed or crippled, and all of them ruined by the war,
he found that he, at any rate, could scratch along
somehow, and devote himself much as of old to the
absorbing pursuit of his Hfe — that of foxes. His
wants were few, and the system of agriculture pursued
by his Ethiopian tenants didn't fret him in the least ;
for was he not a Virginian of the good old sort, who
could see a hungry field grow hungrier — even to
starvation point — under half a dozen successive crops
of grain without the faintest twinge of his agricultural •
conscience ?
Moreover, the leaden hail that had wrought such
havoc upon men and horses, and indirectly even upon
hounds, had created a veritable heyday for foxes, and

76 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
they had thriven so vigorously in Sassafras County
that a sore and bitter cry went up from the newly
restocked poultry yards and sheepfolds. So when
the Colonel settled down to devote the remainder of
his days to the pursuit of Reynard, he had the satis
faction of feeling that he was at the same time a
public benefactor of the first importance.
In former days there had been at least half a dozen
packs of hounds in Sassafras County. Fox-hunting
had, in fact, been the chief sport of the gentry in East
Virginia since the early part of the eighteenth century,
by which time a squirearchy of English blood, sur
rounded by well-cleared estates, had taken the place
of the once trackless forests. Fox-hounds and even
foxes were imported from England to fill the measure
of that rural life which, thanks to slavery, had become
so rudely comfortable and uneventfully pleasant. The
English red fox was imported perhaps a little later,
when the indigenous gray species was found to be
but a second-rater, clinging to the woodlands, and
with all the "ringing" instincts of the hare. The
imported varmint throve and multiplied, though never
interbreeding with the native, and maintaining to this
day those straight-going qualities which have made
him at once the delight and the despair of so many
generations of Virginia sportsmen, with their slow
hounds and rough country. The gray fox, however,
which always was, and still is, in a majority, gave
very fair sport to men whose whole thoughts are
centred in the doings of their hounds, as were the
thoughts, no doubt, of English squires who hunted
foxes in the days of Walpole and the elder Pitt, and

AN OLD VIRGINIA FOXHUNTER 77
didn't ride, I will dare swear, with anything approach
ing the impetuosity they are made to do, for instance,
in the Christmas numbers of the London weeklies.
With these gray foxes also, the Virginian hounds got
plenty of blood, and maintained thereby a stout heart
in those long all-day runs after the scarcer red fox,
which so often failed to end in a kill. But all the
more on these latter occasions was the ambition of
the Virginian M.F.H. fired to achieve success. And
when his wiry little favourites fairly raced an "old
red " down after a four or five, or perhaps even a
seven or eight hours' " chase " (as he called it), there
was no prouder or happier man between the Alle
ghanies and the Atlantic. He didn't often see very
much of these big performances himself, but he
plodded along on his slow, soft-conditioned, long-
tailed horse over the deep corn fallows and rough
broomsedge pastures and open leaf-strewn woodlands,
listening with delight and keen knowing ears to the
fast fading music. And when his hounds had swept
beyond both sight and hearing, he would tit-up along,
picking out the line from labourers in the fields or
travellers on the roads, who would have often holloa'd
themselves hoarse as the hounds passed in sight. He,
would have felt too, would this primitive sportsman,
just as much elated at the fashion in which his hounds
were pushing this old fox along, though he was not
with them, as if he were a Thruster of the first water
showing his heels to a whole Leicestershire field.
Washington, for example, when he was at home at
Mount Vernon, was a most enthusiastic foxhunter.
His diary takes careful note of the days he hunted.

78 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
which were many, the sport he had, and often the
company he hunted with. He took immense pains
with his breed of hounds, which were famous in Vir
ginia for long afterwards. And he seems, moreover,
to have kept several horses for hunting purposes only.
His diary, too, seems to indicate that his lady guests
— and his house was generally full— sometimes hunted
with the gentlemen, but, as a matter of fact. Southern
women, though they could all of necessity ride, took
very little interest in sport.
I don't know whether it may not have been to
some extent the force of association, but there always
seemed to me something entirely delightful about
these old-fashioned Virginia homesteads, with all their
contempt for comfort and convenience.
The ancestral halls of the Broomsedge family were
in excellent keeping with their master, and both were
eminently picturesque, perhaps, rather in a social
than a purely artistic sense — and in a fashion peculiar
to Virginia. The date upon the chimneys was 1769 ;
but Broomsedges were there fifty years before that,
at least — in a former house, as the gravestones in the
walled burying-ground across the fence would tell us,
even if the Colonel had not been sometimes given to
making his ancestry the burden of his conversation.
The bricks of the present structure, under a climate
of comparative extremes, had assumed a really vener
able aspect, and the narrow windows with their small
panes suggested the fashion of other days. Nor were
signs of dilapidation and decay wanting to give the
necessary touch of sentiment to the stronghold of a
race whose doom, both as individuals and as a class.

AN OLD VIRGINIA FOXHUNTER 79
had been sounded. For no country houses such as
this will ever again be built in Virginia for gentlefolk
to live in from generation unto generation ; city mer
chants will erect convenient villas, and farmers will
build farmhouses, but even the latter will be what the
Colonel called " Yankee contraptions." No present or
future architect, for instance, will ever contrive such
a porch as that which towered above the front door
of the Broomsedge mansion. Its roof was on a level
with the lofty eaves of the house, and the tall columns
which supported it supported also two landings, an
upper and a lower. The upper landing opening from
the bedrooms was convenient for the airing of mat
tresses. Upon the lower one before the front door,
when the heat was too great for his favourite tree, or
when it was raining, sat the Colonel, with two or
three of his most favoured hounds at his feet.
From the back of the house innumerable out
buildings of various dates and in all stages of
disrepair staggered away in quaint procession towards
the huge barns and stables, and on either side a row
of negro cabins told a significant tale of other days.
Much cherished oaks of giant stature threw their
limbs heavenward, and buried in grateful shade the
whole easy-going colony beneath them. In front of
the house upon the lawn, however, there were only
ornamental trees — maples, mulberries, silver aspens,
and mimosas — and these the Colonel had taken good
care should not obstruct his view of the high road,
which was barely fifty yards away. For the old
gentleman had a passion for conversation even
above the passion of the average Virginian, which is

8o SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
saying much indeed. And as he sat upon the porch
or with his chair tilted back against his favourite
mulberry-tree, he kept his eye fastened on the road.
And the traveller who was shouted to by the Colonel
to " lite and sit awhile " and could resist that tone of
hospitable command, must have been an individual
wholly unsuited to dwell upon Virginian soil — some
despicable pettifogger who carried a watch about and
grudged an hour or two for genial interchange of
views on politics, or farming, or the war, much less
for a homily on foxhunting. For the Colonel could
talk well on anything from the British Constitution,
of which he was an ardent admirer, to local agriculture,
in which you might have supposed he was a shining
light if you had heard him hold forth on curing
tobacco or fallowing for wheat, and did not at the
same time know his habits, or I may add his
farms. But it is the Colonel as a man of action, the Colonel
in the winter season, and above all upon hunting
mornings, that I should like to be allowed to recall.
These hunting days of his, I need hardly say, were
nothing in the shape of fixtures. No local papers
advertised his meets, no sporting, correspondents
chronicled his doings. No rendezvous or prearrange-
ment was of any use, for no neighbours ever any longer
joined him as they had often done before the war — in
the brave days of old — bringing their dogs to run
against his, and dining together afterwards, and talking
politics and foxhunting and wheat and tobacco till all
was blue. The Colonel hunted now for himself alone,
and by himself and just when he felt inclined, which

AN OLD VIRGINIA FOXHUNTER 8i
was about three days a week, perhaps, when the
weather was propitious.
Sometimes, too, he hunted, as it were, under
compulsion — that is to say, he might have himself
made other plans, but his hounds would occasionally
break out upon their own account, and he had of
course to go with them. For only some of his small
pack were regularly kennelled, and that often in some
empty tobacco barn, beneath whose logs with a little
industry they could generally scratch their way out.
The rest lay around loose, and spent their days upon
the porch, or under it, or in the dining-room till they
were kicked out. And in the nights if the weather
were cold or rainy they not infrequently crawled
through convenient draught holes in the wall, and found
snug domicile in the gloomy caverns that intervened
between the floors of the house and its foundations.
It was by no means unusual while seated at supper
round the Colonel's hospitable board to be conscious
of fearsome sounds beneath your feet, which seemed
to come from the very bowels of the earth, but as
a matter of fact were nothing more than a portion of
the Colonel's pack contending for bone or bed.
But not all the terror of the Colonel's boot or
Uncle Ephraim's lash could deter them from taking
now and again, as I have hinted, a day's hunting on
their own account. Indeed, on more than one
occasion when staying with this fine old sportsman,
I have been waked in the dark of a winter morning
by the sound of heavy blows upon the Colonel's door,
and old Uncle Ephraim shouting at him somewhat
after this fashion : G

82 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
" Marse' Robert ! Aw, Marse' Robert ! "
" What's the matter ? "
" Dem ar dawgs is off agin, I hearn 'em runnin' fur
all they's wurth at the upper een of old man Daniel's
cornfield." Then there would be the sound as of a heavy body
falling, and the old house would shake almost to its
foundations as the Colonel rolled his 200 lbs. avoir
dupois out of bed, and roared out of the window for
his horse and down the stairs for his morning
"julep." In ten minutes he would be on his horse, thoughts
of vengeance and chastisement having alone con
sumed him while hustling on his clothes. But by the
time the old gentleman has got clear of the yard, and
cantered out past the stables and barns, tobacco
houses and negro cabins, he can hear the hounds still
running, and thinking that an illicit hunt is better
than none at all, he begins to blow loud blasts on his
big cow-horn, relieving himself of his anger thereby,
and fetching out from various shelters far and near
those of the pack that had not played truant.
>-¦ But these after all were but occasional irregularities.
The Colonel upon most hunting days sallied forth
with dignity and in order — a good breakfast in
addition to his early " julep '' beneath his generous
breadth of waistcoat, and his pack, small, wiry,
wizened little fellows of two or three and twenty
inches perhaps, following demurely at his heels as if
they had never done such a thing in their lives as
take " bye days " upon their own account. The
Colonel knew nothing of eleven o'clock meets, except

AN OLD VIRGINIA FOXHUNTER 83
from those accounts in the New York papers which,
as I have hinted, brought him within measurable
distance of apoplexy. His rule in winter was to
throw off (though he didn't use that term) before sun
rise, and his horn sounded along the country roads as
often as not before the first streak of day had broken.
Old man Ephraim still sometimes went with his
master, mounted on a plough mule all rubbed and
chafed by collar and trace chains, and the two might
have been heard as they splashed along the muddy
road talking somewhat after this fashion.
" I reckon we'll see if we can't scare up that old
red that beat us last week from the Doctor's pine
wood." " Thar's two or three grey, Cunnel, 'twixt here an
dar in dem ivy thickets, an if de dawgs strike ther
trail they's gone fur sho, and thar ain't no fence to
de road neither."
" That's so, Ephraim ; we'd better get out here and
cross old man Caleb's wheat, and down over the
Doctor's cornfield."
And as old Ephraim rolls off his mule to let down
the slip bars for the Colonel and his hounds to go
through, it would have been light enough to enable
us to make a note or two upon the former's appearance,
which, to put the matter mildly, is unconventional to a
degree. There is not much Melton Mowbray about
the Colonel, that's quite certain. From his slouch
hat to his wooden stirrups, from his gray homespun
coat to his rusty boots, there is nothing that would
not absolutely outrage every tradition of a sports
man's "turn-out." A pair of high old-fashioned G 2

84 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
stick-up collars fastened at the back with string
indicate in a measure the depths of Conservatism
that lurk within the breast of their wearer, while with
his honest rosy face and white moustache and snowy
bushy hair (which his wife cuts twice a year) he looks
the thorough good fellow he is and the well-bred
gentleman withal, in spite of his astonishing rusticity
of attire. As if too he flouted almost by design
every conventional decency — though as a matter of
fact he really knows nothing about such things — the
Colonel carries the sprout off an apple tree for a
whip, and wears a spur upon one foot only, and that
too a weapon of antique design, which, moreover,
cannot possibly have been cleaned since the war.
But the Colonel wouldn't care a blankety blank what
anybody thought of his appearance, and would
wonder what in creation his clothes had to do with
hounds or foxes. Even John Peel, though his
methods were probably not unlike the Colonel's and
the hours he kept were very similar as we know,
would have been shocked, I think, at the Old
Virginian's attire. But the latter, as I have said,
would upon his part entirely fail to comprehend the
point of view.
When the Colonel and Ephraim reach the Doctor's
pines there is very little ceremony in the way the
eager hounds anticipate their movements and throw
themselves into the ten acres of green woodland
through which a stream fringed with now naked
alders winds its way. The two old sportsmen, the
Anglo-Saxon and the African, master and ex-slave,
united by their lifelong passion for the chase, take up

AN OLD VIRGINIA FOXHUNTER 85
their stand outside and wait for that music which to
each of them is the sweetest sound in life.
There have been whimpers already from the covert,
but the old Colonel knows the language of his hounds
as the parent does of his children, and which of them
it is talking and what it amounts to, whether it is
Trumpeter " foolin' after an ole har," or Beauregard
" triflin' on a possum trail," or Rattler with confident
and trustworthy note proclaiming the presence of
nobler game. And sure enough on this occasion, too,
it is this celebrated hound who wakes the Colonel and
Uncle Ephraim from their reverie, and in a few
moments the whole pack have answered to his well-
known summons.
There is then great music for a space, and it grows
greater, and the two old men outside the wood listen
to it in silent rapture.
" Cunnel," says Ephraim as the situation intensifies,
" that ar ole red'll hev to quit, I reckon." And even as
he speaks a big red fox breaks covert not a hundred
yards from the corner they are standing at, and faces
the open with an air of confidence in himself and
contempt for the Colonel's already defeated endeavours
that warms up that old warrior mightily.
" That's the gentleman that beat us, Ephraim ;
that's him ! I'll swear I know every hair on his
durned hide."
Then indeed is the time to see this veteran pair,
perhaps at their very best, and hear a notable duet.
Old man Ephraim is standing in his stirrups — one of
them, by the way, hung on with a rope — and at the
very top of his power and lungs is giving the shrill

86 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
Virginia hunting cry that there does sole duty for each
stage of the chase, with his hat in his hand and his bald
black wrinkled head fringed with a circlet of short
silvery hair, and his mouth wide open and his withered
frame shaking with excitement. The Colonel at his
side has got to work on his big cow-horn, and with
cheeks puffed out and the colour of a ripe tomato is
filling earth, air, and sky with its strenuous blasts.
Out come the hounds on the line one after the other
and in straggling fashion, but none the less keen and
always full of music. It is nothing from their pace
that the sturdy fox who has just disappeared over the
top of the wheat field has to fear, but they may wear
him out, and run into him at midday or even in the
afternoon, for the tenacity and hardiness and scenting
powers of the Colonel's hounds are remarkable if they
have little speed. Old Ephraim, whose powers of
sporting narrative have been the delight of two
generations of loafers at the village post-office, whence
he fetches the Colonel's letters daily, has some most
fearsome stories of long runs in the days of old. That
celebrated hunt which took place in Christmas week
1 83 1, when "the Jedge, Marse' Roberts' pa, kep' de
hounds," is known to every one in Sassafras County.
We were never tired of making Uncle Ephraim tell
that story, for the old man had come to believe in it
himself most firmly for the last half-century or so ;
and I think, upon the whole, it was the most magnifi
cent He I ever heard recited in cold blood and in
detail, and by a member of a church too. " Yes, suh,
fo' Gawd I's tellin' you de solemn troof Dem ar
dawgs run dat ar ole fox fur two days an' two nights

AN OLD VIRGINIA FOXHUNTER 87
clar through. ... It wur de day befo' Christmas,
dey struck dat ar fox's trail, and when de Jedge quit
off hunt'n at sundown he done tell me ter foller dem
hounds and see whar they's gwine ter. Well, suh, I
follerd 'em all dat night. I follerd 'em all Christmas
Day and all dat night too, and when I caught up wid
'emjes as sho' asyo' born, suh, it wur over in Hanover
County about'n hour after sun-up, and fo' de Lawd de
fox was walkin', and de hounds was walkin', dey was
all walkin', widin a few yards of one nur'r."
How this old sinner gathered up the emaciated
voiceless hounds and the exhausted fox and put
them all in a two-horse waggon and drove them
home, I always suspected was a comparatively recent
addition. But Ephraim invariably recited the legend
with his hat in his hand, as if baring his head for the
vengeance of heaven to descend upon it — as, indeed,
he frequently invited it to do — should he deviate one
hair's-breadth from the " solemn troof"
From what has been said in an earlier part of this
paper it will be readily understood that there was no
eager shortening of stirrup leathers or cramming on
of hats with the Colonel and Uncle Ephraim as the
hounds went away. At the same time the red dirt
flew for a brief space from the Doctor's wheat field in
a fashion that testified to the ardour with which these
veterans, lying back in their saddles with their legs
thrown in Southern manner straight forward, sent the
long-tailed half-bred and the plough mule up the
sticky slope. It is only, however, a spasmodic burst
of excitement. There is a snake fence on the ridge,
and as Ephraim rolls off the mule to throw down

88 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
a panel he finds breath for two or three more
holloas. " Praise de Lord, Cunnel, I kin holler good on a fox
chase yit, tho' you is got me down as mighty nigh
eighty on de book." ^
But the Colonel only waits for the three top rails to
be pitched off, and then there is a fearful earthquake
and scattering of chestnut timbers, as with apple
switch and solitary spur he lifts the cob at the
remaining five, and, striking them about halfway up,
carries the whole panel away with him into the
next field.
Space forbids us to follow our old friend as he
potters along far in the wake for the present, at any rate,
of his hounds. I think, however, from what I have
said of the Colonel it will be readily understood, by
most readers of the Badminton at any rate, that this
astute old gentleman, steeped to the lips in the ways
of hounds and foxes, will be very apt to see some
thing more of the fun before it is all over. And even
should he not do so, and his dogs after all kill their
fox on some remote plantation miles away, he will be
just as pleased as if he had ridden at their heels to
the finish. Indeed, from the Colonel's obsolete point
of view, due to habit and circumstances, there is no
very clear connection in his mind between foxhunting
and horsemanship. I wish, too, we were able once
again to follow him home and sit with him for a bit
in the old wainscoted dining-room, beneath the stolid
portraits of bygone Broomsedges in wigs and ruffles,
' The old register in which the birth, deaths, ages, &c., of
slaves were entered.

AN OLD VIRGINIA FOXHUNTER 89
and listen to his cheery yarns of hounds and foxes
and politics and war, when the long reed pipe is lit
and the oak logs are roaring on the big brick hearth.
But this, alas ! is, after all, but a retrospect. The
Colonel's cow-horn has long ceased to rouse the
echoes of the Virginian woodlands. It is five years
or more since I stood by his grave, even then not
entirely a new-made one. And as I stood there in
the old graveyard to the west of the house, amid
a scene of ruin and decay, I felt how immense was
the gulf between the past and the future in the
South, and what a fine race were these Old Virginia
squires ; and I thought then, as I have often thought
before and since, how really lamentable it is they
found no contemporary chronicler of fame in whose
pages they might live again, and as a type acquire
some measure of immortality. None arose, however,
and now it is too late — for they are gone.

ON THE OLD BETHEL PIKE
The Bethel pike, or, as it is sometimes called, the
" old rock road," runs right through what was once
the blackest bit of the black belt of Virginia. This
latter term, let me hasten to explain, has no geological
significance whatever, but was merely used to indicate
that middle region of the State where, in former
days, the negro was most thick upon the land.
Regarding the second name conferred upon the
decayed highway, along which I am going to ask the
reader to travel with me in fancy for a short distance,
it will be sufficient to say that the remains of the only
effort on a large scale ever made in Virginia east of
the mountains to macadamize a country road still strew
its surface. This memorable achievement belongs to
the days of stage coaches sixty or eighty years ago.
It took the shape of a narrow causeway of rough
rocks bisecting the broad mud track of which the
ordinary Virginia road did then and still does consist,
and was once regarded as the wonder of its time. I
have seen old pictures — mostly advertisements it is
true — of the stage coach flying along this cryde em
bankment behind four horses all extended to a gallop.
But ever since I can remember, the chief aim of the

ON THE OLD BETHEL PIKE 91
declining traffic has been to dodge the fearsome cause
way by hugging first one fence and then the other,
according as weather and circumstances permitted.
Nowadays, indeed, you may travel for miles along
the Bethel Pike without meeting any traffic whatso
ever, whether horse or foot, and this not because the
road has relapsed into a state of nature, for that is the
normal condition of most Virginia roads, but because
there are scarcely any people left to travel on it. The
country hereabouts is hilly, but the old road crosses
it with a disregard of gradients and of everything else
except mathematical precision such as would have
extracted _ admiration (at a respectful distance) from
an ancient Roman. Indeed I have often thought that
a thousand years hence possibly — for nothing short
of dynamite will ever make any impression on this
old road — some enthusiast may arise and declare that
even Virginia was not exempt from the tramp of the
Roman legions.
Whatever things may look like a thousand years
hence, there is to-day no more pathetic sight of the
kind to be seen perhaps anywhere than that presented
by large districts, nay, whole counties, in this same
black belt of Virginia. In regions nearer home it
is true the deer may wander or the sheep nibble over
the vanished habitations of an expatriated peasantry.
But in such cases it is rather the triumph of economy
— if in some eyes an undesirable triumph — over senti
mental poverty. The human occupants must have
lived perpetually upon the borderland of want : their
four-footed successors are at least the symbol of
wealth and the pastures they wander over are of

92 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
greater, not less profit to their owner, than before.
But here over large districts of Virginia everything
has gone or almost everything — squirearchy and
peasantry alike — and they were not miserable and
poverty-stricken, but happy and prosperous. Nor is
there here any stock to take their place, for stock
would starve upon the briars and broomsedge
that run riot over the deserted fields. And these
people, let it be remembered, lived here, not for many
centuries it is true, but for more than two, and this
for the purpose in hand is much the same as
twenty. The leading cause of this desolation, it need
hardly be said, was the civil war and the collapse of
negro slavery. But it was by no means the only one.
The recent history of the South is on the whole one
of progress. Those districts that were naturally rich
in soil or mineral wealth, have maintained or vastly
improved their former position. Those which are
naturally poor have retrograded, with still greater
rapidity, and it was upon these latter that the most
patriarchal establishments in the old slavery days
were very largely to be found. For the last few
years it has been all that the keen Yankee or thrifty
German can do to hold his own upon the richest
lands of America. The fight of the easygoing and
somewhat shiftless gentry of Virginia upon some of
the poorest ceased long ago, and was a foregone
conclusion, though hardly at the beginning of the
seventies a foreseen one. For I remember very well
about that time how people in those parts felt and
spoke regarding the future. A large number of

ON THE OLD BETHEL PIKE 93
the gentry and practically all the yeomen or middling
class remained upon their farms after the war. They
could not all go to Baltimore and become lawyers
and insurance agents, though so many Virginians did
fly to that then almost sole harbour of refuge, as to
create a grievance among the natives not yet quite
forgotten. By the close of the decade which saw the
war, almost every landowner remaining on his place,
and these were many, had contrived to collect
sufficient implements and stock wherewith to cultivate
his lands. The latter, carrying good houses and what
local custom considered good outbuildings, were at
least his own, if sometimes encumbered. The negroes
had virtually not moved, and could be hired at wages
which, compared to the rest of the continent, were
very low. The Southerners are constitutionally a
sanguine people, and the Virginian, when he had recov
ered from the shock of war and reconstruction, and
had fairly settled down at home again, was by no
means unhopeful of his future as a farmer. He was
poor of course, and had little or no credit, for his
negroes had been his security, while now they were
free men and his labourers. But with very few
exceptions the Virginian gentleman had never tasted
luxury as the word is commonly understood. Of
the many daily necessities of an English landowner
or gentleman of most moderate means he never
dreamt. In his establishment there had been a plain
abundance, but in its appointments and fittings,
except that everything was clean, and that it was
distinctly the home of a gentleman as opposed to
that of a mere farmer, there was no approach to the

94 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
sumptuousness of the ordinary English country
mansion. An owner of three thousand acres would rank in
England among the lesser squirearchs. But three
thousand British acres before the recent collapse, and
even yet sometimes, would mean ;^i 50,000 or nearly
a miUion of dollars. Now half that sum in the
palmiest days of slavery would have bought out
nearly any of the bigger magnates in Virginia, land
slaves and personalty, and few of the country gentry
were worth a quarter of it. I mention this because
so much rubbish has been written of ante-bellum
luxury and splendour by imaginative Americans,
either Northerners who knew nothing of the old
Southern life, or by untravelled Southerners whose
notions of luxury mean abundance of home-grown
eatables, a mint julep before breakfast, a black boy
to pull their boots off, and nothing to do. Such
writers have been taken too literally, and much
misconception has arisen both in England and
America regarding the actual standard of that
happy, careless, and picturesque life, which distin
guished the Southern States, and most of all Vir
ginia, before the war.
The Virginia gentry of slavery days lived simply,
partly because they had to, and partly because they
knew no other life. The cares of a plantation and
the ownership of a hundred or two negroes admitted
of much leisure, but did not admit of those prolonged
absences in which an English landlord can indulge.
In some districts that I could indicate there was
money made in a modest way by actual farming. In

ON THE OLD BETHEL PIKE 95
most, however, and in particular such a one as we
are now considering, if the estate was self-supporting
it was all that could be expected of it. When the
domestic wants of the planter's household had been
supplied, and the numerous families of negroes fed
and clothed, all of which was done with Httle recourse
to the city merchant, there was not often a great deal
left for outside needs. Education was, of course, a
leading item, but the State University was com
paratively inexpensive, nor were there sons in costly
regiments, nor wine-merchants' bills worth mentioning,
nor did the accounts of tailor and dressmaker make
very serious demands on this happy rustic society.
Taxes were light, while of those innumerable tributes
to his position which, in the shape of local subscrip
tions, lighten the purse of even the smaller English
squire, the Virginia landowner knew nothing. There
was no high-class fast life to attract the men folk,
either of a sporting or convivial sort, for racing,
though popular, was not of a harmful or costly
character. Young gentlemen went to the dogs occa
sionally, as they will do all the world over ; but in
Virginia they had to go there in a dismal, squalid
fashion, amid the atmosphere of provincial whisky
saloons and low companions. The tone of society,
however, was in general wholesome and excellent,
and it matters little if its backsliders had no oppor
tunity of sowing their wild oats Hke gentlemen, if
there be in that any particular merit.
The very simplicity of this old Virginian society
was its charm, with its courteous old-fashioned
manners and its hearts both stout and kind, and as

96 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
much education within its ranks as was in those days
necessary to ladies and gentlemen living out of touch
with the world's great centres. Perhaps the principal
domestic extravagance of these days was the annual
visit to the Springs, a pilgrimage no properly consti
tuted Virginian family could omit. Here were
mountain breezes and healing waters for the sickly ;
dancing and flirting galore for the young ; and oppor
tunities for the old of telling stories and cracking
jokes and talking politics, such as no local courthouse
even could offer. That was a happy day always
when the family started in all its glory for the
Springs. The wheat harvest was over, the corn was
" laid by," the young tobacco plants had " taken holt,"
and under the hot July sun were dimpling the red
hillsides or darker low grounds in chequered lines of
green. The negroes were sleek and fat, and happy
in the sunshine and the abundance around them.
There was a lull in the year's anxieties, and the lord
of this strangely constituted kingdom possessed his
soul, for once, in peace as the family coach, loaded
with trunks and piloted by some ancient retainer,
turned off the ruts of the private road on to the ruts
of the great main highway. Along the same route,
too, went the saddle-horses, bestridden by frolicsome
sons or cackling negroes, pacing, racking, or fox
trotting along in the red dust, all bound for one or
other of those mountain Meccas of the Virginia
pilgrims. This forlorn old rugged, deserted turnpike
echoed in former days to the merry tramp of
thousands of these light-hearted pilgrims. Now
those indefatigable beetles, whose mission consists in

ON THE OLD BETHEL PIKE 97
rolling the summer dust of Virginia highways into
pellets much larger than themselves, pursue their
inscrutable calling from morning till night, with little
fear of destruction by wheel or hoof Entertaining,
it was true, was the delight of the Virginian, nor were
there ever in the world more kindly hosts ; but the
plantation provided almost wholly for the simple
entertainment, and nearly everything was produced
that ministered to a guest's wants. The saddle-horse
that was sent to fetch him from the station, even the
servant that led it there, was raised on the place ; the
blankets he slept under were woven in the cabins ;
the mutton, the ham, the fried chicken, the hot biscuits,
the batter cakes, and the other simple and admirable
condiments that formed the acme of local Epicureanism
were all — with the exception of a mint julep in the
morning, and a glass or two of Madeira perhaps at
dinner — home grown.
I should not, however, have thought it worth while
to drop into any financial comparisons concerning
the bygone gentry of Virginia, except for the reason
that it has always seemed to me a pity that so much
florid nonsense about "Barons" and "lavish splen
dour" and the like should have obscured, not only
the truth, but, in a measure, also the chief excellence
of this society, which lay in its simplicity. A
simplicity, too, of which it was itself almost un
conscious, for it knew nothing else, and had no
standard of comparison.
As a matter of fact, Virginia had been none too
prosperous for the last generation of the slave era.
Her lands had been going down, and but for the great
H

98 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
demand for negroes occasioned by the development
of the new cotton planting industry in the far south,
some crisis in her affairs must have occurred thirty
years before she was forced into war by her hot
headed sisters.
To come back, however, to the close of the war and
the period of reconstruction referred to at the begin
ning of this chapter. Numb despair had been suc
ceeded by something like hope in the breasts of the
Virginians, who still stuck to their homesteads. I well
remember the state of feeling upon this subject. The
land had never, it was truly said, been reasonably
treated under slavery ; and upon this every one was
agreed. To kindly treatment the exhausted acres
and infertile fields would generously respond. So
said Yankee farmers who began to put in an appear
ance, though not a very warmly welcomed one ; so
said hard-headed Scotchmen and confident cock-sure
Englishmen. And so at last came to believe the
native owners, though not quite so confident, because
they knew them better, of the ready response to im
provement of their paternal acres as the strangers
who lectured them on the subject, and what was better
still, backed their opinion by purchasing for purposes
of illustration no inconsiderable share of the country.
There was a good excuse indeed in those days for the
number of estates that were for sale ; and very eligible
they appeared. Their buildings were far superior to
the ordinary farmhouse of Canada, and there was no
suggestion of that backwoods life which had hitherto
been indelibly associated both in the British and New
England minds with expatriation. The lands were

ON THE OLD BETHEL PIKE

99

well-watered and lay in gentle undulations ready for
the plough. The landscape was not sublime, but it
was good to look upon, and still is so for those, if
there could be any such, to whom its briery wastes
and sedgy fields and rotting fences tell no tales.
Stately forests of fine timber covered the unoccupied
spaces ; prolific orchards of apple and peach-trees
bloomed around the homesteads : the climate was the
best upon the Atlantic coast. It was, in truth, a
region calculated to hold the affection of its sons, and
to attract the stranger, particularly the educated
stranger, and imbue him with a hankering for country
life under such conditions as seemed here to exist.
'' Here will I live and die," was the resolve of many a
New Englander and not a few Britishers as they sur
veyed the roomy, and even dignified-looking mansion,
with its ancestral oaks and broad acres, that had just
passed into their hands at a price which seemed to
them a bargain, and to those who knew perhaps a
little better, quite fair and reasonable. Such prices,
indeed, read now like a joke, though in truth a very
grim one. "Who can suppose," wrote an English
author and authority on such matters about the year
1870, "that these Virginian estates, now freely offered
at thirty and forty dollars an acre, will be long in the
market at figures such as these." A true enough
prophet was our author, but alack, alack, not in the
fashion he intended. Far as the eye can see, and
that is very far indeed from some high points upon
the Bethel Pike, there is scarcely a farm that if put
upon the market to-day would fetch, not forty, but
four dollars an acre. Upon behalf of most I will
H 2

loo SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
undertake to say that the auctioneer would expend
his eloquence upon deaf ears and shout his laudatory
platitudes in vain.
But this is merely the bald financial side of the
question, though it may be doubted if pages of
description could tell a woeful tale more significantly.
I do not know that this is a very interesting, or what
would be called a very tragic tale, to the general
reader. I am not in a position to judge. It is simply
that of the depopulation of a large region, where life
for long ages went merrily, but is now silent, or very
nearly so, and the feeble sparks that flicker here
and there amid the weedy desolation, only seem to
accentuate the sadness of the scene.
Every one has gone, not only the old families, but
the later ones, who with help and hope and capital,
came in a quarter of a century ago to fill up the gaps
that war and its consequences had made, and to
demonstrate that the poor lands of Virginia only
wanted farming properly to laugh with gladness. One
after another natives and foreigners gave up the un
equal struggle.
The latter soon found that except in the strips of
river bottom they had struck land of a poverty be
yond all calculation, and through whose too often
porous subsoil manures disappeared with heart
breaking rapidity. No natural grass, as in the
Northern States, and western counties even of Vir
ginia, grew upon the waste places to cover their
nakedness, but broomsedge and briars and thorns and
saplings only. To achieve a set of clover required
considerable effort, and even then the result was

ON THE OLD BETHEL PIKE lol
problematical — while winter storms cut deep channels
in the soft red hillsides, and summer suns blistered
and defertilized the galls and scars that marked their
course. In the middle of the " seventies " prices
fell grievously. The West, with her overflowing
abundance, grew nearer every year. All grades of
tobacco but the very best, which was producible only
in certain counties, ceased to pay. Growing seven or
eight bushels of wheat to the acre, with an occasional
twelve, had been possible under slavery, and remained
possible, though hardly profitable with the high prices
which followed the war, but with the collapse of the
grain markets became an absurdity. The fattening
of cattle on land that could rarely be persuaded to
take or hold grass worth mentioning was out of the
question. Guide books and histories, and magazine
writers from time immemorial, tell us that all this
was because the lands of East Virginia were worn out
by repeated crops of tobacco. There is a half or
rather quarter truth about this — as every one with a
practical experience of this subject knows — that
amounts to a fiction. This is what many of the
strangers thought who came into the country after
the war, and it took them some years to find out that
the greater part of the land was " naiteral po' in the
woods," as the vernacular had it. The country had
been well enough to live happily in and raise negroes.
Even after this, till the West came into action, it
remained as a sort of possibility. But with the fierce
competition of fat prairies and low prices, what could
such a region hope for .' People cannot live on
sentiment or feed on climate. Nor can old associa-

I02 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
tions or tender memories keep the wolf from th
door. Ever since the period following the war it ha
been my lot to traverse, at stated intervals, the same
twenty miles or so of the old Bethel Pike. And if I
take as my text this particular line of road it is only
because I know it best, and have been an eye-witness
of its slow but sure decay, and have moreover the
melancholy satisfaction as I ride along of peopling
many of its deserted homesteads and abandoned fields
with familiar names and well-remembered faces. For
this, after all, is but a fraction of a large slice of
Virginia which tells the same sad tale. Nor would it
be a spectacle half so pathetic if the country, as here
and there is actually the case, had been wholly
abandoned to the forests of scrub, oak, and pine,
that without intrinsic value of their own would, if
unchecked, at least have thrown their kindly canopy
over these dismal skeletons of the past. But life, as I
have said, flickers feebly still upon these old estates.
Heaven knows whom they now belong to. Most of
them have changed hands, and that more than once,
and always at declining prices, since I can first
remember them. Many of them are now hardly worth
paying taxes on, and taxes are low. Here and there
a surviving scion of some old family may be found
struggling with the briars, bearing but little likeness
in appearance or education, and still less in the
condition of his life, to his forbears. Sometimes the
dilapidated acres are still owned by the family, who
are scattered in trade or what not all over the United
States, while some " poor white " or negro tenant

ON THE OLD BETHEL PIKE 103
undertakes to pay a rent which theoretically almost
nominal is reduced in practice to microscopic propor
tions. Mortagees own many through foreclosure,
storekeepers, perhaps, or lawyers in the local towns,
and if they get rent enough to pay the taxes and
keep the buildings from actually falling, it is the
utmost satisfaction, unless maybe a few days quail
shooting in November, that they derive from the
acquisition. In some places, indeed, the forests have
re-asserted themselves so freely that the very deer,
after a banishment of a century, let us say, have
found their way back to as great a solitude as that
from which they were originially driven. But for the
most part the landscape lies as open as of old, and
the fields keep their former boundaries, marking them
rather by the lusty growth of briars ¦ and saplings
that have flourished especially along the fences
than by the rotting rails they hide. And at the
season of the year when, in happier days, the cheery
shout of the negro, as he followed his plough or
harrow over the red cornlands, and the busy stir of
rural life filled the air, the blooms of the dog-wood
and the wild cherry and the peach blow over wastes
of broomsedge that are in themselves, perhaps, less
depressing to look upon than the dismal efforts to
fight against fate which break the desolation.
Here is a hillside on whose briery face the withered
corn-stalks of two years ago are still standing, telling
by their miserable attenuation a tale unmistakable.
Here a few acres of wheat thin beyond belief upon the
ground, and of a sickly colour, save where some old
tobacco-barn or cabin has stood, and a bright, rank

I04 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
patch shows by contrast what wheat should be in
April, and what it is not. There, again, a field of last
year's corn has been followed in the ordinary local
rotation by oats, which amid dead corn-stalks and a
promising growth of weeds and bushes is making a
desperate struggle for existence. If it achieves this
last it may thresh out six bushels to the acre, a
miserable output indeed, but one which the sickly
wheat- field across the road will hardly run to. Fine
horses, as everybody knows, once scampered and
whinnied over these now tangled wastes, horses that
were the pride of a sport-loving population, whose
sires often had borne names of note upon Newmarket
Heath and Epsom Downs, themselves distinguished
upon Southern race-tracks, and not unfamiliar with
the music of horn and hound. It is needless to
remark that the Virginia horse, which still enjoys
some reputation in America, does not find its model
in the miserable drudges that, scarred by collar and
trace-chain, toil in these unprofitable furrows, or drag
the crazy, half-loaded waggons along the old rock
road. Following along the latter, it carries us every now
and again with sharp descent and little ceremony into
the waves of some rapid stream that brawls over its
pebbly bed with a callous gaiety that seems somehow
at variance with the scenes through which it is
travelling. As our steed, after the fashion of all its
kind in Virginia, stands in midstream and slakes an
apparently unquenchable thirst, a pleasant vista
unfolds itself to left and right of sunlit foam and
gray rocks, and bowers of leaves that willow, alder.

ON THE OLD BETHEL PIKE 105
beech, and sycamore form with their spreading
branches. Here, too, are some remnants of fertility, and,
indeed, all along the tortuous course of the little
river strips of alluvial bottom land will be found
hugging its banks, which in former days, on the
greater estates, made up in some sort for the infertile
uplands that spread on either hand. Still in those
days such choice bits were treated with some for
bearance. To protect them from washing floods at
least was the planters' care, and to sow them from
time to time in meadow grass or clover. Even such
simple operations are beyond the scope of the hungry,
shiftless occupier of modern days, whose reckless
plough vies with the wayward stream in destroying
those few spots where he can still hope to raise some
apology for a crop.
But perhaps it is in the homesteads themselves that
the contrast between the " then and now " is saddest.
Many of them you would hardly notice from the
turnpike, for though standing mostly upon hill-tops,
those that have any past in a social sense are a long
way back from the road, and often hidden by those
stately groves of forest trees that throw their pro
tecting arms around every well-constituted Virginia
rooftree. Here is one that, even after the war, remained for
long a type of that simple, gracious, old-fashioned
hospitality that distinguished the period before it.
The track that wandered off the turnpike through the
woods to the private entrance was easy enough to
overlook even in those days, and now when the dead

io6 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
leaves lie upon it, undisturbed by passing wheel or
hoof, it is difficult to trace up to the two rotting
posts upon which once hung the ever-open and
hospitable gate. The house itself in a score of years
seems to have lived a lifetime, and to have hastened
from cheerful and well-preserved middle age to
decrepitude and decay, while the heavy portico over
the door, resting, in the English fashion of the Georgian
period, on lofty fluted columns, has shed the plaster
from its ceiling in big cakes upon the rotting steps.
The windows have mostly fallen out, and a battered
shutter hangs here and there by a single hinge from
the sash to emphasize the woe-begone aspect of the
walls. And these again are scarred with ominous-
looking cracks in the brick that no inmates whose in
terest in life was vigorous and circulation normal
could contemplate without dismay. A family of
" poor whites " occupy one wing of the decaying
mansion and work their wild will on a portion
of the surrounding acres. And the "poor white"
of Eastern Virginia is both in appearance and ways
of life the most unlovely sample of Anglo-Saxon,
of rural Anglo-Saxon at any rate, that an inscrutable
Providence has fashioned. To suppose too that a
single window-pane would be replaced, a single nail
driven into a loose plank, or a gate hung upon its
hinges under the auspices of these gentry, would be
not to know them. If anything were wanted to
intensify the melancholy of this spectre of an old
Virginia home the gaunt forms and yellow faces and
vacant stare of its present occupants are well
calculated to do so.

ON THE OLD BETHEL PIKE 107
The Virginia squires troubled their heads little about
landscape gardening. An acre or so of old turf shaded
with forest trees and sprinkled with a few exotics
filled, and upon the whole filled well, every require
ment of dignity and comfort. But not even this relic
of former days, however, has here escaped the
aggressive inroad which nature abandoned to itself
makes beneath these Southern suns. For the briars
and weeds from the half-tilled fields without have
leaped the broken palings of the lawn and are
disputing every yard of ground with the old sod that
seemed to have in it the resisting power of a century's
growth and care.
In the vegetable garden, on which chiefly in olden
days the care of the household, and above all of its
ladies, used to be expended, the turf walks can still be
traced, and the posts and trellis-work over which the
grape-vines once clambered with such profusion are
even yet partly standing. Out of a jungle of weeds
waist-high old-fashioned herbs still push their heads
up here and there for life and light, and the box-
edgings of the beds have struggled up into rank
bushes, stiff and straight amid the chaos.
And yet perhaps it is the inside of the house that
awakens the saddest memories. Each chamber in its
musty silence has some tale of its own to tell, and
the tale told within these particular walls is not that
of a single family, but of hundreds — the story of a
whole race who once were powerful, were a leading
factor in the life, not of a province, but of a nation,
and who have within a period comparatively brief
passed out of existence. The nails are still sticking

io8 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
in the walls from which used to hang those homely
but none the less treasured paintings of gentlemen in
wigs and swords, and ladies who danced with
Braddock's fated officers at Williamsburg, and as
sober matrons turned up no doubt their pretty noses
(in secret) at Patrick Henry's rustic eloquence and
Mr. Jefferson's dowdy clothes. It needs not the
memory of these vanished symbols to remind us how
Virginia in prosperity and political influence was once
the foremost of American commonwealths, and had
much more than her share in a numerical sense,
considerable though this was, in guiding and shaping
the early history of the United States.
Virginia, nowadays, as a state, is, upon the whole,
by no means unprosperous. We have been looking at
her moribund and historic part. That other portion,
which represents her increase and prosperity, which
fattens cattle and grows corn with moderate success,
which delves for coal and iron, rears blast furnaces
and factories and summer hotels, though beautiful
indeed by nature, belongs otherwise to the common
place tale of modern progress, and has no connection
with the point of view from which this chapter is
written. But this pleasant and prosperous western
half that hugs the foot-hills of the Blue Ridge and
lies amid the shadow of the Alleghanies is not, to any
appreciable extent, the Virginia of the days when her
opinion was listened to by sister colonies and sister
states with a deference that reads strangely now.
It is this older Virginia, this famous cradle of the
English race beyond the sea, that now, so much of it,
lies an almost hopeless desert, or what, compared

ON THE OLD BETHEL PIKE 109
to any other agricultural country in the Anglo-Saxon
world, is practically a desert — and seems likely to
remain so. This is not an age when the pressure of
population is forcing men on to sterile soils — above
all on to sterile soils in America, where migration is so
simple and land so abundant. It is all, indeed, that
the tillers of fertile farms can do, at this time, to hold
their own. The owners of indifferent lands are having
an anxious time of it, while those who live upon poor
ones, though they may have cultivated them with
thrift and energy for generations, are abandoning their
homes wholesale, as in New England, for the fatter
pastures of the prairies, or the sunny fertility of the
Pacific coast ; and the abandoned farms of New
England were considerably more productive than the
mass of middle and eastern Virginia. Even the
proximity to markets, which at one time partly
neutralised the comparative poverty of eastern lands,
has no longer any commercial significance. For
purposes of export the railroads have equalised long
freights and short ones, while in the n- atter of home
markets the centre of population shifts further west
ward every day. Nor, indeed, could any advantage
of markets assist a country whose means of getting to
them are over the worst roads in the world, and that
has little chance now of ever having better ones. It
is difficult to conceive, for those who really know it,
any combination of circumstances that can, within
measurable time, arrest [the decay of large portions
of Virginia east of the Piedmont counties — a region,
roughly speaking, half the size of England, and once

no SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
pre-eminently the England of the New World, where
the manners and customs, the sports, and even the
prejudices of the mother country were reproduced
with a fidelity that in colonial days was almost
pathetic, and the traces of which are even yet not
wholly extinct.

PARKIN THE SADDLER
The old store at the forks of the Shiloh Pike is an
admirable illustration of the contempt of the South in
past days' for industrial centres — or shall we say its
independence of them ? Barkers' has been a spot
celebrated in local annals for something like a cen
tury. It is marked upon the oldest maps of the
district in no uncertain letters, while upon the very
latest it is written in characters almost as large as
those of the populous towns that have sprung up in
comparatively recent days along the nearest railway
track. Barkers' consists of a single house and a
blacksmith's shop. There is no reason to suppose
that eighty years ago there was anything more. The
oldest inhabitants have been heard to mutter about
the place "going down." But oldest inhabitants are
nothing if not pessimists ; and this matter on being
investigated reveals no more than the hazy tradition
of a wheelwright's shop having once stood upon the
other side of the road. There are no Barkers left
now, in the neighbourhood at any rate, to tell the tale
of the enterprising ancestor who immortalised their

112 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
name. The store itself has run to a third or fourth
edition. Two great fires at least mark the local
calendar. The present edifice dates from before the
war, and by a careful abstinence from paint looks
venerable enough to harmonise with the traditions of
the spot. An uninitiated traveller would pass by
Barkers' almost without noticing it ; such notice as
he might spare would probably be of a most con
temptuous and uncomplimentary description. His
conclusions, however, like those of many passing
travellers, would be erroneous, for Barkers' in com
mercial circles is regarded as one of the best country
"stands" in the state. It is twenty miles from a
town or a railroad, quite a novelty nowadays in the
civilised parts of America. But from the high red
ridge on which it is perched it overlooks a com
munity of farmers that in the days of slavery were
very prosperous and even now are fairly so.
Barkers' is of course a post-office, and has been a
voting-centre from those blessed days when freeholders
alone held that privilege to the degenerate present
when the negro crowds to the polls. Congressmen
and legislators, would-be congressmen and would-be
legislators, temperance orators, revivalists, preachers
— all, in short, who, within the memory of man,
have wished to capture the votes or influence
the opinions of the district, have taken their stand
under the big white-oak tree which stretches its broad
arms over the store on one hand and over the black
smith's shop on the other. Men have gone to battle
from Barkers', not in ones or twos but in whole troops.
A hundred and fifty years ago small companies of

PARKIN THE SADDLER 113
adventurous settlers in moccasins and hunting-shirts
marched from a few scattered clearings to join the
frontier levies against the Indians beyond the moun
tain. A generation later sturdy farmers, who knew
little of the red man or his ways, hastened northward
to don the blue coat and three-cornered hat of
Washington's Continental Line. And in recent years
the fiery cross of the Confederacy found in the whole
south no prompter response than among the free
holders who voted and traded and gossiped at Barkers'.
To-day there is nothing moving. It is hot July
and it is not mail-day. Even the negro blacksmith
has gone to tend his crop, for farmers and horses and
ploughs are all hard at work among the tender
spreading leaves of the freshly-planted tobacco and
the lusty, growing corn. The broad stretch of road
around the Tree of Liberty is untenanted save by
industrious "tumble bugs" who roll their burdens
backwards and forwards through the dust as if secure
to-day at any rate from the ruthless waggon wheel.
Sometimes a score of horses stand hitched along the
fence. To-day there is not one, and the ground
squirrel scuttles fearlessly over its rails, and the lizard
scrapes and rustles in the heaps of last year's leaves
that still lie in its corners. The woods upon the
adjacent hillside are motionless in the simmering,
breathless heat. Not even a distant waggon is to be
heard jolting and bumping over one of the four rough
and rutty roads that meet at Barkers'. Even the
worthy merchant who is generally to be seen on the
rickety porch calling to passing wayfarers to "get
down and hitch up awhile " has succumbed to the
I

114 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
inevitable and retired to a siesta beneath his counter.
No sign of life is to be seen, but the buzzard swinging
far up in the blue vault above, and below the subject
of this sketch — commonly and somewhat quaintly
known as Parkin the Saddler.
This is, perhaps, rather an elaborate setting for the
picture of a lank and homely man seated on an
empty dry-goods case before the store door, solemnly
whittling at a chip ; but Parkin is a notoriously
difficult man to " to catch up with," and almost the
only chance of doing so without tracking him through
the mountains, the woods, and the fields, is to seize
upon, what for him alone, probably, in the district of
Barkers', is a dead season. No trout to-day will be feed
ing in the streams whose course can be traced by the
dark hollows in the great masses of blue mountain
that lie piled against the western sky. The wild turkey
will to-day be leading her tender, fluffy brood through
the sequestered shade of the pine woods that clothe
the spurs and foothills ; and the cock quail pipes
forth his lay from the fence-top with a confidence
that would secure his safety from the veriest poacher,
much less from such a sportsman as Parkin the
Saddler. So far as Jim Parkin is concerned there is nothing
to be done at such a time but the comparatively un
important occupation of hoeing corn and ploughing
tobacco. But for farming, though he owns a bit of
land, Jim, to use his own vernacular, "has mighty
little use," and that is a bold assertion at Barkers',
where the entire community think, move, and have
their very being in agriculture' This, by the way, is

PARKIN THE SADDLER 115
not because his heart is in saddles and bridles, as
jnight be inferred. Jim will make you a bridle or a
set of waggon-harness, it is true, but the order would
be an act on your part of pure and simple philan
thropy. Your troubles instead of being then over
would only have begun. You would certainly have
to advance the money to purchase the leather, and
would probably have to lend him a horse to ride into
town upon. Jim is as honest in intention as the day,
and upon the whole is a sober man. But the un
wonted stir of the city might create in him an un
wonted thirst ; or at any rate he might meet with
long-lost friends, and begin telling big stories of fish
and bear till the ten-dollar bill began to burn a hole
in the pocket of his shabby coat. He would get
home with the horse late the next day perhaps, hav
ing been compelled to pledge your credit for another
five dollars for leather. Repentance is no word for
the state of feelings which would then rend the breast
of Parkin the Saddler. His remorse would be so
profound and sincere that you would begin to feel
yourself almost a brute for not paying him two
dollars a day for the time he spent in frolicking, and
he would go to work upon the job with almost
feverish energy. If no fishing-day interfered and no
turkey-tracks in the woods pressed themselves too
forcibly on his attention, or if his dogs did not happen
to get on a fox on the way home, or if there was no
swarm of bees within five miles that required coax
ing, you would eventually secure a really admirable
article. It is not, however, in his capacity either of agricul-
I 2

ii6 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
turist or saddler that I wish to recall this simple,
kindly, shiftless son of Nature, but as a sportsman of
the first water, a poet unconsciously, a naturalist half
consciously, and a gentleman entirely. Perhaps, as
we are speaking of a poor uncouth fellow of dilapi
dated appearance and no education worth mentioning,
conventionality will be less outraged if we substitute
the term " Nature's gentleman." Jim Parker is in
truth no beauty, but he has a pair of big gray eyes
that tell of kindly virtues worth a deal more. He
may be fifty and is slightly lame, though you would
not think it to see him travelling down the mountain
side after a wounded turkey — for he was shot through
the thigh in the war. His peculiarities as a local
character are of course his own, but still they are the
result of a particular civilisation. From a mere
business point of view he is an excellent type of the
old-fashioned rural mechanic of the South. Under
the patriarchal dispensation of slavery there was so
little use for white artisans that the supply was of a
most extraordinary description. It rendered its
services on the principle that if you could not give a
man work for his whole time he would retaliate by
doing what he did get when he chose and how he
chose, and the custom is not yet dead. The country
carpenter, wheelwright or saddler in the South was
generally a member of the plainer farming-class ;
sometimes he owned a small farm himself, and in
former days possibly even a negro or two. Jim was
one of the latter stock — which indeed was very
numerous round Barkers' — and nearly everybody
within ten miles called him cousin. He had jolted

PARKIN THE SADDLER 117
oft the track somehow or other, for neither land
worth mentioning nor negroes had ever come in his
way. "Too fond of huntin' and ramblin' round,"
people said. He had acquired, however, with his wife
a farm of some thirty acres, on a steep hill-side with
a snug three-roomed log house at the foot of it. If
the property was not very valuable it was at any rate
close to Barkers' and handy for hearing the news,
which suited him well. To see Jim at his best it will
be necessary to put the dial back to the early days
before spring has melted into summer, and to recall
one of those May mornings on which the trout in the
Virginia mountains may be surely counted on to
feed. Jim has planted his corn patch, and thinks
with a sigh of relief that there will be no more farm
ing to be done till he has to plough it, and thin out
what the crows from the mountain will leave him to
thin. This morning he is up and has fed his mule
and had his breakfast before the first gleam of day.
With a big fishing-basket on his back and a mustard-
tin full of worms rattling about inside it, a twist of
tobacco in his breeches pocket and a line wound
round his old felt hat, he is ambling along the big
road leading to the mountains before the first rays of
sunlight have reached the valley. Ah ! those May
mornings in the mountains of Virginia ! How vain
with feeble pen to attempt those memories of bloom
and blossom, of glistening dewdrops and fresh unfold
ing leaves, of glowing mountain peaks and white
torrents leaping into soft oceans of unruffled silent
woodland. In the still morning air the tramp of the
Saddler's mule sounds hard upon the beaten red road.

ii8 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
The sun has just risen over the distant plains of East
Virginia, has shot his rays over the intervening moun
tains, and lit as with fire the peaks of the Blue Ridge
towards which Jim is hastening. Every crag and
every scarred cliff, bared by the winter winds of the
struggling growth which even at that great height
strives to hide them, catches the golden glory. The
gray mantle of the dawn that has lain over every
thing, — from the rank dew-laden wheatfield by the
roadside to the farthest pinnacle of the western
peaks — yields and flushes as the broad band of gold
comes creeping down the mountain side. The
sombre wall of woodland that fills the western sky
springs into life as the gleam catches the varied
verdure of oak and chestnut, gay-leaved poplar and
solemn cypress, or the flash of a mountain stream
down some gray water-worn cliff.
Jim was born, and his fathers before him, under the
shadow of these majestic hills. He is only half
conscious probably of the part they played in his
existence. He only knows that during the war, the
sole occasion on which he was out of sight of them,
he was terribly homesick. Just now, however, he is
consumed with anxiety lest Mose' Davis, his great
and only rival on the creek, should get ahead of him,
and rake with his early worm those boiling eddies
and heaving pools which Jim hopes to have the first
chance at. The venerable and faithful mule, his sole
prop, is urged to the utmost speed attainable, and a
queer pair they make. Jim, on an old cavalry saddle,
leaning back as stiff and straight as a pair of
compasses from the top of his head, where some of

PARKIN THE SADDLER 119
his erratic locks have escaped through a hole in his
hat, to the point of his toe in the wooden leather-
capped stirrup ; and the old mule, galled and seamed
by years of collar-work on its withers and shoulders,
and rubbed almost bare on its sides and legs by the
trace-chains of many owners. Jim's flowing locks,
the fishing-basket with the rattling mustard-tin
inside it, and the long, frayed tails of the old green
coat, all flap in unison as the patient beast, urged
by unwonted pressure, breaks into a canter that
threatens a dissolution of the whole outfit. Numerous
are the remarks made by the Saddler's friends and
relatives now stirring about their fields and home
steads as they catch sight of his familiar figure
bobbing up and down behind the gray fence rails of
the turnpike. "Well, it does seem to me mighty
strange folks can trifle roun' like Cousin Jim these
hard times," says Madame Cornstalk, a third cousin
once removed, as she throws the remains of the
breakfast to the chickens in the yard. " I declar' if
that ain't Mar'se Saddler Parker travellin' fur all de
world as if he war ridin' fur the doctor ! " exclaims
sable Uncle Archie to his dusky spouse, as he pitches
an armful of stove-wood down before the log kitchen in
the yard. " Hello, Cousin Jim ! " sings out the burly
owner of six hundred acres from the porch of a big
brick house. " You seem in a powerful hurry this
morning. Fishin', I reckon. Well, leave some for
seed anyhow 1 "
The foot of the forest-clad mountain is reached
before the sun is half an hour high. The world with
all its works, its taunts and its cares, is left behind

I20 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
and Jim plunges into the forest. Pressing the pace
is no longer possible. The red road becomes a steep
track strewn with slabs of slippery rock and loose
boulders, that yield here and there to stretches of
black mould deep in last year's leaves. A grist-mill
marks the line between the world and the wilderness,
the mountain and the plain. From a loophole some
where up in the dank and weather-stained walls the
miUer can't resist the joke. " Hello, Jim, you'd best
hurry up ! Uncle Moses' jes gone up the creek."
" Dawg my skin ! " This is all Jim says, but he
" thinks a heap " as he pushes on. If he could only
know it. Uncle Moses is at this moment profoundly
indifferent to Hfe in general and sleeping off the
effects of a business-expedition to town on the
previous day. The unsuspecting Jim, however, curses
his luck, and pictures every favourite hole and eddy
in the stream searched by the skilful hand of his
loving relative, who is popularly supposed to spend
about two-thirds of his waking hours on the banks of
Buffalo up which Jim is now travelling.
How these Blue Ridge streams leap and Tumble
and flash and roar ! How clear, how fresh, how
crystal are the white churning waves that in the
hottest days of summer send cool spray-laden
draughts down the leafy avenues through which they
riot 1 Above such cataracts you would look for
beetling cliffs and sterile crags and rugged nakedness.
The cliffs and crags indeed are plentiful enough, but
it is only here and there they pierce through the
wilderness of leaves that clothes the mountains as
with a mantle from their summit to their base. But

PARKIN THE SADDLER 121
Buffalo Creek is not all turmoil and foam. Some
times its course is checked by a natural dam of rock,
and lingers in a pool so deep and black that no
shadow even in the sunniest days can flicker on its
gloomy face. Sometimes it courses smoothly down
some wide half-open glade where an old clearing has
run to turf kept sweet and short by the cattle that
roam in summer through the mountains. Where
the [rocky road dips into a glade such as this, Jim
dismounts from his mule and hitches it to the
swinging limb of a sycamore tree. The depressing
spectre of Uncle Moses taking all the best water
ahead of him weighs heavily on the Saddler's spirits
during that brief period of expectancy which with the
ordinary sportsman would be occupied in putting his
rod together.
Jim, however, has no rod to put together. A
"jinted pole" has been his life's ambition, or the
object at any rate of his heart's desire. Since the
gun-maker at Shucksborough, where he buys his
powder and shot, put up a case of these "Yankee
faldangles '' in his window some six years back, Jim
has been trying to persuade that worthy man that
his rods are worth a little less than half the price he
puts upon them. The latter has never seen his way
to adopting the Saddler's views, and a compromise
seems as remote as ever. Jim, in the meantime,
clings to the homely sapling of his youth, and prides
himself vastly on his selection of young pines and
hickories, and their preparation for "fishin' poles."
It is not too much to say that the banks of the stream,
from its source to where it leaves the mountain and

122 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
ceases to be a trouting-water, are lined with Jim's
poles. Almost every cluster of rhododendron bushes,
every thicket of ivy, every pile of brush or bed of
weeds, conceals in its depths one of those tremendous
weapons. The hiding-place that has not been
monopolised by the Saddler has been seized upon
by his relative and rival, for the jealousy between
these two great sportsmen extends even thus far.
The former, on this occasion, having looked carefully
round to see that no crafty mountaineer is taking
stock of his movements, plunges his head and arms
and the greater part of his body into a neighbouring
ivy bush, and after a few seconds' scuflfling emerges
holding on to the point of what ultimately develops
itself into a hickory sapling of at least eighteen feet
in length. To the end of this he ties with knots of
primitive simplicity six feet of gut and whipcord line,
and to the end of the gut there is attached a hook
that is known in the mountains, for the sake, I sup
pose, of distinguishing it from the new-fangled "tricks"
from Baltimore and New York, as the " Old Virginia "
hook. The peculiarities of the latter will be of more
interest to the unfortunate red worm that is soon strug
gling on its fearful shank than to the reader. When
Jim has unearthed from the depths of his breeches
pocket the big twist of home-grown tobacco, bitten
off a piece about the size of a tangerine orange and
deposited it in his left cheek, he is ready for the fray.
Where he is standing is just the sort of place that
no trout-fisher could pass by. A gravelly beach
shelves by degrees into the bright gliding water which
under the further bank deepens and darkens as it

PARKIN THE SADDLER 123
swirls under hollow sycamore roots covered with green
and dewy moss and overhung with banks of fern.
All up and down the river-side masses of rhodo
dendrons blaze in the first freshness of their bloom.
From among the waves of blossom spring, tapering
upward, smooth stems of beech trees and gnarled
trunks of maple and chestnut breaking with their
thick canopy of leaves the beams of the now risen
sun. The Saddler is in his glory. He is no mere
brutal slayer of game. Like most good anglers he is
full of the poetry of the sport, and his rude being is
as profoundly influenced by its associations as the
most cultivated of its devotees, though he could not
perhaps find words to express his feelings. " I
suttn'ly do love to be on the crik on this yer kind o'
spring mornin'," is probably the limit of verbal
enthusiasm to which he would commit himself, as
he poises his tremendous pole for a moment over the
broken water at the pool's head and drops the worm
into its tempting depths.
I will not enter into a disquisition on clear water
worm-fishing, but I feel tolerably certain that the
experienced angler, after watching Jim at work with
his pole for a while, would decide that he was not a
very deadly performer. But the experienced angler,
like many other experienced persons, would be mis
taken as he would probably find out if he took the
Saddler's standing offer, made nearly every time he
goes to Barkers', to fish any one in the United States
for a new hat. I have spent many a long spring day
in the lonely woods on Buffalo with Parkin the
Saddler, and in spite of such debasing advantages as

124 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
Baltimore hooks and Yankee snoods (as Jim always
called casting-lines) and a "jinted pole" and an
average amount of skill, I never could get much
ahead of my ragged companion on the day's count.
That I used to kill as many weighed upon his gentle
soul with a weight that, in spite of his supreme good
nature and amiable disposition, was at one time
almost more than he could bear. The rivalry of
Uncle Moses was another matter. They had been
rivals ever since the old man had taught him to fish
as a boy ages before the war, and they had been
together the great exponents, the great patrons of
trout-fishing in that little corner of the globe. The
low-country farmers that on a general holiday or a
slack time come up once in a while to " try the trout "
are quite unambitious tyros, who take our friend
along with them to make up the basket while they
flounder round upon the slippery unaccustomed
rocks within comfortable distance of the lunch-
hamper. The occasional " city fellah," who penetrates
as far as Buffalo Creek and takes Jim of course as
his gillie, is more persevering, and is also well armed
by the Shucksborough tackle-maker aforesaid. Ac
cording to Jim, however, this class of sportsman
always " skeers a heap more fish than he cotches,"
and the former's supremacy has never, I take it, been
threatened on any of these rare occasions.
It was a real blow to Parkin the Saddler when a
ready-made fisherman, so to speak, was launched out
of space and set down at his very side on the waters
he and Uncle Moses had dominated for a lifetime.
It was no selfish fear of their special preserves being

PARKIN THE SADDLER 125
encroached on that agitated these honest souls, but
pure mortification and wounded pride mixed with
profound astonishment. It is many years now since
they realised for the first time that the trout-producing
area of the known world was not limited to a par
ticular portion of the Blue Ridge Mountains of
Virginia. This strange belief imparted to my first
encounter with Parkin the Saddler special interest. I
should doubt if the splinter of shell that knocked
him senseless beside his gun in the Richmond redoubt,
and partly crippled him for life, was more of a shock
in its way than this unlooked for and successful
invasion by a foreigner of his particular stronghold.
The way of it was this. I was making a preliminary
exploration among other mountain streams of Buffalo
Creek. An accident had rendered necessary some
temporary substitute for a rod. A poplar or hazel
switch about eight feet long that was lying handy
seemed to suit my notions of brook-fishing better at
any rate than the sixteen-foot pole of the country,
and working my way up the then strange tangles of
Buffalo one April morning I had reached the very
spot where we have just left our friend. The fish
were biting very freely, and by pitching a long line
up stream I had been able to some extent to counter
act the inefficiencies of the rustic rod and had
basketed a really good dish of trout. The place in
question I have described as being both tempting and
accessible, and here on that occasion the little silvery
quarter-pounders came out one after another in a
fashion by no means general in Buffalo or any other
stream. The excitement of the moment was great

126 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
and my absorption in the sport so complete that I
was startled and astonished when a hollow voice
sounded from the adjoining thicket —
" Dad blame my cats 1 "
I turned and beheld Parkin the Saddler as he was
more than fifteen years ago, looking, so far as I
remember, precisely as he looks now. The same old
well-ventilated slouch hat, the same sun-cured green-
black tail coat, the same yellow homespun pantaloons
and knee-boots turned over at the heel, and the same
tangled wilderness of beard and hair, and the big
wild eyes almost bursting from their sockets with
blank amazement.
" Dad blame my cats ! " Jim had a wonderful
vocabulary for the relief of his emotions, and avoided
by all sorts of quaint compromises the large and
expressive D. that would have written him down in
the Baptist community to which he belonged as " a
swearing man." On that occasion I wasn't in a
position to realise the shock Jim had received. What
accidentally gave it more force was that he had that
day, in fly-fishing parlance, " missed the rise." He
had wasted precious time in chasing Uncle Moses
through the bushes, trying to get ahead of him with
out avail, and had dropped back with an empty
basket in despair to make a fresh start below. It was
thus he encountered the startling apparition which
"put him right off everything," except talking, for
a week, and he spent this period at the store at
Barkers' recovering from the shock and relieving his
feelings. But we must return to Jim as we left him carrying,

PARKIN THE SADDLER 127
and apparently carrying lightly, up Buffalo the
weight of the intervening years. He has dropped his
worm into the head of the pool, and his big wild eyes
glare at the point of his long pole as it follows the
course of the bait down the eddying, curling stream.
The portentous plug of tobacco stretches almost to
bursting the skin of his drawn leather-coloured
cheek. But his jaws suddenly cease their monotonous
working as the electric thrill of a biting trout flashes
down the cumbrous sapling to the horny hands that
hold it. The trout is checked for a second only
in its downward course. Jim. still loses his head like
a schoolboy over the first fish. There is a scuffling
of feet for a moment on the pebbly shore. He staggers
'back a step or two, as he does when he has poured
a double charge of powder by mistake into the old
turkey-gun, and a golden-bellied red-finned trout of a
quarter of a pound is in mid-air flying into the
rhododendrons behind. " Dad blame my cats ! " The
prize takes some hunting for in the bushes, but is
eventually secured, and the Saddler, a little ashamed
of himself, puts on a fresh worm, sobers down, and
begins again at the head of the pool.
Jim does not always land his fish in this wise, but
at the very best he treats them with scant ceremony.
As for playing a trout he would scout the notion,
though he has read about " such foolishness " in old
copies of Forest and Stream that find their way
sometimes to his cottage on winter evenings. When
he fastens in the rare but occasional pounder, or in
his own idiom " hangs a whaler," the struggle is apt
to be a brief and violent one. Generally the whaler

128 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
gets what appears to be the best of it, and returns to
his lair decorated with a foot of gut and an " Old
Virginia " hook in his gills, and a severe pain in his
jaw, to swear off worms doubtless for a considerable
period. Jim is not a member of any fly-fishing club,
but he claims descent from Ananias with the best of
them. That badly treated trout swells and grows
with each narration of the struggle to unbelieving
PhiHstines at Barkers', till they ultimately settle the
question by deciding that it was not a fish at all but
a sycamore root or a chestnut log that Cousin Jim
" hung." There is no space to-day to follow Jim up the
mazy gorges of Buffalo. Lonely enough so far as
humanity goes are these, unless where here and there
a rickety cabin stands by the brook's side ; or the
quaint but dreaded figure of old Uncle Moses looms
large ahead, focused against the white veil of a
cataract. But surely no solitude was ever so far
removed from sadness as this, nor Nature gayer, nor
a wilderness more smiling ! The stream has its
moments of sadness, it is true. Brief fleeting periods
of depression, when its joyousness quails beneath the
frown of dank and verdureless cliffs, and its sunlit
laughing face grows wan and dark in some uncanny
hollow where black whirlpools go round and round
for ever and sullen backwaters heave and tremble
beneath banks of creamy froth. But these are
passing moods. The ways of Buffalo lie mostly
through caverns to be sure, but the walls of these
caverns are of blooming shrubs and flowering
woodland trees, of stately, graceful cedars, of sweet-

PARKIN THE SADDLER 129
smelling hemlocks. If their roofs are not the un
broken sky, the soft tracery that breaks the blue of
heaven is that of the trembling leaves of maple and
aspen, of cherry blossoms in their season, and of
dogwood blooms in theirs. And on the bank there is
the familiar alder with its homely, sombre leaves,
catching, as they whisk downward at their appointed
times, the Duns and March Browns and stone flies
in which Appalachain trout as well as English ones
so greatly delight. What music there is too in the
tumble of a mountain stream, and none that I ever
knew played more witching airs than the streams of
Buffalo ! What are all the fiddles that ever scraped
in South Kensington to the ever-changing melodies,
the solemn dirges, the plaintive carols, the sobs, the
laughter, the thunder of such a rivulet as this .¦'
In these sounds and sights and solitudes Jim's
rough uncultured soul delights. He is no pot-hunter,
and in fact has little care for his fish beyond the
pleasure of carrying what he calls a " mess " to some
sick old woman, and going perhaps several miles out
of his road to do it. His neighbours, busy with their
corn and tobacco, call him a loafer, a trifler, and a
" no 'count fellar " ; but for all that there is not a
farm-house or a cabin within twenty miles where a
knife and fork would not be laid more readily for him
than for almost any one. Or if help is wanted at a bed
of sickness no name occurs more naturally to those in
need than that of Parkin the Saddler.
Jim, too, is almost the only man in the district who
can hunt the turkey with success. If he is ever
K

I30 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
quite so happy as upon the banks of Buffalo, it is when
the woods upon the mountain spurs have turned to gold
and scarlet, and the young birds are large enough to
shoot but not yet endowed with that supernatural
astuteness, that enables them later on to defy the
wiliest of sportsmen. Jim has found out long before
the season opens where the various gangs have been
bred, and where they " use." Not a farmer within ten
miles drops upon a flock of turkeys in his rounds that
he does not send word to Parkin the Saddler. Then
Jim starts off in the crisp autumn morning on the
same old mule that carries him to Buffalo. And he
takes with him his old muzzle-loading gun whose
barrels are wearing so thin that his daily dream of a
breechloader, though financially as remote as ever,
takes possession of his soul with increasing force.
It is not only in the field of sport that Jim is
prominent. Almost every event, that has no
connection with his own business or personal profit,
is graced by his presence. His own hogs have
probably come to various and untimely ends long
before the acorns in the woods, and the corn on his
half-worked patch, are ready to turn them into
bacon. But no hog-killing in the neighbourhood
would be quite complete without the Saddler was
there to crack jokes and tell " bar " stories,— for Jim
is something of a bear-hunter too — or to take a hand
in keeping the log fire going and the water hot. No
coon-hunt, no corn shucking, no house-raising, no out
door preaching, no wholesale baptising, escapes the
personal attention of Parkin the Saddler. If his

PARKIN THE SADDLER 131
criticism on such matters is not of much worth, as a
chronicler and a local news-bearer he is invaluable.
But the most notable chapter in Jim's life since the
war, and most certainly the most notable in the humble
annals of the post-office at Barkers', was the year in
which he carried the United States mails backwards
and forwards between that centre and the county town
eighteen miles off. The postal system pursued by
Uncle Sam himself, with regard to the rural districts
of Virginia, at that time, was sufficiently remarkable.
It was always understood that the actual grant allowed
by the department at Washington was sufficient to
run a daily waggon between Barkers' and the town.
But by the time the fund reached the locality, there
was only enough of it left to mount an indifferent person
upon an indifferent horse three times a week. And
the way of it was somewhat thus wise. The original
grant for this postal service, grouped together, probably,
with many others, was handed over to a contractor
in Washington, presumably a politician with a " pull,"
who was nominally responsible, no doubt, for any
vagaries of his subordinate who carried the letters from
Barkers' to Bunkerville, and from Bunkerville to
Barkers'. But I think, indeed I am quite sure, that a
dissatisfied or injured correspondent might just as well,
in those days, have addressed a complaint to Queen
Victoria or the Pope of Rome, as to those responsible
for the matter at Washington. The original contractor,
however, had a very simple way of proceeding, for he
in his turn sublet his contract, and it was always said
at an immensely reduced figure, to another politician
K 2

132 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
nearer the scene of action, and he it was who out of
this reduced amount had to apply as little of it as he
prudently could to the Barkers' postal route, and as
much as he dare for his own pocket. And this class
of person dared much in those days, for the Federal
officials were bitter Republicans, and practically every
white man was a bitter, but a helpless democrat.
There was a mighty small margin left, as will be
imagined, for application to the original purpose of
Uncle Sam. Prices were good in those days, and even
small farmers did not care to ride thirty-six miles three
days a week in all weathers, for two or three hundred
dollars a year. So when Parkin the Saddler put in a
bid for the final contract at a lower figure than any one
else, and found the necessary security, he was promptly
installed as mailrider for the year. It was not, however,
without grave misgivings that the neighbourhood saw
the excellent Saddler astride of the mail bags. It was
not the immediate safety of their letters that anybody
felt alarmed about, but the fashion in which they might
be delivered.
There were no gentry in the neighbourhood of
Barkers', but some of the larger farmers, who took in a
newspaper and got two or three letters besides each
mail day, shook their heads when they heard Jim
Parkin had got the contract. The latter however, who
was a poor hand at calculations, has candidly confessed
to me since, that he thought he saw his way to a breech-
loading gun out of it, or he wouldn't have touched it.
Nobody however got further than shaking their
heads and the majority didn't even do that. Some of

PARKIN THE SADDLER 133
those indeed who waited for the mail at Barkers' with
the greatest regularity, on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and
Saturdays, were never known to get a letter at all, other
than an occasional advertisement. But these were the
days and this the hour the local " gossip " had made
his own, and the meetings were often prolonged ones,
while the mail rider struggled with climatic or physical
difficulties, or waxed too sociable on the way. When
Parkin the Saddler took up the contract, these gather
ings grew very prolonged indeed, and instead of two
o'clock it was often four or past when the United
States mail, in the person of that genial, feckless
sportsman, rode up to the porch of the store amid the
rough chaff of the assembled throng. How indeed
could it have been otherwise, when the gauntlet of two
other country post-offices had to be run on the way,
with all the greetings and the badinage, and the inter
change of opinions on men and things that was thereby
implied, and that the soul of the Saddler loved .' Nor was
this all. It was a lonely road for most of the way, it was
true. But still there were occasional farmers to be met,
ambling along, and hitherto the United States mail-
carriers had at least been able to resist the natural in
clination to stop and talk with every one of them.
But Parkin the Saddler, who knew them all, could not
thus wrestle with his natural self And even when
there was no one on the road, there were other things
that appealed with equal force to our friend's instincts.
Some of his best beats for wild turkey lay in the pine
woods that brushed the fence rails of the Bunkerville
road in one place, and in the high oak-clad ridges over

134 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
which it climbed in another. And it happened, not
seldom, that the United States mail bags and their
four-footed bearer were left in the lane, while the
Saddler himself was hunting for turkey tracks in the
woods above. Minor checks, too, arrested, each for
their few seconds, the spasmodic course of this undis
ciplined " Will Wimble " : the scent of a fox, the distant
note of a hound, the spring of a covey, the scuttle of a
rabbit. People, however, in those parts took things
easily, and were long suffering, to a degree, in matters
of this kind. Cousin Jim, in fact, was regarded with
much contemptuous affection, and so long as he was
happy it was felt by most people around Barkers' that
an hour or so wasted three times a week did not
amount to very much.
However, at the end of the year a feeling that
neighbourliness might be carried too far, was met half
way by Jim himself, who found after all that there was
no breechloader in the contract. So with a gasp of
relief he threw up the irksome obligation, which bound
him to do the same thing three days in every week,
and retired into private life.
To see Jim, however, at his best on serious
occasions is when Senator Tidewater, that good old
Virginia representative of Free Trade and States'
Rights, pays his annual visit to Barkers', and from the
broken verandah of the store appeals to his friends
not to let new issues and local questions allow them
to forget their ancient faith. In the whole crowd
there is no more vociferous applauder than Jim. His
wild eyes dilate with excitement, and his leathery

PARKIN THE SADDLER 135
face actually glows with indignation and with pity for
himself as an honest toiling farmer fast in the clutches
of the unscrupulous Yankee manufacturer ; and he
goes home to dream of a millennium in which breech
loaders and "jinted poles" are forwarded on applica
tion with the enclosure of a two-cent stamp.

THE "POOR WHITES" OF THE
MOUNTAINS.
The Blue Ridge may perhaps be best described as
an advanced outwork of the great Alleghany range
thrust just so far forward as to be within easy sight
for the most part of the parent chain. With sufficient
accuracy for the present purpose this whole mountain
system may be said to run a somewhat parallel course
to the Atlantic coast and at a distance inland from it
of about one hundred and fifty miles.
I have elsewhere indicated the conspicuous part
that this same Blue Ridge has played in the past
history of the country. How till nearly the end of the
Colonial period it was the limit of civilisation, and
how the Virginia that grew up beyond it was the
creation, very largely, of another race of people, who
set their stamp for ever upon a region that of itself
differed greatly in soil, and considerably in climate,
from Old Virginia.
Time, however, has long robbed the Blue Ridge of
all significance but the surpassing beauty of its form
and colouring. Hundreds of miles beyond the blue
peaks that were once the Ultima Thule of Anglo-
Saxons have arisen some of the most populous centres

THE "POOR WHITES" OF THE MOUNTAINS 137
Upon earth ; and the scream of the iron horse dragging
its heavy freights eastward wakes strange echoes in
wild upland glens whose solitudes have otherwise
defied the march of civilisation. The traveller of
to-day on his way south by one at least of the great
trunk-lines from Washington will for many hours see
the Blue Ridge filling the horizon upon his right hand.
He will pass innumerable streams that either bear the
names or swell the waters of those eastern rivers that
the civil war made famous. Rumbling Creek is one
of these, and I mention it particularly for two reasons.
The first is that, after crossing the river on a tressel-
bridge, the train stops at the station of Tucker's Mills,
from which I think the passing traveller gets the best
distant view of the mountains to be had from the
railway. The second, because it is upon the head
waters of this tortuous and noisy stream that I
purpose to introduce the reader to one type, at any
rate of that strange specimen of humanity — the
Southern Mountaineer.
So far, however, as the station at Tucker's Mills and
its surroundings are concerned, the mountaineer popu
lation might be in another planet. The river, it is
true, races under the railway-bridge with something
of the life that marks its earlier career as a foaming
trout stream in some dark ravine of the great
Appalachian rampart that towers so wonderfully blue
into the distant sky. But the landscape all around is of
a lowland character ; fat cornfields and green meadows
with big farm-houses, half-hidden in apple-orchards
and groves of oak and tobacco-fields just planted
and through all the roseate blush of the red soil from

138 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
lane and fallow glowing against the rich greenery of
crop or woodland. Perfect in outline, and of that
marvellous hue which caused the simple name it still
bears to burst naturally from the lips of the adventurers
of two centuries and a half ago, the Blue Ridge rolls
wave after wave along the western sky. It is full
twenty miles away, though you would hardly think the
distance to be half as great. The road leading thither
is of the true old Virginia type, full in winter of mud-
holes that have absorbed, and have absorbed apparently
in vain, waggon-loads of fence-rails and tons of rock :
in summer rough and bony, with ruts worn into chasms
and slabs of freestone cropping up above the dusty
clay. On the subject of roads even the patriotic
eloquence of good Virginians remains dumb ; though
old man Pippin, who lives on the hill-top yonder and
is a firm believer in the superiority of the district
watered by Rumbling Creek to every other part of
the known world, has been heard to maintain the
advantages of even a really bad road : " I tell you, sir,
them ar' 'cademized roads is mighty hard on a horse ;
when thar ain't no mudholes and no rocks a man
don't know when to pull up, and is mighty apt to go
bust'n his horse along till he drap under him."
There is no fear of any one pursuing such a reckless
course between Tucker's Mills and the mountains.
The road bristles with impediments to which an
uneducated steed would probably succumb, though
not from exhaustion, if indeed he consented to face
them at all. But upon a small active horse to the
manner born, the traveller would be indeed hard to
please who could not forget the ruggedness of the

THE "POOR WHITES" OF THE MOUNTAINS 139
way in the beauty of the scenes through which it
passes. If the pace be somewhat slow, and particularly
should the season of the year be May, or early June,
who would wish to hurry through such an Arcady .'
The wheat on the hill-sides is just heading ; the early
corn in the low grounds is knee-high, and the negro
labourers shout their queer spasmodic melodies as they
drive their one-horse ploughs along the rows. At one
turn the road enters some forest of primeval oaks and
chestnuts through whose tops the sunbeams shyly
flicker on the fresh green leaves of shrubs and saplings
At another it will be separated from the ceaseless
babble of the river by narrow clover-fields ripe for the
scythe, or long stretches of clean red soil in which the
young tobacco-plants are making their first struggle for
existence. The log-cabin of the negro is everywhere :
on the slopes of the hills, by the roadside, in the
depths of the forest. Unpretentious homesteads, suited
to the needs of the times, look peacefully down from
wood-crowned hills, while here and there some larger
mansion, with its brick walls and pillared porticoes,
stands among aged and branching oaks as a memorial
of the days of slavery. Again and again the road
plunges into the gradually narrowing river, and, as
your horse pauses in midstream to slake that un
quenchable thirst which the Virginia nag so uniformly
affects, rare vistas of wood and water opening to the
sight tempt you to unconsciously encourage the bad
habits of the cunning quadruped. All the familiar
trees that love the banks of running streams are here.
The sycamore and the beech, the ash, the alder and
the willow, spread their branches above the stream.

I40 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
while underneath their shade the kingfisher and the
common sandpiper scud from rock to rock till they
vanish over the white sunlit rapids beyond. Shoals
of minnows race in the shallows under your horse's
feet, and a big chub plunges in the still pool above.
The deep boom of the bull-frog sounding from some
rushy backwater beats time to the ceaseless chorus of
the woodland crickets, and as the day wanes the
tinkling of cow-bells in the lanes and woods answers
to the musical summons of their owners from the hills
above. And in the meantime the massive outline of the
mountains looms nearer and larger. The blue veil of
distance is lifted and the mighty wall above us becomes
one vast screen of rustling leaves. Houses of even a
humble kind grow scarce. The stream gets steeper
in its fall, and thunders in an angry fashion against
the rugged cliffs and moss-grown rocks that hem in its
waters. An old mill, its timbers black with time and
weather, totters over an idle wheel. It is the last out
post of southern civilisation. The sights and sounds
of every-day Virginian life are left behind, the red
fallows, and the green maize-fields, the shout of the
negro ploughman and the summer pipe of the quail.
The mountains begin to close around, and the air is
full of the noise of falling waters, the scent of cedars
and hemlocks, and the steady moan of mountain winds
sweeping softly over many miles of leaves. A change
of scene more complete within the same short space it '
would be hard to find. The red clay road winding so
lately through cheery rural scenes becomes a stony
track, toiling painfully upwards between the huge

THE "POOR WHITES" OF THE MOUNTAINS 141
trunks of a dark and sombre forest to the now hidden
sky-line three thousand feet above us.
Here is the domain of the mountaineer. Not the
romantic, ornamental, somewhat glorified peasant that
the word is apt to suggest, but merely one branch
of that despised and outcast race of white men that
Southern slavery begot. The Southern " Poor White,''
of which the mountaineer is certainly the most inter
esting type, is not himself the outcast of a recent or a
single generation, but is the descendant of those, who
in former days, either sunk below the level, or as
emigrants began life outside the pale of those
connected directly, or indirectly, with the domestic
institution, and the landed interest. Such men in the
Free States, in the natural order of things, would have
carved a road to competence if not to fortune. In the
Slave States an emigrant without means or education
may have done so, but the chances were that the odds
were too much for him, and that his children were
driven, not by violence or deliberate combinations, but
by the force of circumstances, into the rough and
waste places of the land. There they have multiplied
and stagnated, illiterate, squalid, poor, unambitious,
despised by whites and by negroes alike, clinging
together, intermarrying and degenerating physically
and morally. Not at war exactly with the world, but
going through life with a kind of latent animosity
towards it, as if it had used them ill, and a vague idea
that their lot is hard and their chance a poor one.
And so it is. Not that a pair- of stout arms and a
stout heart will not still in America bring a labouring
man at least competence ; but though the stout arms

142 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
are there, the energy and the brains to direct them
seem to have wholly evaporated from these strange
specimens of the Anglo-Saxon family.
And yet, even among these people, material
prosperity and civilisation varies considerably in
different states and regions of country. But there is
neither space nor need to examine such details. The
mountaineer of the Blue Ridge, who has been entirely
surrounded by a lowland civilisation for generations,
is on that very account a more curious survival than
the better fed hunter, amid the illimitable highlands of
West Virginia, or the " Cracker " of the boundless
back-country that lies behind the sugar and rice
plantations, and the orange groves of the far South.
It is a popular notion that these people are, as a
class, descended from the indentured servants, who were
shipped to the Southern colonies from England in the
seventeenth and early eighteenth century. That there
can be anything like uniformity in their origin is
impossible. In the ups and downs of colonial and
frontier life, men of all sorts must have been jolted off
the track, and with the growth of slavery, and the
comparative contempt for manual labour that always
existed in the South, dropped out of the race, and
retired into the forests, to live as illiterate hunters or
idlers. The position their descendants occupy is at
least unique. They are worse off in every respect,
save fuel, than the French or Belgian peasant, while
the latter in his turn has a harder struggle for existence
than the average British labourer. The squatter on
the Blue Ridge cultivates his own land, or land so
rough that its owners do not care to interfere with

THE "POOR WHITES" OF THE MOUNTAINS 143
him, and he touches his hat to no one. But even in a
democratic country where hand-shaking is a mania
and has no social significance, the plainest kind of
country farmer does not much care about extending
the hand of citizenship to the pariah from the moun
tains or the pine-barrens. The latter may starve
when his meagre corn-crop and his scanty supply of
bacon runs out in the early spring, for all the outside
world is concerned or is aware of ; and if he never
actually dies of starvation, there are sometimes weeks
in the early spring when his rations are reduced to
microscopic proportions.
To look up at the Blue Ridge from its base you
would hardly suppose that a vestige of life lurked
beneath that vast green canopy of leaves. A familiar
eye might detect here and there the corner of a clear
ing peeping above the shoulders of the hills, and in
early spring clouds of smoke, rising from some burning
new ground, proclaim to the dwellers in the world
below that human life of some sort exists up in those
wild woods. This indeed is about all the majority 01
the community ever see of the mountain man. There
are exceptions,ho wever, and Pete is an exception. Pete,
indeed, is a veritable chieftain among mountaineers,
and is, moreover, well known in the low country for
many miles round, while his cabin guards the narrow
entrance to his dominions. At the very foot of the
" big mountain " (as distinguished from the spurs and
foothills), right in the angle where the north and south
forks of Rumbling Creek tumble their respective
waters together in a churning and boiling pool, stands
the mansion of this illustrious man. Here, too, with

144 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
the dividing stream the rough road divides also, and
by the side of these stony tracks and on the banks of
these rocky streams, reaching far away up to the
highest gaps between the mountain peaks, are
scattered at long intervals the isolated hovels of Pete's
subjects. Pete's house, as I have said, stands as
befits his autocratic position at the forks of road and
stream, and no one can get up the mountain on
business or pleasure bent without undergoing the
scrutiny of his ever-watchful eye. The house is com
paratively palatial, and the shoulders of the hills have
receded sufficiently at this meeting of the waters to
leave nearly two acres of flat ground around it, giving
an air of ease, solidity and distinction to Pete's three-
roomed house that the ordinary mountain cabin con
spicuously lacks. Pete too has sown the flat in clover,
a wonderful concession to lowland ideas. He^has even
planted a dozen or two of young apple-trees, which
mark him as a man far in advance of his race. The
logs of his house, too, are squared and not merely
round poles unbarked, like the architecture higher up
the creek. The chimney is also a departure from
other chimneys on Rumbling Creek, for it is of rocks,
not of sticks filled in with mud.
One other fact places Pete on a pinnacle in his
community — he can write This is the last letter he
wrote to me :
Dr. Sur, — Thars trowte in the Crick by a heap
mo' nor lars yer. Cum orn rite soon. Thars tu
walers in the hole at the forx. Yrs respcfly, Pete
ROBISON.

THE "POOR WHITES" OF THE MOUNTAINS 145
From this it may be gathered that my acquaintance
with Pete and the mountain community on Rumbling
Creek, an acquaintance renewed annually for many
years, was due to a predilection for the gentle art.
No strangers indeed but anglers (and they were
scarce enough), unless it were the sheriff or an occa
sional cattle-dealer crossing the range by this rough
route, ever penetrate beyond the forks of the creek
where Pete's house stands. And few of these pass his
door without alighting. Whether the subject in hand
is trout or cattle, horse-thieves or whisky-stills, Pete's
countenance and advice is almost indispensable.
For our friend is not only an exceedingly smart man
in his way, but an original and a character of the
most pronounced description. What is more he is
known as a "'sponsible mount'n man," a unique
departure from ordinary rules, and a much greater
exception even than a responsible Ethiopian. Pete
has never been suspected of stealing a steer or setting
fire to a barn. When he has taken a contract from
some lowland farmer for roofing-shingles, or from the
miller for barrel-staves, he has been frequently known
to carry out his agreement within the appointed time.
People have even been known to pay him money on
account before the completion of contracts, which
with an ordinary mountaineer would be a most
fatuous proceeding. Old Judge Tucker, the big man
of the country just below the mountains and once
Member of Congress, used in former days, moreover,
to ask Pete down to play the banjo and tell " bar
stories " to the fine folks from Washington staying in
his house. For there was no one on the mountain, L

146 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
nor a negro below it, could " pick a banjer " like Pete.
Many a night after assisting at one of those mountain
suppers that nothing but lusty youth, still further
hardened by long days on the rocky streams or in
the saddle, could have survived, have I sat and
smoked while Pete twanged at his banjo and crooned
out his quaint medley of negro airs and Baptist
hymns. Strange performances they used to be, with
an audience sometimes of wild mountain men, drawn
together by the rare news of a stranger's arrival,
standing in the flickering firelight, and beating time
with their often shoeless feet upon the rough boarded
floor ; while outside there was the chorus of the frogs
and crickets, the intermittent cry of the screech-owl
and the cat-bird, the roar and the gleam of the white
water, and the flashing of the fire-flies against the
black gloom of the night and the forest.
It is a favourite local pleasantry that the Southern
Highlander has, through isolation, ignorance and
apathy, so lost the human form divine, as to be in
distinguishable at any distance in the woods from a
cedar-stump or a fence-rail stuck upon end. Pete at
any rate represented a very different variety. He was
short and thick, with huge long arms. Everything
that was to be seen of him, except his eyes, seemed
covered with black shaggy hair. If a human being
could be like a bear, Pete was that man ; while, on
the other hand, if all the real bears on the mountain
could have been polled upon the subject, they would
most certainly have agreed that Pete was their wiliest
and deadliest foe. Our friend was thrifty. He had, for
instance, a young horse of his own, whereas most of

THE " POOR WHITES " OF THE MOUNTAINS 147
the folks higher up the creek had to be content with
a share in an old one. His house outside, as I have
said, was quite superior. Inside you would have said
it was absolutely luxurious, if you had begun to pay
calls at the top of the mountain instead of coming up
from the country below. The long Kentucky rifle
that the bears had so much cause to dread, and under
neath it the banjo, were ranged above the chimney-
piece in the living-room. In this apartment, too, was
the family bedstead, resplendent with frilled pillow
cases and a patchwork quilt. There was an oak
dresser which contrasted oddly with the smoke-blacked
logs of the walls, and which Pete used to declare his
great-grandfather had brought from "out thar" — a
phrase expressing the mountaineer's very hazy notion
of the mother country. Pods of red pepper and
twists of home-grown tobacco hung from the rafters,
while on the walls hung a pedlar's coloured print of
Washington on the verge, apparently, of an apoplectic
fit, and a somewhat realistic representation of Lazarus
emerging from the tomb. Pete also had a guest-
chamber, where weary anglers, and an occasional
benighted traveller might dispose their tired limbs on
straw mattresses of adamantine texture, and resign
themselves to tortures from unseen enemies over
which memory entreats us to draw the veil.
For land, there were the two acres of clover and
struggling apple-trees, and a clearing of twenty acres
on the slope of the mountain above. In the latter
Pete had grown crop after crop in succession, and
was wont to declare that the steadily-shrinking yield
was the result of the wickedness of the times generally.
L 2

148 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
Mrs. Pete, however, insisted it was a sign of the
approaching end of the world and that carnival of
flame and torture, the contemplation of which so
fascinates the mind of the illiterate Calvinist. Pete,
moreover, had a cow and a heifer, and several thousand
roofing-shingles and barrel-staves cut in the woods,
and some hogs running wild on the mountain, that at
this season of the year could almost have wormed
themselves underneath his front door.
Pete had seen much of life for a mountaineer, for he
had been through the war. He was the only man
probably on the mountain who had felt the least
enthusiasm for the Southern cause, and he had been
more than once detailed with a sergeant's guard to
hunt up deserters with which the gorges of the Blue
Ridge at that time swarmed. Pete knew every cave
in the mountains and every trail. He still recounts
with much gusto the exciting chases his truant neigh
bours used to give him in those stormy days. Many
a rifle shot they then exchanged is now joked over
as they huddle over the winter fire, about as much
influenced for good or evil by that great strife as if they
were living in the Sandwich Islands.
Mrs. Pete is a typical mountain woman, gaunt ot
figure, and with a skin like dried parchment stretched
over her projecting bones. If there is little of anima
tion in her appearance, there is less in her manner, and
her life is a dreary one indeed. A mixture of super
stition and mountain methodism seems to dominate
her existence. She will sit for hours before the fire in
the broken rocking chair, crooning out disconnected
lamentations, after some such wise as this — " The

THE "POOR WHITES" OF THE MOUNTAINS 149
Lord is good ! The Lord is mighty good 1 We're too
sinful, too bad to live 1 Even this yer mountain's too
good for such as us ! " — Poor woman, very little attrac
tion there has been for her to wander off along the
broad and easy road. Her greatest thorn is the
wickedness of Pete, who has never even " professed."
That Pete is by far the most honest and reliable man
on the mountain will, from her peculiar religious
standpoint, amount to nothing in the absence of those
hysterical demonstrations which she has been taught
to regard as the equivalent of salvation.
Following the winding of the narrow valley, some
times clinging to the wooded hillside, sometimes
descending to the level of the stream, toils upwards
the rugged, stony track that is the highway of the
mountaineer. Little clusters of cabins break at long
intervals the rich and varied foliage of the forest.
Rude houses enough for the second or third or even
the fifth and sixth generation of Anglo-Saxons in the
land of phenomenal progress. The roofs are of riven
white oak-boards, curled and twisted by the action of
the sun and weather ; the walls are of rough, un
barked logs, enclosing a single room ; the chimneys
are of sticks and mud. Round the house there is a
small garden-patch fenced in with chestnut rails,
where a few common vegetables, such as peas and
onions, testify to the richness of the loose black moun
tain soil. To each house there is probably a cow
wandering in the woods, making in summer a toler
able living on the bushes and weeds, but passing every
winter through a critical period of want and weak
ness, when the slender supply of corn-fodder begins

I50 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
to fail. Emaciated hogs stretch themselves in the sun
among the warm rocks, lean as greyhounds, whose
only chance of making bacon lies in the still un
formed fruit of the oaks and chestnuts that spread
their branches above them. The women around the
settlement will be more conspicuous at this time of
day than the men. Nowhere else in the world, I am
quite sure, have the Anglo-Saxon race produced
such unattractive, such dismal-looking, females. The
peasant girl of Europe may not be all that poetic
fancy sometimes paints her, but she at least has
health and comeliness, a wholesome colour, and a
cheerful mien. The peasant of these Southern moun
tains has health, to be sure, after a fashion, or at least
a wiriness and tenacity of life ; but she carries no
sign of it in her bony figure and drawn colourless
face. As for the men in this early summer season,
when the rest of rural mankind, both North, South
and West, in their very various fashions, are snatching
the fleeting hour, they may be in the corn-patch on
the mountain above, but are just as likely to be found
loafing through the woods in listless Indian fashion,
rifle in hand, or wandering by the brooks with their
rough rods and tackle. Though trout, squirrels, an
occasional turkey, with now and then a portion of
a deer or bear in their respective seasons are to be ob
tained, no dependence can be placed on such addi
tions to the larder of the Blue Ridge mountaineer in
the annual period of semi-starvation through which
he generally passes. Game at that time is scarce and
wild, and is none too plentiful in these narrow ranges
at any period. If these cabins and clearings were in

THE "POOR WHITES" OF THE MOUNTAINS 151
Oregon or British Columbia, there would be nothing
singular about them ; they would be the common
place heralds of advancing civilisation. The men and
women might bear the outward stamp of poverty,
but hope and intelligence would be written on their
faces, and the crudeness of their surroundings would
be but a recognised and honourable phase in their
career to prosperity. Here, however, it is all different ;
the squalor carries no hope with it, and is the out
come of the oldest civilisation in the Western world.
And yet civilisation and comparative prosperity
through all these years has been within easy sight.
There is hardly a bend in the road up the gorge of
Rumbling Creek, from which if you turn in your
saddle you cannot look down over the tree-tops upon
the rolling plain of old Virginia, which means so little
to the mountaineer. The very roofs of the plantation-
houses, catching the sun ten or fifteen miles away,
flash from point to point as the eye ranges far over
the rich and glowing stretch of field and forest. The
white smoke of a train goes trailing northward to
wards Washington. Senators, congressmen, mer
chants, millionaires, tourists from beyond the seas,
are there likely, watching with admiration the ever-
changing outline of the glorious crags upon whose
sides we stand. But of the race who inhabit them,
their habits and customs, the senator and the foreign
tourist are in the matter of knowledge about upon a
par ; for all that one or the other knows of the popu
lation upon Rumbling Creek they might be Digger
Indians. What life is upon the head-waters of Rumbling

152 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
Creek, so with slightly varying conditions it is in the
thousand other valleys of the Southern Mountains.
Better land and more abundant game modify material
conditions, but more or less all belong to the same
primitive non -progressive class. They are out of
touch with everything which the name of America
suggests to the outside world. Books on Rumbling
Creek are unknown, for there are no scholars. Pete
can read, and the county paper once a week finds its
way to that worthy, who transmits the news up the
mountain. Nor is Hfe absolutely without excitement.
If wheaten bread is at a discount and hogsmeat at
certain periods wofully scarce, there are weddings
once in a while, when some buck from the north fork
of the Creek crosses the mountain and brings back a
barefooted bride from the further side of the range.
There is a great picking of the banjos then and much
" patting " and dancing of the mountain boys on the
loose undressed planks of the cabin floors. And there
is Pete to perform the ceremony if the wandering
Baptist preacher from Juniper Creek, ten miles to the
southward, cannot be found in time. A new cabin
then runs up in some hollow even still more remote
than the rough highway on which the old folks live.
Another five or six acres of oak and chestnut, poplar
and gum, maple and hickory are belted and killed,
and become grim and naked skeletons amid the
wilderness of verdure. And under these trunks and
unsightly limbs another half-worked corn-crop will
struggle with only partial success against bushes,
squirrels and crows. As for funerals, that festival so
dear to the negro, I had almost said that the people

THE "POOR WHITES" OF THE MOUNTAINS 153
in these mountains never die. In spite of hard winters,
when for three or four weeks together, both forks of
Rumbling Creek go choking and gurgling under
hea-vy crusts of ice ; when the rude grist-mill below
Pete's house is silent, and what little corn there
may be left on the mountain cannot be ground ; and
when the winter wind howls through the gaping
chinks of the cabins, and drives the mountaineer close
into his one luxury, a blazing hearth ; in spite of
these and many other annually recurring horrors, and
in spite too of his lantern jaws, his parchment skin,
his irregularly filled stomach, the native of the Blue
Ridge seemed to me always to defy death. There are
men of seventy in these mountains, wandering in
summer time along the streams, who talk as naturally
as possible about their " pa up yonder." And there,
sure enough, at the cabin in the woods above you will
find the veteran himself, seated probably on a straw
chair on the shady side of the house, puffing at a long
pipe and shaking his head at the very mention of
time, as if it had long past his reckoning powers.
The population on Rumbling Creek live mostly in
small settlements — clusters of half-a-dozen cabins
more or less together, and between them long intervals
of forest. These settlements in great measure repre
sent different families, or at least clans of the same
name. Feuds deep and bitter between clan and clan
have not seldom agitated the mountains from top to
bottom. The knife and the bullet have played their
part often enough within the memory of even the
middle-aged, and the county sheriff could tell many
a tale of pursuit, generally fruitless, over these path-

154 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
less hills, On such occasions indeed it is upon Pete
that the majesty of the law leans. The most deter
mined officer, in such a wilderness, would have a
poor chance, unaided by local experience, of hunting
down a transgressor. Pete feels his importance to
the full on such occasions. It is pretty well known
that it is he who decides beforehand in his own mind
on the veniality of the " cuttin' " or " shootin,' " and
arranges for escape or capture as seems good to his
judicial mind. Pete belongs to no sept, so may be
supposed to be free from all personal bias. From the
very rare occasions on which an offender has been
actually brought to justice we may conclude that
he is not rigid in his views upon the use of deadly
weapons in dispute. Few Southerners indeed of any
kind are decided upon that point, and certainly no
mountaineers. The nomenclature on Rumbling Creek is amazing.
The surnames are, of course, common English or Irish
ones, but the Christian or " given " names, in which
the local imagination has had full play, surpass in ex
travagance those even of the plantation negroes.
Pete's immediate neighbours, for instance, consist of
a father of eighty and three middle-aged sons. The
former's name is Micajah, the latter are known com
monly as Atch, Phil, and Pole. Such familiar abbre
viations might pass almost unnoticed, if you did not
chance to find out that they were short for Achilles,
Philander, and Napoleon.
Co-operation of any kind has always been a diffi
culty on the mountain. A little way above Pete's
house, by the side of the stream, the uncompleted log

THE "POOR WHITES" OF THE MOUNTAINS 155
body of a house stands, and has stood, for years. Pete,
at some former period, urged forward probably by his
devout helpmate, decided that it was a disgrace to the
mountain that its people had no regular church. Logs
were cut and hauled, so many a-piece, by the various
families. When it came to " raising " the house, how
ever, and a general gathering of the clans was neces
sary, every attempt resulted, after a log or two had
been put up, in what Pete denominates as a " fuss " —
and a " fuss " in the South means a free fight. So the
church, according to Pete's account — for it was a long
time ago, and the logs have got by this time black and
mossy — had to be abandoned altogether, and the wan
dering preacher continues his exhortations in Pete's
living-room or under the arches of the forest trees.
The trout of Rumbling Creek have always been a
leading item in the general economy of the mountain.
I do not allude to them merely as an article of food.
There are no sweeter trout in the world than these,
but the native, as a rule, has been satiated with them,
and has to be exceedingly hungry before he has any
relish for what his betters consider a luxury. Of fish
ing, however, he never tires, and if he ventures out of
the mountain to the nearest village store, it is generally
to exchange trout for whisky or ammunition. The
sport itself seems to exercise a fascination over these
rude beings, and there is considerable rivalry of skill
among them. Until quite recently the art of fly
fishing was unknown, and even now it is only a very
adventurous sportsman among the mountaineers who
attains to that pinnacle of science. Worm-fishing,
however, in clear water is, as all anglers know, some-

156 SKETCHES From old Virginia
thing of an art in itself, and in this art the rude
fishermen of Rumbling Creek excelled. Pete claimed
always to be the best fisherman of the mountain.
Deep and almost bitter was the rivalry for pre
eminence between him and old man 'Lisha, who lived
near the top of the pass. Through many a long
spring day, when April showers have been driving the
wild cherry-blossoms in clouds on to the river-banks,
have these two champions, when they ought to have
been ploughing their corn-land, wrestled for the
biggest " string " of fish..
Trout, in these latitudes, cannot live away from the
forest shade and the cool waters of the great mountain
ranges. Before the war, with the exception of the
mountaineers and an occasional farmer in the country
adjoining, scarcely a trout-fisherman could have been
found in the whole of Virginia. The mountaineers
themselves appreciated the superiority of trout-fishing
over the kind of angling for coarse fish in vogue in the
lowlands, and prided themselves vastly on the accom
plishment. It was a momentous day indeed when the
first fly was thrown on Rumbling Creek. So much so
that I have thought it worthy to be recorded later on
in a chapter to itself

THE VIRGINIA QUAIL
No finer game bird flies than the American or
Virginia quail, which must on no account be confused
with the little migratory bird that one associates with
toast and the Mediterranean, or notes as an occasional
" etcetera " in an English game-book. In fact, one
feels much more inclined even in print to follow the
people of the Southern States and call the Orty
Virginiana a partridge, for such, indeed, to all intents
and purposes, it practically is.
Though the bird does not get much notice in
English literature which deals with American sports,
it is, nevertheless beyond all comparison the most
important, and far the most valuable item on the
American game-list. One half of the cartridges that
are loaded in the United States are probably fired at
quail ; and taking the older States alone, a much
larger proportion even than that. It is the one
domestic game-bird of the Americans in the sense that
the partridge is with us ; and not only fills the place of
the latter most admirably, but may almost be said to do
duty in a certain fashion for the absent pheasant as
well. As to other American game-birds, the prairie
chicken or grouse recedes more or less before civilis-

158 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
ation, is not easily preserved, and is much more easily
killed. The woodland or ruffed grouse, though widely
distributed, is nowhere plentiful, and has an objec
tionable partiality for the tops of trees. The woodcock
is partial and scarce, and an inferior bird to the
European species, while snipe and wildfowl do not
come within the range of our comparison.
But the quail has neither a hankering for the wilder
ness nor a dread of man. On the contrary, he clings
to cultivation, and is only too anxious to remain there
if given anything like a chance. In former days the
comparative scarcity of sportsmen was sufficient
guarantee for the maintenance of the stock of birds.
Since the improvement in guns, however, and the
immense increase in the number of sportsmen, not
merely the game laws but the sense of private
property in game have acquired more stringent
recognition. And it is a notable fact that, with the
exception of a few thinly settled Western districts,
some of the best quail-shooting in America is to be
had in regions that have been occupied for over
two hundred years.
There is neither space nor occasion here to go into
geographical detail as to the wide range of the Virginia
quail. More than half the area of the United States,
at any rate, carries a greater or smaller stock. It is
sufficient to say that in the colder Northern States
they are either extinct or too scarce for serious
consideration ; and efforts at re-stocking have, I
believe, not been wholly successful. In Canada there
are scarcely any left ; Western Ontario, their only
breeding ground, is almost denuded. And, indeed.

THE VIRGINIA QUAIL 159
extreme winters and clean farming together are'
generally speaking, too much for the quail. It is in
the Southern States that he really thrives to perfection ;
and, though still more numerous, for obvious reasons
in thinly settled districts of the new South- West,
there is nowhere that he shows finer sport than in the
older parts of Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas.
For here there is always that proportion of open
country and woodland, of stubble fields and rough
pastures and straggling thickets, that makes the birds,
from a sporting point of view, show to the best
advantage. I have ventured the remark — which no one qualified
to judge will, I am sure, dispute — that no finer sport
ing bird exists than the Virginia quail. I am almost
tempted to go even further, and wonder if there is
another bird that for dash and pluck and versatility is
quite his equal : and this with no lack of respect, by
any means, for a rocketing pheasant or a driven
partridge. Heaven forbid, too, that one should even
touch on that profitless but perennial controversy
between the old style of sportsman and the new, since
each of them are the product of circumstances beyond
their control.
But I do think most of us Hke shooting over dogs ;
and by this I do not mean putting pointers into a
turnip-field where birds are known to be, or over a
country where they could be walked up to with equal or
greater advantage, merely for the sake of seeing them
work. When the dog ceases to become indispensable
half the charm of his assistance has surely gone.
But in a country like England once was, or like a few

i6o SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
outlying corners and nearly the whole of Ireland still
are, it is different. Yet, when birds are so scarce
and lie so close that dogs are necessary, it is almost
sure to mean that most of the shooting is too simple
to satisfy a first-class performer. It is here that the
Virginia quail comes in, and seems to me to stand as
it were alone among game-birds. For none call out
to a higher degree the qualities of the setter or the
pointer : none lie better to the gun ; but when the
quail rises at short range, instead of presenting three
times out of four a " pot shot," he will so contrive that
something Hke that proportion of the chances he so
boldly gives to his pursuers shall tax their marksman--
ship to an extent that would satisfy the most exacting
sportsman of this proficient age. And this is possible
from the fact of the covey scattering, as a rule, when
first flushed, and the single birds seeking covert of a
sort such as enables them to offer a really smart shot
to the gun. The English partridge seeks safety from
the guns by rising wild or out of shot. The Virginia
quail first challenges the quality of the dogs, and then,
more often than not, the shooting qualities of their
master. He gets away with lightning speed. He
generally contrives to have some obstacle handy to
his hiding-place which will assist his escape ; and
of this, whether it be tree, or bush or fence, he
knows how to take advantage with a nimble dexterity
and tortuous flight unknown to any other of the
gallinaceous tribe. He leads you into every variety
of covert ; tests your dogs in open stubble, in briary
thicket, in silent, leaf-strewn woodlands ; and there is
no conceivable class of shot that in the course of a

THE VIRGINIA QUAIL i6i
single day is not presented by this plucky, saucy,
resourceful little bird.
" The Virginia quail," says that celebrated sportsman
and charming writer, the late Mr. Herbert (" Frank
Forester "), " is probably the hardest bird in the world
to kill quickly, cleanly, and certainly. He gets under
way with the speed of Hght. Before the wind he goes
like a bullet from a rifle, when he has once fairly got
on his wings. He flies as fast in the thickest covert,
which he affects, as he does out of it. He takes a
heavy blow, and that planted exactly in the right place,
to bring him down ; and, above all, he has a habit of
carrying away his death-wound, flying as if unhurt
until his life leaves him in mid-air."
Out of the many seasons during which with much
ardour and enthusiasm and in various places I pursued
the Virginia quail, or partridge as he was always
called in the South, it is not easy to select a particular
stage upon which to introduce him to the reader.
But most prominently perhaps of all these memories
there rises one of a roomy old mansion set right in the
heart of what is known as " the bright tobacco belt "
of Virginia. The landscape here lies in pleasant un
dulations, with little rivulets babbling down the valleys
towards the greater rivers. The whole country except
the strips of valley land is astonishingly poor, but
possesses at the same time peculiar virtues for the
production of the highest quality of tobacco. For
this is a concentrated crop and takes up little space,
and is here forced up by stimulants to a yield whose
moderate quantity is more than compensated for by
surpassing quality. The main bulk of the country is
M

i62 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
an alternation of ragged weedy stubbles of wheat or
oats, of rough pastures and large maize-fields, of
stately forest or scrub woodlands that have covered
abandoned lands. It was an ideal country for birds and
an ideal one to shoot them in, and well preserved withal.
November and December were the two quail-shooting
months, and it was almost always some evening in the
second or third week of the former that used to find
me, after a drive of forty miles over the worst type
of Virginia road, approaching the hospitable portals
already briefly alluded to. Within these dwelt one of
the most accomplished sportsmen it was ever my
privilege to know. I will call him the Major, because
every one did so — on the principle perhaps that if he
was not a soldier he ought to have been, and had
mistaken his vocation — which was possibly true.
The Major was, I am proud to say, a Briton. He
had purchased this plantation after the war, and if
the cause of his exile was in part too great a devotion
to horse and hound, he at least found much consola
tion in so fine a field for gun and dog. The Major
was as popular as he was celebrated for his shooting
prowess. The district was remote from towns, the
farms were large, and my friend had practically the
right of shooting the whole country for a dozen miles
round, and nearly every one was only too glad to see
him kill, or help them to kill, their birds. I have
qualified this statement because the Major was
possessed of a somewhat fiery spirit and a most
formidable frame and pair of fists. So, if there was a
little bit of country here and there " posted " against
him, it was quite sure to be in connection with some

THE VIRGINIA QUAIL 163
such passage of arms that had occurred between the
owner and himself That the latter had never been
shot was the marvel of his friends and those who
knew the code of that country. One misguided man
had once let fly at him, but was imprudent enough to
miss, and before he could get in a second barrel, the
pistol was spinning one way and its owner another.
As. there was little chance of the local law as then
administered consigning the offender to prison, the
Major took care he should at least have to go to the
hospital for a considerable period. But by the time
the Major and I used to shoot together he was a
grandfather, and by far the most nimble grandfather
I ever saw. No hours were too early, no day
too long, no pace too great, no bird too quick,
no colt too devilish, no negro too intractably for
the Major. -
What a month of months was November, or at any
rate most of November in Virginia ! The summer
heats had gone ; sharp night frosts had stricken the
rank greenery of field and thicket. The tints of the
open country were all brown and yellow, save the
dark green of the pine woods and the brighter glow
of the freshly sprungwheat. The forests were ablaze
with red and gold. A great lull rested over all
things ; crisp mornings and balmy sweet-smelling
days, with floods of sunshine tempered often by the
dreamy haze of Indian summer skies, followed each
other with little interruption. If you were a loafer,
you could loaf to perfection ; if you were a sportsman,
you could walk or ride for ever. It felt a good thing
merely to be alive. And when you knew that in
M 2

i64 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
every stubble there were huddling coveys of the little
brown fast-flying birds waiting to be shot, the cup of
happiness used to seem in these gorgeous seasons to
be entirely full.
We used in that district generally to shoot on
horseback in the old Virginia fashion, not because we
were lazy, but because the beats were very large, and
we could by this means cover more ground and handle
more coveys in the day. We had often, too, a long
way to ride in the morning before commencing
operations, and a still further distance to travel home
at night. It might be supposed that relays of dogs
would be a necessity, particularly as the weather was
occasionally as warm as an English September and
the country rough to a degree. I can only answer
that they were not necessary, and that our native-bred
setters and pointers stood up to these long days three,
and occasionally even four, times a week without
apparent difficulty.
The Major's own property was about a thousand
acres, a fourth of which, perhaps, was original forest,
another fourth second-growth timber of pine or scrub
oak on abandoned lands, while the remaining half
would be equally divided between wheat, oats, and
corn, or rough knee-deep pasture divided into large
fields by snake fences, themselves half buried in
woodland growth. Here and there were strips of
clean, well-cultivated land, whose recent occupation
was indicated by the rows of tobacco stalks still
chequering the loose black soil. Here in these ten
or twenty-acre patches the pulse of the whole estate
really throbbed. To them were tributary the greater

THE VIRGINIA QUAIL 165
area of ragged stubbles and bristling corn-stalk fields
that covered hundreds of the surrounding acres. For
them existed the tall, sharp-gabled barns that dotted
the landscape, full now to bursting with the fragrant
leaf The strings of mules, the groups of whistling
darkies, the rows of cabins at the homestead, every
thing centred in the one word — " tobacco." It was the
burden of every conversation — the end of all human
aims. It was in the very bone and blood of the
people. Its fragrance was upon every breeze.
Such in outline was the Major's plantation, and
such were the dozen or so others around it over
which we had the privilege of shooting. This
privilege, however, when their owners happened to be
sportsmen, was saddled with the very natural con
dition of their company in the field. They were
capital fellows these shabby-coated planters, if not
perhaps exactly the style of men you would have
selected to swop horses with. They were not of the
same social stamp as our old friend Colonel Broom
sedge of Locust Grove, but they were frank and
hospitable, and with the genial friendly manner that
places such a gulf in this respect between the country
man of the South and his equivalent of the North or
West. They were all used to firearms, of course, but
it was only a very few that were professed partridge
shots and kept " bird dogs." But these few were very
good performers and very keen, and to any one who
shared their tastes they opened freely their hearts,
their hearths, and their stubbles. They were a bit
wild and dangerous, it is true, and something jealous ;
for rivalry enters into the American's field sports with

i66 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
a candour that an English sportsman might consider
somewhat indecent. There was no particle of male
volence in the hearty way they would "down" your
bird if the chance offered at fifteen yards before you
could pull on it, or claim with unblushing prompt
ness the entire merit of a simultaneous shot ; but it
made you like them much better with a pipe and a
glass round their own fire at night than upon the
opposite side of a fence during the day. The Major
and I, however, used to utilise their spirit of rivalry by
suggesting as often as possible the separation of our
forces, for which there was plenty of room — he and I
taking one beat and our native friends another, so
that while we could thoroughly enjoy the day after
our own fashion, our local companions were generally
quite zealous to engage in what partook of the nature
of an international competition. But some of our
hosts were of the forest-hunter variety — deadly at
sitting shots — men who could " bark " squirrels, or
shoot the heads off turkeys, or circumvent the wily
geese that cackled in big flocks on the new-sown
wheat-fields, but " took no stock," as they would have
said, " in shootin' on the wing " ; and if leaving out
the terminal " g " helps to make a sportsman, as we
are led in England by inference to suppose, they did
this to perfection and without any effort too. They
were always delighted, however, to see us kill their
birds, and hovered about all day on our rear and
flanks with fearsome single barrels of prehistoric
build. There was no getting away, of course, from
these gentry by any appeal to their bumps of
competition, for they did not profess " wing shooting."

THE VIRGINIA QUAIL 167
They were out to enjoy themselves, and skirmished
around with their long guns, talking farming, and crack
ing jokes, and now and again taking a promiscuous and
generally futile shot at a hare stealing back, or even
at a bird swinging round them. You never knew
where you were with these cheery casual souls, or
from what quarter the explosion might come, or in
what direction their cannons might be pointing. The
latter when at rest were generally covering some man
or dog ; for after the manner of the type, they
generally carried them " at the trail," with the hammer
down upon the cap, or at full cock — the happy
medium having with these old guns usually ceased to
work or else arrived at a condition that was more
dangerous than either. It was holiday time too,
now ; the tobacco was housed and fired, and, though
temperate men as a rule, both the season and the
occasion seemed to demand some little token of
festivity. So in the tails of their coats there nearly
always lurked a small bottle of ten-horse-power
whisky, with a corn-cob stopper. And by afternoon
our hosts were sometimes a little merry ; and when
the men at the end of those long guns got merry, and
took heart, and pressed up to the dogs, and came
seriously into action, and let fly when the air was
full of wings, or worse still, when birds were darting
in the woods, it ceased entirely to be a laughing
matter, however humorous it may seem in the long
ago. Even the good shots were astonishingly in
different as to what objects were in the line of fire.
There were very few sportsmen of that country who
did not carry shot about in them somewhere. I have

i68 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
always regarded it as a special dispensation of
Providence to have survived so many campaigns
without so much as a scratch, or even a horse shot
under me. And I use this latter phrase in no
figurative sense, for the horses used often to get
badly sprinkled, particularly when they were standing
about hitched to trees, while a scattered covey was
undergoing treatment. The horse, however, did not
as a rule stay on these occasions to get the second
barrel, as may readily be imagined, but carried away
the balance of his owner's cartridges, and possibly his
lunch, leaving only the broken end§ of a bridle behind
him. There was usually no pleasanter day in our annual
programme than the one on which we shot the Doctor's
place. It was four miles away, and as our medico
had it rented out, and lived upon the other side of the
Major's, he used on these occasions to stop and
breakfast with us on the road. He generally brought
with him as a fourth gun a dilapidated individual of
some local notoriety — a landless, feckless, middle-
aged bachelor, redeemed from utter disrepute by his
cunning in every kind of sport. This individual re
joiced in the name of Rat Morgan ; and no inverted
commas are needed in this case, for the suggestive
prefix was no nickname, but the short for " Rattler.''
And Rattler was a famous hound who flourished, quite
early in the century, and was practically the god
father of our dilapidated friend. He had, at any rate,
been solemnly called after him by a fond parent — a
substantial yeoman, wholly given over to fox-hunting,
of Httle education, and no religion, and considerable

THE VIRGINIA QUAIL 169
eccentricity. Rat's brothers had also been all called
by hound names ; and no minister, it was said, had
ever been asked to assist at the family baptisms. Rat
Morgan was fifty at least when we used to shoot with
him, and had as yet taken no steps, so far as I ever
heard, to remove the scandal, though there had been
much competition among the rival parsons of the
neighbourhood to bring him to some kind of font and
remove such a heathenish stain from their midst.
Rat's signatures was chiefly utilised upon promissory
notes of trifling amount, as I have reason to know.
If, however, he had possessed a bank account, his
cheques would most certainly have carried the name
of his father's favourite hound, for he had no other-
Rat, however, had acquired a breechloader by some
mysterious means, and was a first-class shot. The
Doctor was profoundly respectable, both in birth and
standing, and " rode," as the local saying went, pro
fessionally, the whole south side of the county. He
was a keen sportsman, however, and I don't think that
on such occasions as this the most violent epidemic
would have kept him on his professional beat.
I dare say we should have looked a strange party,
the four of us, all mounted — Rat Morgan usually on a
plough mule — as we turned out of the Major's gate
and went clattering down the hard and rough red
highway. Haifa dozen setters and pointers of the
native stock ran at our heels, for the pedigree
Laveracks and Gordons that were then finding their
way into the country couldn't have faced our long
days or stood up to the briars. Each of us had
saddle-bags slung over our McClellan saddles, and

I70 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
behind two of the party at any rate was seated a
negro boy, hanging on as best he could to his
precarious perch
Nor was there any trouble here about dividing our
forces when we came to the scene of action, for the
Doctor and Rat held us in deadly and traditional
rivalry. Quail, like English partridges have their good and
bad breeding seasons, dependent upon the weather,
though it is not so easy with the former to tell what
the year may bring forth till you are actually in the
field with gun and dogs. They are late breeders, not
pairing till the month of April ; and the nests are
well concealed in rough pastures or fence corners,
though sometimes, unfortunately, they are made in
clover or mowing-grass. The old birds themselves,
however, are infinitely tamer than the partridge in
the nesting season. For at that time — and, indeed,
throughout the summer, till the broods are hatched —
they will come out and perch on roadside fences or
garden palings and fill the air with their cheery
piping of " Bob-white 1 ah-bob-white ! " And at such
periods even the very negro with his old army and
othei vermin musket respects the trustful, handsome
little bird. Their natural enemies are numerous —
hawks, crows, and foxes ; but the opportunities of
escape are considerable in so much covert. I remember
a sportsman's association once upon a time was
founded in Virginia with a view among other things
to the suppression of vermin, and a reward of fifty
cents was offered for every hawk's head forwarded
to the secretary. Times were bad, and every loafer

THE VIRGINIA QUAIL 171
and schoolboy in the country went out hawk-hunting.
Flour barrels full of hawks' heads came up from
remote counties, it was said, and descended upon
the association's headquarters in Richmond. It was
perhaps fortunate we were not an unlimited liability
company for the -well-intentioned fund to which we
had subscribed was cleaned out in about a week, and
there were unpaid creditors it was said going to and
fro like raging lions in back country districts to whom
five dollars were five dollars, and hawks' heads were
hawks' heads. The committee were popularly reported
to go about Richmond armed for some time ; and
it was jocularly suggested in the press that the
office should be put in a state of defence. However
this was twenty years ago and no attempt so far as I
know against the Virginian hawk has ever been made
since. The quail cock is as pugnacious as he is
handsome, and his size is about two- thirds that of an
English partridge. By September the young broods,
usually numbering from sixteen to twenty birds, are
hatched, and one oftens hears them scuttling in the
dry thickets by the roadside, or occasionally even
startles them into the air like a cloud of grasshoppers
on their tiny wings.
October is the last close month, and it is not only
that the birds then are usually not fully grown, but the
country, untouched by serious frost, is too green and dry
and tangled for successful shooting. Nor is there as yet
any particle of scent, and quail-shooting without scent
would be a vain hope indeed. But by November some
sharp night frosts, following, perhaps, on heavy rains,
have killed the last lush rankness of summer, and turned

172 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
the landscape into a vast patchwork of varying autumn
tints. The covert is so all-pervading that it would be
hopeless to hunt it promiscuously ; but the experienced
sportsman and even the experienced dog knows by
instinct what fields are likely and what are not.
The habits of the birds change slightly as mid
winter approaches ; and as they are, moreover, always
liable to eccentricities in their movement, there is
ample demand upon the intelligence and experience
of the sportsman. Their favourite haunt is wheat
stubble, which by November is knee-deep in brown,
frost-killed "ragweed." And where little streams
fringed with brushy alders and wild vines course
through the stubbles, there will, in all probability, be
found the greater part of your coveys, till real winter
sets in with December, and they are forced to wider
rambling in their search for food.
There was no better line of country in Virginia
than the one upon which the Major and I used to
start on these propitious mornings, as the darkey
boys unceremoniously threw a panel of the roadside
fence down to let us through into the waving sedge
grass that covered the ridge upon which we gave our
dogs the word to " Hie away 1 " (the American equi
valent for " Hold up 1 ") As nothing is I think, more
tedious than a detailed account of a day's shooting,
I will but venture to ask the reader to accompany us
just so far as to see where and how a bevy of quail
is found, and in what manner it is handled. I may
remark, however, in passing, that we didn't call them
'' bevies of quail." Rat Morgan would have wanted
to know "what in thunder we were talkin' about.'

THE VIRGINIA QUAIL 173
The Doctor would have grasped the meaning, but
resented the term as " a d  d Yankee notion."
However, let us ride down the slope of this long
ridge, the tall yellow broom sedge brushing our
stirrup-irons, while the dogs run off their first
excitement — though, to be sure, the seven-year-old
pointer is much too wise to waste her strength over
such indifferent ground. Below us lies the valley,
whose course we shall more or less follow all day ;
and we can see the brown stubbles stretching away
upon both sides of the brushy stream that meanders
down their midst. Here, too, the eager setters,
young dogs, both of them, range wider over the
deep stubble ; which is quite right, for the birds
might possibly be away from the watercourses. It
is not very likely, however, this warm morning, so
early in the season ; and this the old pointer knows
full well, as she trots leisurely along in the ranker
growth, through which the rippling brook burrows its
hidden way. In a few minutes there is a sensation —
for we can't always see her — that the old dog has
come to a stop. " Hi, dar she is ! " pipes a shrill
Ethiopian treble in my ear. " Dar she is, Marse
Major — stannin' right plum in de bresh ! "
And so she is. The setters are whistled up, and
with a timely caution are soon backing their senior
in pretty style right out in the field. The alders and
willows here form a thicket ten or fifteen feet high,
and it is a case of a gun each side of it. We are
soon off our horses and abreast of the dog, who
begins to crawl slowly on, the setters creeping after
her. The birds are running, and we can hear them

174 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
scuttling over the dry leaves. They soon rise, how
ever, with a great commotion, seventeen or eighteen
of them, and the air above the alder tops seems for
a moment alive with glancing wings ; and from the
far side it is not child's play to pick out two outside
birds and plant two effective shots before they have
dipped out of sight — most of them to swing past the
Major in the direction of the forest skirting the valley,
the rest to dash on further down the stream, scatter
ing, probably, as they fly.
If it can be avoided, it is as well not to follow a
scattered covey instantly, as the birds, either volun
tarily or involuntarily, give out but little scent for
some time after they have squatted. So, with good
prospects of a fresh covey within a few hundred
yards, leaving our horses, we hunt onwards down the
stream. We are not disappointed, and the former
scene is re-acted with those pleasing variations inci
dental to shooting a sporting bird in a sporting
country over dogs. In a quarter of an hour this
second covey, taking the same flight, is for the most
part in the forest, some single birds, as in the first,
taking an independent line and being haply marked.
We have now two coveys scattered in the woods,
which are perhaps four hundred yards off, and to
wards the spot where the first one entered we now
bend our steps. A large corn-stalk field with yellow
pumpkins lying about and a broom sedge pasture
sprinkled with small pines have to be crossed, where
we pick up a lagging bird that had been marked and
knock over a hare or two — the Brer Rabbit, this,
of Uncle Remus, whose diplomatic victories over

THE VIRGINIA QUAIL I75
Brer Fox are by now classical or ought to be ; and
the turkey buzzard, who was also, it will be re
membered, so notably out-generalled by that long-
eared practical joker, hangs above us in mid-air, his
broad wings silhouetted against the blue sky.
As we enter the woodland it is desirable to make a
wide cast round so as to get behind the birds, and
drive them, so far as you can drive a quail, back into
the open. If you have a heady dog on your string,
it is well upon such occasions to leave him with the
horses, for steadiness over this crackling carpet of
dead leaves, where the birds are squatting singly or in
twos and threes, is essential. The forest is open, and
at this season of the year a veritable fairyland. Oak
and chestnut, poplar and hickory, rise like vast grey
columns from the russet carpet beneath to the flutter
ing roof of red and gold, of saffron and burnished
copper, illumined by floods bf sunshine and broken by
patches of cerulean, sky. There is no sound but the
tapping of the woodpecker and the gentle rain of
acorns and chestnuts on the leafy ground, or the light
scraping of a grey squirrel as he leaps from tree to
tree. But here is the first of the birds, a whirr of
wings, a momentary vision of a brown streak, dis
appearing behind a monster oak, and Ponto, who has
flushed him, sitting on his haunches and gazing wist
fully into space with an expression of countenance
that most unmistakably declares, " That was not my
fault." And in all probability it was not. But of the
rest of the scattered birds, in whose midst we soon
find ourselves, the dogs, for the most part, are able to
give us timely warning. This, indeed, is the very

176 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
cream of quail-shooting — I had almost said of all
shooting. It is beautiful to see the dogs, with all
their senses wrought up to the highest tension, work
ing carefully over the bare woodland floor, and drop
ping suddenly and without a second's warning into
every sort of rigid attitude known to the setting tribe.
Sometimes a fallen tree, sometimes a heap of leaves,
blown against standing saplings, yields a patch of
covert, but as often as not the little brown bird is
squatting on the open ground not three feet from the
quivering nostrils of his discoverer. And what a dash
he makes for his life, rising even with so timely a
warning from your very feet, must be seen to be
believed. Leaving the ground with the speed of a
snipe and the noise of a partridge, he rushes through
the forest trees, twisting and corking like a woodcock,
only a woodcock on double speed. Sometimes he
shoots straight up like a rocket for some opening in
the leafy roof, at others he tears along not a yard
above the dark ground. Often, too, on such occasions
a bird is flushed by the other gun, and comes rocket
ing down over your head like an arrow from a bow.
And perhaps when you have emptied your right barrel
at him, a second, with cunning instinct, has allowed
you to walk over him, and now, thinking the time has
come, rises at your back, and gives you an instant's
snap-shot through the trees with your left. Many of
the birds find their way back into the open, and drop
in sedge fields, or in thickets, and occasionally in the
open stubble, and are marked, in part, at any rate, by
our sable horse-keeper. But there is no necessity,
with so much country before us, to be too exacting

THE VIRGINIA QUAIL I77
from each covey. So, emptying our pockets into the
game-bag, we mount our horses and canter over some
half-mile or so of unlikely country, till the next
stubble fields spread themselves before us. It would
be tedious to pursue further on paper the incidents of
such a day, varied and delightful as they are in actual
practice. We are baffled now and again by the plump
of a covey into the dense scrub pine woods that here
and there cover abandoned fields. Now^ and then, too,
one escapes us in that mysterious, unaccountable way
sufficiently familiar to the English partridge-shooter.
We kill a woodcock or two and a good many hares,
and eat our lunch where some big sycamore or beech
spreads its arms above a bubbling spring. And all the
afternoon the cheery work goes on through stubble,
thicket, woodland, and pasture. The negroes, driving
their waggons through the crackling corn-stalks, or
hauling fence rails from the woods, tell each other that
the " Major's bird-hunt'n'," with many strange ejacu
lations that imply it's a bad day for the " patridges."
The shadows are long, indeed have almost faded, before
we turn once more into the main road and head for the
Doctor's buildings. The western sky is one entire blush
of crimson, and that incomparable after-glow which
succeeds these autumn sunsets in the South spreads a
strange and lurid flush over the many-tinted earth.
The negro women are calling up the cows. The axe
is thudding from the wood-pile of cabin and farm
house. The scattered birds are piping in the stubbles,
and the frogs from brook edges are proclaiming that
the winter of their silence and their discontent is not
yet quite at hand. N

178 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
The Doctor and his henchman have got their bag
spread out upon the porch floor of the overseer's
house, and when the Major and I reckon up our
spoils and find them to amount to twenty-five brace
of birds, besides extras, our shooting host has to
confess that once more he has been " bested " by the
Britishers, though not, indeed, by much. He has,
however, a most excellent excuse — for to Rat, it
seems, was thoughtlessly entrusted the whisky-flask,
and the natural result of such misplaced confidence
had occurred ; the greater part, that is to say, of the
Doctor's share, had leaked out in some mysterious
fashion, though it was not into the pocket of his faith
less partner, it is to be feared, that the precious fluid
found its way. The Doctor, however, merely re
marked, and with some justice, that so unequal a
division of the refreshment should fairly account for
the difference of five brace in our respective bags.

MAR'SE DAB AFTER THE WAR
It was fortunate for Dabney Carter Digges that he
came out of the war with the well-earned rank of
Captain, as he stood badly in need of some handy
title for use on formal occasions. For by nearly the
whole of the negro population, in spite of the
tendency to drop, after the war, old ante-bellum terms
that denoted servitude, he was still, for some reason
or other, universally spoken of, and to, as Mar'se Dab.
This was partly, no doubt, an unconscious tribute to
the local fame of his family, as if, perhaps, it were
due to these latter not to snap the old times quite
so abruptly as in ordinary cases, and partly, no doubt,
to accident. Nor, indeed, was this a unique survival
of old habits ; it was simply a rather exceptional one.
So I think the reason that made those of us who were
the Captain's immediate friends and neighbours
speak of him generally, and in frivolous moments to
him, as " Mar'se Dab," must be sought for in the
humorous contrast between the great man's impressive
personal appearance and the curt juvenility of this
particular sobriquet. At any rate, it is as " Mar'se
Dab " that my old friend's image comes most forcibly
to my recollection, and it seems natural to recall his
N 3

i8o SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
peculiarities, or to attempt to do so, with the familiar
appellative upon the title-page. With regard to the
subject of this sketch, I have so far used and shall
continue to use the past tense. I don't wish the
reader to suppose Mar'se Dab is dead. Far from it.
But because the industrial system he pursued with
such vigour proved so much less profitable than
picturesque, he is now, I regret to say, an exile from
his native land. The old acres, fortunately for them
I fear it must be added, know him no more.
Mar'se Dab, in short, " burst all to pieces " many
years ago, as his neighbours, with that kindly
interest people take in their friends' futures, used
always to prophesy he would. Not even a fragment
from this aforesaid explosion remained wherewith to
start him in a new land-killing enterprise. So he,
poor man, scarcely past the prime of life, had to
accept an offer from his wife's brother, who kept a
store far away in Western Kansas. The Captain was
not, I think, a proud man. He had not so much
pride in matters of this kind as most of his class. But
what he had he was compelled to swallow, when
circumstances forced him behind the counter of a
western country store. For those who had known
Mar'se Dab on his ancestral acres, it required a
mental effort of no ordinary kind to imagine him
tying up packets of sugar and coffee for Teutonic or
Scandinavian homesteaders. Indeed, it is distress
ing even to think of the Captain in such a place or at
such an occupation.
To attempt a Virginia sketch without at least a
genealogical allusion would not merely be unpardon-

MAR'SE DAB AFTER THE WAR i8i
able, — it would be impossible. It was an instinctive
feeling that this had to come which I think prompted me
to open this chapter with the Captain's full baptismal
name. For the English ear, neither the names of
Dabney, of Carter, nor of Digges have any particular
significance. Distinguished individuals may possibly
have borne them, but the names themselves are by
no means distinguished. In Virginia, however, it is
otherwise ; for they are all three written large upon
the pages of her past. There are, no doubt, plenty
of people in Virginia possessing one or other of these
names who are no connection whatever to the old
colonial families who have given to them their local
lustre. The Captain, however, was a representative
in his own person of these three illustrious houses,
respectively. For his mother was a Carter of Birley,
and his grandmother had been a Dabney from the
shores of the Rappahannoc, while as for the Diggeses,
are they not written in the chronicles of Berkeley
county from generation to generation .?
Mar'se Dab himself, however, never appeared to
take much stock in the genealogical advantages he
enjoyed. In many respects, indeed — more particu
larly in the superficialties of life — he by no means did
credit to his courtly progenitors. It used to be a
common matter of criticism in the more aristocratic
circles of Berkeley county — among the ladies particu
larly — that " Cousin Dab was a mighty rough man
for his raising." But then, as these fair critics would
go on to remark, it was not so much to be wondered,
seeing of what " very ordinary stock " his wife came.
Now, as I have said, the Dabneys, the Carters, and

i82 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
the Diggeses were among the very first families in
the State. If all their members were not educated
and polished men, they ought to have been. But the
Thackers, from whose family the Captain took his
wife, neither were, nor ever had been, people of
education and polish. They were not, it must be
understood, mere common farmers. They owned
plenty of land, and before the war had acquired
almost as many negroes as the Diggeses themselves.
Nevertheless they were upon quite another social
plane. The Thackers, in short, belonged to that vary
numerous class which came between the real gentry
of the south and the poor non-slave-holding whites.
Politically a part of the great compact " slavocracy,"
numerically and its greater part, but socially, and for
obvious reasons, inferior. Not a harshly defined
inferiority, it is true ; that would never have done
among people whose somewhat precarious interests
were identical, and who were all members of a
dominant political caste, with most of the world
against them. But the division was the unavoidable
one between people with the habits and customs
of gentlefolk, and those whose existence was quite
devoid of such refinements, who were, in short, at the
best, intelligent farmers, and nothing more. These
things were managed very well. The Diggeses and
the Thackers had been accustomed to interchange
calls regularly every year. The phraseology of the
most perfect equality had always been maintained
when they met, but there the fiction ended. Human
nature could do no more, as I am sure you would have

MAR'SE DAB AFTER THE WAR 183
said if you had paid a visit first to the old Digges's
homestead, and then gone on to the family mansion
of the Thackers ; and the Diggeses and the Thackers
were only types, and very good ones, of what, to
apply English terms, we may call the gentry and the
yeomanry of the South.
So when the war was over — though old prejudices
and social barriers were a good deal shaken — Mar'se
Dab was looked upon as having rather let himself
down when he married Amanda Thacker. Southern
rural society, however, though by no means destroyed
in that district, was greatly shattered. People were
too poor and too busy, and too sore with the outside
world, to be very ill-natured about such trifles. Still
social traditions that are founded upon common-sense
and natural forces cannot be destroyed in a moment.
So, as I have already remarked, the ladies of
Berkeley county used to say in after years, that it
was not altogether to be wondered at " Cousin Dab
had got so rough."
Mar'se Dab's social position is then, I think,
sufficiently well depicted. I once heard him airily
described, by a jocose Canadian who was staying in
the neighbourhood, as " a dilapidated blood." The
Captain's friends rather resented the phrase ; but
when he heard it himself some time afterwards, he
laughed so loud that you could have heard him all
over the plantation, and so long that his wife got
anxious about him, — Uncle Ephraim, however, who
was standing by at the time, reassuredly remarking,
" That's 'zactly how Mar'se Dab useter laff befo' the
wah."

i84 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
When I first knew the Captain soon after the close
of the war, he might have been five-andrforty. His lung
power was in keeping with his powerful frame. He
did more shouting and shouted louder than any man
I ever heard of on his plantation, standing about on
hilltops and sending his orders echoing far and wide to
his numerous and widely scattered dependants.
The negroes on the place used to declare that " Mar'se
Dab could go in two hollers to Shucksville." Now
Shucksville was the county town, and as it was
thirteen miles off, this remark must of course be
regarded as an Ethiopian illustration of a purely
allegorical nature.
Mar'se Dab's military title was no bogus one, such
as Captain Topfodder's, for instance, who kept the
store at Digges's Mills, and took his rank from a
freight barge he had skilfully navigated for many
years on the James River Canal. On the contrary,
the fact that it was not more important may be
attributed to the Captain's own reckless gallantry. If
valour alone — and of course I allude to the Civil
War — could have regulated rank, our friend should
by rights have been a general of division at the very
least. For it was always said — said, that is to say,
in Berkeley county — that Dab Digges was the bravest
soldier in the whole Southern army. His valour,
however, was of such a hopelessly reckless kind, and
his contempt of discipline so profound, that even the
command of a regiment would have been out of the
question. So as a captain he started in the 20th
Virginia Cavalry ; and a captain he remained till the
second year of the war, when he was taken prisoner.

MAR'SE DAB AFTER THE WAR 185
Those of his brother officers who survived the
struggle used to say it was extraordinary that Cousin
Dab (for the regiment was raised in Berkeley, and
most of the officers were his relations) succeeded in
escaping death or captivity, or even a wound, so long.
"There was no man in the war," they said, "that
tried so hard to get killed as Cousin Dab, and that
wrought such havoc in the ranks of the enemy ; or,"
they sometimes added in the strictest confidence,
" got his men so often into ' tight places.' "
I gathered that it was upon the whole considered
by no means an irreparable calamity when Mar'se
Dab, the fire-eating captain, was harmlessly removed
in the second year of the war. The climax came
about in this wise. It was in one of the great battles
of that year, I forget which, that the 20th Virginia
Cavalry were ordered to charge a regiment of
Massachusetts infantry. It was a misty day, and it
was not until the horsemen were within a couple of
hundred yards of the enemy that an overwhelming
body of cavalry was discovered to be drawn up in
their rear. At any rate the retreat was sounded, and
the 20th Virginia wheeled about. Not so, however,
Mar'se Dab ! That big voice which the negroes
declared would go in two holloas to Shucksville, was
heard sounding through the fog and smoke that its
owner would be d  d if he'd retreat. And that was
the last that was seen of Mar'se Dab for two years.
From evidence that filtered out afterwards, it
appeared that the Yankee infantry were amazed upon
that day to receive the charge of a solitary horseman,
who came down upon them out of the fog, from

i86 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
whence they never rightly knew. They supposed it to
be a ruriaway horse till it got so close they could see
that the rider was spurring for all he was worth and
shouting like a madman, as they then took him to be.
Not a rifle was raised, but when Mar'se Dab arrived
among the enemy's ranks, so far from appreciating
the forbearance, he laid about him with such zest
that if his sword had had an edge on it, several
people would have been badly hurt. As it was, he was
knocked off his horse with the butt-end of a musket,
and sent to a Federal prison on Lake Erie.
Here Mar'se Dab chafed for nearly two years, pick
ing up various and useful accomplishments hardly
worthy, perhaps, of a Digges. Among these he learnt
how to bake bread, to cut hair, and to pull teeth —
studies forced upon him partly by the ennui of his posi
tion, and partly by the necessities for making a little
money out of his fellow-prisoners, with which to pro
cure those cakes of chewing-tobacco which were the
solace of his life. Again and again, in the piping times
of peace, has Mar'se Dab joked to me of these accom
plishments. Two of them at any rate he carried with
him into private life, and practised (in a friendly way
of course) during his few spare moments, with an
enthusiasm that I am afraid somewhat victimised his
neighbours. As for hair-cutting, it was at least a harm
less if a somewhat singular hobby. The Captain was
indeed in great request in the neighbourhood as a
trimmer of locks. As a puller of teeth, Mar'se Dab's
popularity was nothing like so great. He used an
old-fashioned key, and for the rest trusted only to his
herculean strength ; so the hesitating attitude of the

MAR'SE DAB AFTER THE WAR 187
neighbourhood towards him on the tooth question
may be partially understood. There were some
people of an economical turn of mind who were
tempted to call in once the gratuitous services of the
Captain. But I never heard that the most desperate
sufferer from toothache or the most penurious
individual ever repeated the experiment. Living
near, as I did, I have heard sounds occasionally
proceeding from Clover Hill that the negroes declared
was Mar'se Dab at work upon some confiding
countryman's jaw.
I was only once, however, a witness to one of these
operations. If, as the negroes said, Mar'se Dab
" could go to Shucksville in two hollers," I am
prepared to swear his patient upon that occasion
would have reached the local metropolis in one.
When I first knew the Captain he had just come to
live at Clover Hill. This was not actually at the close
of the war, but it was at the close of those few years of
chaos — political, social, and financial — which ensued
in war-worn Virginia after the surrender of Lee and
the abolition of slavery. It was the period which
marked the first conflict of new conditions with old
ideas — that reluctant struggle of an old civilisation
based on a kindly picturesque domestic slavery, to
adapt itself to an altered state of affairs ; a change
from the obligation for food, clothing, lodging, and
protection, to a business compact between master and
servant, terminable at any moment.
Clover Hill was an average Virginia homestead of
the better class. It had no pretension, of course, to
compare to " Newtown," the old Digges place at the

i88 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
Other end of the county, where the Captain's eldest
brother still lived at that time. There, indeed, at
Newtown were many heirlooms and old sideboards, and
antediluvian bedsteads, and a good deal of old silver,
and family portraits that, whatever their defects may
have been as works of art, represented at any rate
ladies and gentlemen. Newtown was quite a famous
place in Virginia ; but Clover Hill was nothing of the
kind. For that reason, perhaps, it was all the more
typical. Till the Captain took possession, the place
had been occupied only by an overseer. Seed-wheat
had been stored in the parlour. The best bedchamber
had been for years devoted to the storage of dried
apples and washed wool, and the walls were coated
thick with entomological specimens that had danced
in the sunny rays of a half-score of departed summers.
With the Digges advent this was of course all
changed. But the house was furnished distinctly
upon Thacker and not upon Digges lines. As
Amanda Digges was an only daughter of old man
Hiram Thacker, she had inherited his household gods.
Among these, too, there were family portraits of a
kind — daguerreotypes and black paper silhouettes
framed in fircones or varnished oakleaves, caricatur
ing the last generation of Thackers in merciless if
unconscious fashion.
The house at Clover Hill, though not so venerable
nor so large nor so hallowed by traditions as New
town, had been built nevertheless as a gentleman's
residence in the early part of the century. The
Captain's great-uncle, Randolph Digges, somewhat
prominent in his day as a Whig politician, had been

MAR'SE DAB AFTER THE WAR 189
its founder and its occupant for a great number of
years. The instalment of Amanda Thacker and her
family household gods at Clover Hill was an improve
ment on the overseer interregnum. Still it did very
little, I am afraid, to restore to Clover Hill the
aristocratic tone that was said by old people to have
marked it when that venerable patriarch " Uncle Ran "
over his madeira used to make its walls echo to post
prandial denunciations of Jefferson, infidels, and
Frenchmen. The building was of red brick ; it was
two stories high and perfectly square. A wide
corridor ran straight through it below, and another
with the same direct simplicity pierced it above.
Upon the ground floor there were three rooms upon
each side of the corridor, all exactly the same size and
exactly alike. Upon the upper floor, too, there were
three rooms upon each side of the corridor, also all
of the same size and exactly alike.
It has never been rightly decided which was the back
and which the front of the Clover Hill house, for at
either end of the corridor there were big porticoes,
supported by the same number of high white fluted
columns, and approached by the same number of half-
decayed wooden steps. The up-stair corridor led
through doors on to the roofs of these porticoes, from
whence, under the over-arching leaves of aged oaks,
could be seen glorious views of woodlands, fields, and
distant mountains. In Uncle Ran's time, you may
be sure, no such things would have happened ; but
in the utilitarianism of Thacker tradition it was no
uncommon thing, after washing-day, to see the
family linen hanging in graceful festoons over

I90 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
the carved railings, and fluttering in the wanton
wind. The doors and the windows of the Clover Hill
mansion may possibly one day have fitted tolerably,
though even in an old Virginia house of the most
approved kind such a condition would have been
hardly orthodox. Now, however, they had sprung at
their lintels, and gaped at their hinges to such an
extent that Mar'se Dab used to swear that the house
was not merely not weather-proof, "but it warn't
hardly dog-proof"
From the early spring to the late fall of the year,
however, there were few more charming spots in all
Virginia than Clover Hill. Mar'se Dab could then
boast with justice " ther was 'ar stirrin' thar " (for he
had dropped hopelessly, I am sorry to say, into the
vernacular), " when the heat elsewhere was enough to
kill a mule."
To nature's charms, however, I fear Mar'se Dab
was almost insensible. He was not devoid of senti
ment of a kind. Indeed it was partly that, I think,
that made him so reactionary. But it was a senti
ment that hugged insensibly all time-honoured
Virginia rural customs — a sentiment that made him
cling obstinately to old-fashioned ways, to be happy
among big gangs of negroes, to love the very sight
of a tobacco-field, to put up almost cheerfully with
roads bottomless for mud, with gates that would not
swing, with barns through which the rain-storms soaked,
with houses through which the winter winds blew.
When the Captain took up his abode at Clover
Hill, the land was in very fair condition. The over-

MAR'SE DAB AFTER THE WAR 191
seer, who had had it in charge so long for the Digges
family, had been a skilful and thrifty farmer. Being
too old to be drafted for the army, he had remained
at home all through the war. The estate had never
been too heavily stocked with negroes, and had been
seeded largely to grass and clover, the very acme of
high farming in the South of those days.
When slavery and capital together were swept away
by the war, and the conditions of southern life prac
tically revolutionised, most sensible men recognised
that a different system of farming must be pursued.
Numbers of the upper class flinched from the pros
pect, and went into business. Others set to work
with good resolutions, and kept them. Many, again,
made the resolutions, but did not keep them. Mar'se
Dab, however, when he came to Clover Hill after
the war, not only showed no inclination whatever
towards agricultural reform, but he did not even
make any profession of such intentions. He did
even more than this. He openly and emphatically
repudiated any such course, and declared that the
style of farming that had been good enough for his
fathers was good enough for him. He was too old,
he said, to start raising clover and grass, when he'd
been all his life trying to kill it in the corn rows. So
Mar'se Dab "went into terbaccer." He collected
double as many free negroes on the place, both
renters and hired hands, as there had been slaves
before the war, and commenced that enlightened
course which finally reduced Clover Hill from toler
able fertility to absolute barrenness.
Mar'se Dab, moreover, was more fortunate than

192 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
many of his neighbours ; for when he married, he got
with his wife five thousand dollars of hard money,
which, in old man Thacker's thrifty hands, had some
how or other survived the general wreck of war.
Clover Hill was a picturesque property, undulating
enough to give happy variety to the landscape, with
out too great abruptness for cultivation. The pre
vailing colour of the soil was red, which gives such a
warm look to fallowed hillsides when contrasted with
the green of woodlands and growing crops. Of
meadow-land there was plenty in former days — snug
flats of rich alluvial soil between the hills, whose
fertility was sufficient to resist, without deterioration,
the average treatment of the old Virginia " rip and
tear " system, which was saying much. In the over
seer's time, and probably in the time, too, of old
Uncle Ran, waving timothy grass and rank clover
had flourished there and glistened in the heavy dews
of the bright June mornings. When I first knew
the place the backs of the negroes in hay time used
to bend low, and the perspiration pour from their
ebony faces as they swished their mowing blades
through the heavy growth. Little tinkling streams
all overgrown with alders and grape-vines, coursed
their way down the valleys ; and very troublesome
they grew in flood times if treated, as Mar'se Dab
used to treat them, with contemptuous neglect.
At the far end of the place where Buffalo Creek,
which bounded it on one side, crossed the high road
to Shucksville, which bounded it on the other, there
stood a venerable wooden edifice which, together with
the hamlet attached, was known as Digges' Mills

MAR'SE DAB AFTER THE WAR 193
Here the corn and wheat of the neighbourhood had
been ground ever since there had been any to grind,
which was a good long time. From an Old World
standpoint, perhaps, it was not very ancient, but at
any rate it looked it. While the hum and drone of
the wheel and the flashing of the waters over its black
and sodden timbers, and the spray that sparkled on
the mossy rocks beneath, and the rustic bridge of
chestnut trunks that crossed the stream, and the huge
weeping-willow from which it swung, made a picture
that on sunny summer days it was both cool and
pleasant to behold. Besides the mill there was a
store, where Mar'se Dab had, in his earlier prosperous
days, a ready and extensive credit with Captain Top-
fodder the merchant. In the days of his too evident
decline, he had an account even greater still, whose
remote settlement agitated greatly the waking hours
of that worthy ex-commodore of canal-boats.
Mar'se Dab's wages to his hired hands, and the
advances to his tenants, came more and more, as time
went on, in the shape of little notes on the torn leaf
of a pocket-book, written in pencil, to the long-suffer
ing Captain. There were whole files of these scrubby
little remnants stored away in the desk behind the
counter, running after this fashion mostly : —
" To Cap. Topfodder. — Please supply Chris'
Johnson with goods to am*- $1.75, — Y"^- friend, D.
Digges."
The Captain began to wish he hadn't been quite such
a friend to Dabney Digges. As he sat tilted back in
his straw-bottomed chair on the store porch, squirting O

194 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
tobacco-juice over the railing and calling to his
customers, as they rode past, to " lite and set awhile;
he ruminated over the possibilities of how upon earth
at this late date he could alter matters without
appearing unneighbourly. The Captain did get so
far as to say in public that " Dab Digges was the
hardest man to git money out of in North Berkeley."
Besides the mill and the store there was a wheel
wright's shop, whither ploughs and waggon bodies and
dilapidated buggies retired for repair for indefinite
periods, and grew weather-scarred and almost mossy
from long hope deferred. There was the forge, too,
of a blacksmith, who was always out of coal or " gone
away to 'tend his crap," and an Episcopal church,
that had of late years found it exceedingly difficult
to procure, or at any rate to retain, the services of a
parson. Mar'se Dab was a man rough of speech, as has
been implied. He didn't say negro, nor even nigro,
but always used the word " nigger," which is a variety
that, strange as the statement may appear to outsiders,
is seldom used by well-bred Southern men, and never
by ladies. " Those durned niggers 1 " Mar'se Dab
used to be fond of saying, " ought to be put right
back in slavery, — a triflin', no 'count parcel of
scoundrels." This was of course mere verbosity. The Captain
would have been miserable if he had not been
surrounded by his dusky crowd. Most people in the
neighbourhood agreed, in a great measure, with the
sentiments so baldly expressed by Mar'se Dab ; but
they acted up to their opinions, and dispensed as much

MAR'SE DAB AFTER THE WAR 195
as possible with Ethiopian assistance. But the
Captain did nothing of the kind. As I have already
stated, he collected all he could lay hands on, and
established them upon the Clover Hill plantation.
When he was remonstrated with upon the African
centre he had set up, he used to reiterate the vices
and the worthlessness of the dusky race with much
greater warmth of feeling than the subject required,
and then would suddenly break out, " Dawg my skin !
I must have a big force of these scoundrels, if I am
going to make any terbaccer worth speaking about.
I tell you, sir, folks may talk about grass, and stock,
and fruit, and suchlike. Terbaccer made old Virginia,
not termaters, and, by golly ! I'm goin' to hold on by
it any way."
Now Mar'se Dab did really understand the science
of tobacco growing and curing. It was the manage
ment of free labour, and the keeping in heart, by
judicious cultivation, a limited amount of land, that
beat him.
Now, in Virginia, it is generally estimated that a
labourer is required for every 20,000 hills of tobacco.
As the Captain used to aim at planting 400,000 hills,
or about 80 acres, it will be understood that he was
compelled to have about him what was a large force of
hands for these later days and a limited estate. For
it was not only the tobacco, but the 300 or 400 acres
of maize, not to speak of the wheat he had to grow
"to bread his folks," as he would have said, and to
keep his horses and mules, and milch-cows and
hogs. When I first knew the Captain intimately his
O 2

196 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
system was in full blast. I have mentioned that he
recommenced his life with some ready money, as he
did also free from debt. Now there were two or three
years, about that period when prices were exceptionally
high, for artificial reasons that originated with the war.
Mar'se Dab's credit was good, and he seemed for a
time to be actually prospering in spite of his defiance
of economic laws. He came to believe in himself
more than ever. He ridiculed his neighbours who
sowed clover and agitated themselves on the subject
of the improvement of stock. His loudest and most
tremendous laughs were got off at the expense of a
cousin of his wife's, who had set out fifty acres of apple-
trees in the mountains. When I last saw that cousin
he was netting 4000 dollars a-year from his orchards,
and poor Mar'se Dab was in Western Kansas ! Well,
as I was saying, " the pitching " of a great crop was
the main idea in those days, not only on Clover Hill,
but on many other plantations too. The negroes in
the neighbourhood would flock to Clover Hill before
Christmas-time to try and rent a bit of land or hire
out to Mar'se Dab. Many too of the regular old
Digges servants from Newtown again united their
fortunes with the family in this manner.
It was noticed, however, that these last seldom
stayed more than a year. The true reason of this
may perhaps best be given in the words of old Uncle
Ephraim, one of the most attached of the bunch. It
was a confidential communication, it is true, and
delivered across the boundary fence which separated
my own woodland from the tobacco patch on Mar'se
Dab's land, which old Ephraim was working. After

MAR'SE DAB AFTER THE WAR 197
all these years, however, there could, I think, be no sort
of objection to recalling some of the old man's
remarks. " Mar'se Dab," said the patriarch, " is a mighty good
man, but he ain't like his pa. I bin raised with
quality folks, and knows what they is. Thar ain't no
fambly in the State as held therselves higher or more
'sclusive than our folks done useter. But Mar'se Dab 1
Lor' ! he don't seem to have no respect for hisself or
fambly. It make me feel mighty bad to hear him
cutt'n up, a rippin' and a swarin' an a hollerin' roun'
like the ordinary white folks at this upper 'een of the
county, that ain't had no raisin' wuth speakin' 'bout.
I was a bit of a chap down at the big house when
Mar'se Dab wur horned, an' when I heern him lettin'
hisself down an' gwine on in sich a way, I feel power
fully moved to say suthin. But he's a rough man,
Mar'se Dab, an' like as not to burst me all to pieces.
It 'ud go mighty hard with the ole Miss' if she wur
alive and know'd. She'd get after me, too, fur cert'n
and sho', if she thote I 'lowed Mar'se Dab to run on
without speakin' any. I'll be powerful oneasy when I
see ole Miss' at de judgment, when de hearts of
all men * * *."
The asterisks represent one of those exhortations to
which Uncle Reuben, since he took religion, had been
addicted. But sound as was his doctrine, and eloquent
as was his language, there is no space for even a
sample of it. Upon this occasion, however, it was cut
short, and the venerable man's attention turned some
what abruptly to earthly things, by his mule, which he
had left standing in the tobacco-rows, getting his leg

198 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
over the trace-chain, and showing a disposition to
leave the field, plough and all.
" Stan' still, sah ! What you warnt to be cutt'n up
fo'. It look like to me yo' oughter hev movin' roun
enough, and be prepar'd to stay quiet once in a while,
and study over yo' foolishness."
Unc' Ruben's mind, however, was not yet un
burdened, for he returned upon another count.
" It ain't Mar'se Dab only. 'Spite of the rumpus
and fuss he raises 'roun him, thar ain't no kinder-
hearted man north of Jeems river, or dis side of the
Blue Ridge. I could put up with his rearin' an'
pitchin' roun', for the 'spect I bar to the family, but,
bless grashus 1 the niggers that Mar'se Dab's c'llected
on this yer place ! No one ever heern' me say a word
'gainst nobody ; but I swar de solemn truth that the
cuU'd folks on dis yer plantation is de meanest, no
'countest, crowd of niggers that Gord ever made. I
ain't ^//together 'sprised, for I know'd what this yer
north end of the country wur befo' the war. I don't
hold as what some o' these yer plain white folks
warn't mighty good masters to their servants ; but
then a cull'd man as ain't belonged to a good fambly,
whar is he .¦' He don't know nuthin' 'bout manners
or 'spect for hisself. Now, sah, I bin raised, I has !
I bin raised ! I ain't growed up like a sassafras bush
in a ole turn'd-out field anyhow 1 Thar's a heap o'
difference 'tween white folks, an' thar's a heap o'
difference 'tween cuU'd folks, too. Fur a gen'leman
as has bin raised among cuU'd folks, Mar'se Dab
beats anythin' I ever seed. He don't seem to know
more 'bout 'em than ef he wur a Northern man. He

MAR'SE DAB AFTER THE WAR 199
don't study neither character nor princerples. Every
body layed out to git on this yer place, as they
know'd it war a good plantation, an' that Mar'se Dab
had right smart money by his wife an' a good force
of mules. Dis yer nigger or dat ar nigger cum 'long
about 'hirin'-time, an' talks big to Mar'se Dab
'bout the wuk he'll do if de boss '11 guv him a house
an' land for de comin' year. He runs on mightily
maybe about how he's bin mindin' a team for his ole
mar'se since de s'render, an' how as his ole mar'se
was jes fit to kill himself at losin' sich a good
hand ; but how his wife took sorter ailin, an' a whole
parcel of foolishness which Mar'se Dab takes stock
in. Den dis yer nigger tells Mar'se Dab he'll be
satisfied with half the terbaccer an' a third of the
corn ; an' as Mar'se Dab's bin givin' half the corn, he
thinks he's makin' the finest kind of agreement,
not studyin' neither character nor princerples.
" Gord knows whar sich niggers wur raised — up in
de mount' ns as like as not." (The supreme contempt
at such a source of origin, expressed by Uncle
Reuben's shrug of the shoulders, could only be
thoroughly appreciated by a local expert.) " Dar's
bin a heap o' folk an' a heap o' house-buildin' on dis
yex plantation since de war. Dar soon won't be a
house-log stanin' or a board-tree left in the woods.
Dar's bin land clur'd so nat'ral po' it 'ud skeercely
sprout a black-eyed pea in the first crap. I mind the
time when I usetest to come up 'yer in busy times. It
wur a fine place, an' de craps wur powerful heavy
den. The wheat wuz so rank I jes told the Jedge —
Mar'se Dab's pa — that ef he warnted me to go up

200 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
cradlin' wheat to Clover Hill, he'd jes have to trade
me away fur some one who could do it ; for my
rheumatics was too bad, an' I couldn't an' I warn't
agwine ter do it, not if he cut me in pieces fur it.
Now, bless grashus ! the heads ain't within hollerin'
distance of one another.
" Yes, sah, dar's a heap too many folk on this yer
plantation, an' mighty poo' kind of folk, too. It look
like to me as if Mar'se Dab had been ridin' round the
country fo' a yer or two an' skeered up all the meanest
niggers 'twixt here an' the big mount'ns, an' sot 'em
plum' down in a muss. Sich a stealin' an' lyin' an'
cussin' an' rippin' an' rearin' an' tramplin' roun' never
wur seed, an' yet thar's mo' talk 'bout 'ligion here
than most anywhar. To see 'em scufflin' up to the
mourners'-bench on preachin' Sundays — 0-o-o-o-ee !
" I laffed fit to kin myself las' Sunday when Brer
Moses from Poplar Creek was guvin' a open-ar
preachin' for the noo church fund. Well, sah, when
Unc' Mose' had got through de preachin' he tiik off
his felt hat, an' axed me to sukkerlate it roun' for
the c'lection. Fo' Gord, sah, that ar ole hat of
Brer Mose' passed aroun' from han' to han' o' that
bowdaciously 'ligious crowd, and nar a quarter nor a
ten-cent piece, nor even a nickel, wur drapped in the
crown of it. I saw Brer Mose' face wukin' powerfully
as the empty ole hat were comin' roun' to him again,
an' I could see he wur pretty mad. When it got to
the man as wur stanin' next him, he reached out his
han' and grabbed dat ar hat in de biggest kind of a
hurry — sorter makin' out as if he wur skeered he
wouldn't han'le it agin. Well, sah. Brer Mose' in

MAR'SE DAB AFTER THE WAR 201
front o' all de folks fust looked at one side of de
hat an' den at de other, an' den he crams it on
his head, an' hollered out, 'Well, bredren, you
isn't showin' yo'selves by yo' deeds 'preciative of
all de blessins showered upon yo', but tank de Lord
I'se got my ole hat back anyway, — dat's somethin' in
these yer hard times.' In all yo' born days, sah, you
never seed a crowd of niggers look so mean. No,
sah ; I reckon I'll git on down to the old place agin.
Mar'se Ran, so long as he's thar, '11 give me a house
an' terbaccer patch. I ain't suited to these times
nohow. A heap a hurrain' an' fuss was made 'bout
dis yer friddom ^ an' that ; but I b'lieve I'd as lief
things had stayed as they wur."
Uncle Reuben was, of course, a privileged person.
His years, loyalty, respectability, and "dignified
manners " procured for him a licence and liberty of
speech that are submitted to, the world over, in
ancient and faithful domestics.
" Durn that old man Reuben ! " said Mar'se Dab to
me one day not long after this.
"What's he been up to .?" said I. " He's the best
hand you've got."
" Oh, Lord, yes ! He's a good enough hand ; but
I'm blamed if I stand his nonsense any more 1 He's
just been spoiled down at home by our folks, and got
to think I can't live without him. What d'ye think
he did yesterday .¦" He came up to the house 'bout
sundown and said he wanted to speak to me. I
thought, of course, a horse was sick or something, and
went out to him ; and I'll be dorgonned if he didn't
1 Freedom.

202 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
stand and lecture me for a half hour, and would have
gone on for two hours if I'd 'a let him. He run on
about my cut'n har, and said no Digges had ever cut
har before ; and that my pa and ma would get up
out o' their graves and ramble roun' in 'straction if
they thote I was goin' on so. As sure as I stand here,
if the old scamp didn't go on to tell me he was
afeared I hadn't any o' the old Digges dignity, and
Lord knows what, till I took up a swingle tree and
told the old scoundrel I'd burst his head open if he
gave me any more of his sass ! ' Oh, that's right —
that's right, Mar'se Dab,' says he. ' Kill me, sah — for
Gord's sake kill me 1 I bin yer in this wicked world,
long 'nuff anyway. I'se made my peace, an' am
ready to go right away. I'll suttenly go straight to
the ole mar'se and missus, an' tell them how yo' cutt'n
up an' swarin' an' rippin' aroun'. Yes, knock me on
de head, Mar'se Dab ; I ain't keerin' much anyway.
Folks' ways these times ain't my ways. I nussed you,
Mar'se Dab, when you was so small you hadn't
hardly commenced to notice. I shuk down apples
for you, Mar'se Dab, befo' ever you put pants on.
Go on, Mar'se Dab ; kill me, sah ! You're mad now
an' jes' think I'm sassin'. One d'ese yer fine days
you'll say old man Reuben warn't sich a fule as I
thote.' If you'd heard the old fellow, you'd have
been powerfully tickled. I shouldn't have cared, but
the old man raised such a fuss, a lot of the hands
came round to listen."
So Reuben, the last of the old generation, went, and
Clover Hill continued on its downhill course. The
Captain's notions of the capacity of land were drawn

MAR'SE DAB AFTER THE WAR 203
from no human standpoint. He ploughed up the hill
sides ; he ploughed up the bottoms. Noble groves of
oak and chestnut fell before the destroying axe on
ridges infertile for cultivation, and that the common-
sense of two centuries had left intact. So it was year
after year, red-land and grey-land, upland and bottom,
turned and heaved unceasingly beneath the recklessly-
driven ploughs. Year after year the axe rang, and
the toppling trees crashed for new tobacco-ground.
The negroes sang and shouted, and Mar'se Dab
holloaed and stormed, happy in the pandemonium he
had created, and hugging even closer, as their evil
fruit became apparent, the worst traditions of the past.
Tobacco, tobacco, wheat, wheat, corn, oats, wheat,
oats, corn, corn  This, I think, would fairly have
described Mar'se Dab's method of rotation. This
amazing tax upon the soil was not modified by any
outside assistance. Some phosphate or stimulating
fertiliser of a like kind was dropped in the hill with
the second crop of tobacco ; but the Captain's
favourite dictum was that " commercial fertilisers
would break any man." There was, however, an
immense bank of barn-yard manure accumulated
round the stables, scorched by the suns and bleached
by the rains, it is true, of many years, but still by no
means valueless. Never, Mar'se Dab declared, when
twitted by his friends upon the subject, could he find
time to devote his waggons and horses to such a
secondary matter.
The rotation above formulated with tolerable
accuracy covers, it will be noticed, some ten years.
This was about the length of Mar'se Dab's reign at

204 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
Clover Hill, the year of collapse, when the long-
suffering soil at last gave out in indignation, and
absolutely refused to bear further the burden so un
justly laid upon it, and the property, in the estimation
even of the most reactionary Ethiopians, was " run
clean out." The corn-stalks had shrunk to the size of
your Httle finger, and, save in the rich hollows by the
streams, produced nothing but " nubbins." ^ The
wheat-straw was so miserably short, and the ears so
scanty, that Uncle Reuben's forcible illustration as to
their being scarcely within hollerin' distance of one
another, was by no means so far-fetched. The oat-
crops had grown so weak that the briars and bushes,
rioting in the filthy soil, simply choked them out of
existence ; while the fierce winter rains had cut gullies
down the hillsides, which the thunderstorms of
summer rent into ravines so deep that men and mules
nearly disappeared from sight when they floundered
through them.
Mar'se Dab "died fighting." It was the extra
ordinarily dry year of 1 87 — that finished him. The
sight of the crops on Clover Hill that year made
venerable agriculturists weep who remembered the
glories of the past. Mar'se Dab believed in tobacco
till the last, nor was there anything unreasonable in
his faith, considered in the abstract. It was his mode
of applying it that was wrong. His tobacco he
managed admirably. His plant-beds were burnt in
good season. When the spring frosts cut other folks'
young plants, or the fly got them in cold, dry weather,
Mar'se Dab had always a plentiful supply. When
1 Short deformed heads.

MAR'SE DAB AFTER THE WAR 205
" planting out " came in June, the Captain always had
his land ploughed, harrowed, and hilled up, ready for
the first good " season,'' and everybody in the planta
tion had ample warning of the coming rain. For so
long as Uncle Reuben was there, he was better than
fifty barometers. The signs had never been known
to fail. When " de mis'ry " took that venerable hench
man "in de left shoulder, there'd be fallin' wedder
befo' day, cert'n and sho'."
No growing crop was better tended than Mar'se
Dab's tobacco ; and if some of the tenants' houses
" cured up a little blotchy or ran some " during that
critical period, it was because the boss, "rustler"
though he was, couldn't be everywhere at the same
time. But while Mar'se Dab's tobacco was well done
by, everything else was neglected ; and economic laws
were defiantly and aggressively flouted. Clover Hill
was not quite in the real tobacco-belt — that group of
counties where the highest grade of leaf is produced,
and where other crops may be safely made subservient
to tobacco culture. These are technicalities, however,
that would only bore the non -agricultural reader. I
will simply quote once more that oracle. Uncle Reuben,
who was fond of declaring that " any one who put his
main 'pendance on terbaccer in North Berkeley, 'ud
git inter the porehouse sho'." Mar'se Dab put his
'pendance on tobacco. He didn't go to the poorhouse,
because he had a brother-in-law in Western Kansas
of a kindly turn of mind ; but the latter alternative
was, I fear, only one degree removed from the former
in the Captain's mind.
I can recall his figure, as it were but yesterday.

2o6 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
sitting on the roadside fence on a hot June morning,
looking wistfully towards the west for the long-
expected rain that would enable him to plant out his
tobacco. One glance at Mar'se Dab was sufficient to discover
that he ignored the assistance of the tailor even more
completely than he did that of the manure-merchant.
But there is method and not madness in this. In his
patriotic fervour, Mar'se Dab swore that he would
wear nothing that was not manufactured in old Vir
ginia. To a man who was fastidious about his
personal appearance, such a resolution would have
amounted (in those days anyway) to an astonishing
pitch of self-denial. It was very praiseworthy in
Mar'se Dab, no doubt, but I don't think it weighed
oppressively upon him.
He had yellow homespun pants, the cloth of which
had been woven by an old lady of colour up on the
mountain, who still possessed that disappearing art,
while the cut forcibly suggested Mrs. Digges's sewing-
machine. His boots were made by Uncle Reuben,
who solaced himself in his cabin during the long
winter evenings with shoemaking and the weaving of
baskets. I once had a pair of boots from Uncle
Reuben myself; but we will draw a veil over the
recollection, and hasten on. Mar'se Dab despised a
waistcoat, even in cold weather. His coat was always
out at both elbows : whether this was because he got
the cloth by the piece from the new woollen mills at
Barksville or not, I can't say. It was, I think, a kind
of defiant tatterdemalionism that the Captain liked to
hug as a sort of mute undying protest against the dis-

MAR'SE DAB AFTER THE WAR 207
ruption of the South's old institutions. For however
great his financial difficulties might have been, they
were not on a scale so trifling as to necessitate an ex
posure of both elbows. When his neighbours joked
with him about his ragged edges, he used to say,
" times were too durned hard for fancy dressin'."
Mar'se Dab's hatred of Yankees was conspicuous even
at a period when sectional bitterness was extreme. It
made your flesh creep to hear the pains and penalties
to which he consigned in fancy his fellow-citizens north
of Maryland. At election gatherings his defiant shout
was the terror of Republican stump-orators and carpet
baggers. At the same time, I am perfectly sure that
if a Connecticut man, even though he were loaded
down with wooden nutmegs, stood in need of a dinner,
and Mar'se Dab had only a crust, he would have
shared it with him.
There is something, I think, in the culture of
tobacco, as pursued from time immemorial in the Old
Dominion, that appeals to the patriarchal instincts of
the conservative Virginian. The innumerable waggon-
loads of wood that are set to blaze upon the new
plant-beds in midwinter, to kill the germs of weeds
and prepare the woodland soil for the tender seed ;
the crashing and tumbling of the forest-trees when
" new grounds " are being opened ; the cheery shout
ing of the negroes, and the unwonted energy that any
momentous undertaking, more especially if it is con
nected with tobacco, calls forth ; the excitement and
rush of transplanting from the beds to the field in
early summer, when the necessary rain, perhaps, is
scarce, and opportunities consequently few.

2o8 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
Then there is the pleasure of watching, through the
hot days of July and August, the gradual growth and
expansion of the broadening gummy leaves to the
sun, and all the risks of shattering hail-storms and of
early night- frosts in September catching the"crink-
ley " ripening plants before they are fit to cut. Then
the critical period of curing ; and lastly, the long
journey, plunging through the mud to the market,
where the interests of master and man, of landlord
and tenant, are absorbed for a short and exciting
period in the yellow-labelled heaps upon the ware
house floor, which the auctioneer is knocking down to
local and foreign buyers. Perhaps it is in the rapid
fluctuation of the prices bid for tobacco and the
speculative flavour thus imparted to its cultivation
that forms a leading attraction.
Everything to do with tobacco Mar'se Dab loved
with a hereditary devotion to the time-honoured pro
duct of his native land. Still the making of tobacco,
in his estimation, had gone to the dogs. The very
seasons had altered since the war ; the sun seemed
to shine less brightly ; the moon to shed a dimmer
light (and Mar'se Dab believed in the moon); the
summer dews to fall more sparingly than of yore. So
at any rate Mar'se Dab was thinking, when we left
him just now sitting upon the roadside, looking west
ward at the thunder-clouds.
The tobacco-land is hilled up, but scarcely half of
it as yet planted, though the young plants in the beds
are actually pushing one another out of the ground
from their size and vigour. The earth is dry and
parched, and in ten days it will be July — and upon

MAR'SE DAB AFTER THE WAR 209
July-planted tobacco, everybody in Virginia knows,
no 'pendance, as old man Reuben would say, can be
placed. The great black cloud comes nearer and
nearer ; woods and mountains are absorbed, and
vanish into the approaching gloom, while from the
inky void there breaks gradually upon the silent air
the hoarse roar of waters dashing upon a myriad
leaves. Mar'se Dab's hopes have ceased to have even
that slight element of uncertainty that is inseparable
from the word. " It's come this time, any way," says
he, as he turns homeward, full in his mind of the big
crop he will now pitch. The very spray of the com
ing storm scuds on the newly awakened breeze that
is flying before it ; and the red dust of the turnpike,
as if its last chance for a frolic had come, whirls this
way and that in the changing currents of the thunder-
laden air. Everywhere there is the hurry of prepara
tion for the coming storm. The Clover Hill domestics
are hard at work rushing the family linen and mat
tresses off the front portico. Aunt Judy is racing
after the young turkeys ; the negroes have unyoked
their teams from the corn-rows, and are hastening up
to the barnyard, singing tearful dirges for joy at the
" prospec' of a season." The spring calves in the yard
are galloping hither and thither with their tails in
the air, like quadrupeds demented ; and old Uncle
Reuben, at his cabin-door, is reminding Aunt Milly
that " he'd bin lookin' fur weather " (inspired of course
by the sensations in his shoulder), "but hardly
reckoned it would cum befo' sundown."
Here, happy in the prospect of at any rate planting
out one more tobacco-crop, we must leave Mar'se
P

2IO SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
Dab. If he was obstinate and prejudiced, there was
no kinder-hearted man, as Uncle Reuben said, " north
of Jeems river." If he was loud-mouthed and boister
ous, and stormed at his hands in a way that made
him conspicuous in a place where these peculiarities
are not common, it was, at the same, time, the con
fiding fashion in which he supplied these very depen
dants with the necessaries of life in advance from
year to year that hastened his downfall. His inability
to refuse security for all the bacon and corn-meal,
the cotton dresses and " pars o' shoes " that the in
mates of the twenty cabins on Clover Hill wanted, or
thought they wanted, at Captain Topfodder's, no
doubt swelled greatly the obligations that finally
crushed Mar'se Dab. How the gallant Captain came
out among the creditors I never heard, and was most
happily spared the harrowing spectacle of the sale.
The details of this great occasion, however, were
of course fully communicated. There was twelve
months' credit given, and the prices were accordingly
quite fabulous. How much was actually collected at
that remote period is of course a matter I know
nothing about. But, so far as paper went, the bidding
was so brisk and the prices so unprecedented that
Major Hogshead, the famous auctioneer from Shucks
ville, had twice to go behind the stable for a drink —
his feelings were so much overcome.
Poor Mar'se Dab, however, benefited from none of
these things. His chief creditor, a local Jew with a
Scotch name, took over the place, and here is the
advertisement of sale, cut out of the local newspaper of
that date, and kept all these years as a memento : —

MAR'SE DAB AFTER THE WAR 211
" I j'OR sale, on terms to suit purchaser, 13 miles
-L from Shucksville and i from school, store,
and mifl, situate on the old Richmond Pike, 924 acres
of fine rolling land, 100 acres original forest, 50
acres bottom-land ; fine brick Mansion, with all neces
sary Outbuildings, and 16 Cabins. Price $9,500.
Apply at the Office of this Paper."

1' 2

TWO EPISODES ON RUMBLING CREEK
I
It was just about twenty years ago that the art of
fly-fishing first dawned upon the sportsmen of the
Southern States of America. It is well known that
the latter have for all time been devoted to the chase,
but the gentle art, in any sense worthy of the name,
has till recently held no place at all in their sporting
calendar. No countries are better watered than the
five States which, from Maryland to Georgia inclusive,
face the Atlantic. No rivers were ever better stocked
with fish of the coarser variety than those which rise
in the Great Alleghany ranges, at the back of all these
States, and flow eastward to the ocean. But of the
three sporting fish of America, the salmon, black bass,
and trout, the first is not found in the South, the
second is a recent importation, while the last, though
indigenous and abundant, is confined entirely to the
aforesaid mountain ranges. And these latter, which
form the Western boundary, roughly speaking, of all
the South Atlantic States, have been always far
removed, both geographically and socially, from the or
dinary spheres of Southern life. In the countless clear
streams which furrow the wooded sides of the great

TWO EPISODES ON RUMBLING CREEK 213
Alleghany system trout have been always indigenous
and more or less abundant. But most of this romantic
country has only been opened within the last decade
or two to the knowledge of even Southerners them
selves. It has been inhabited, to be sure, for a century
and more, but mainly by the wildest, most ignorant
and lawless types of that class which generations of
slavery cast up upon the rough and waste places of
the land. We allude to the Poor Whites of the South,
a people despised and shunned by all ranks of the old
slave-owning class, and even by the very negroes
themselves ; a folk who may be said to have lived from
generation to generation amid aerial forests, and to
have been born, married, and buried in a mountain
clearing. These, however, till comparatively recent
years, were the only trout-fishers in the South, for the
very excellent reason that it was only in the wild and
romantic territory they inhabited that the trout was
found. The thousand streams that babble so tempt
ingly through Virginia and the Carolinas are, so far as
that gamest of fish is concerned, entirely barren when
once they have left the forest shades of their native
mountains. Under the hot suns of the South the
shallow waters of these mountain brooks take on a
temperature too high for trout to flourish in ; and the
fish that, before civilisation opened the lower country,
no doubt were content to abide there, are now exclus
ively found in high latitudes where beneath unbroken
forests the streams run cool and clear.
When I say that Southern landowners in old days
were not fishermen, this does not mean that the brook
or river which was certain to run through or close by

214 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
every plantation was not utilised. There were coarse
fish of various kinds everywhere, and the planter or
farmer occasionally angled for them in a desultory
fashion with clumsy tackle, as did, with perhaps
greater zest, his boys and girls and his negroes in their
spare hours. But fishing was not a sport, as it is in
England, and not one Southerner in a dozen had
ever seen a trout or stood upon the banks of a trout-
stream, though both were to be found in such abund
ance in a portion of every Southern State.^
But the half savage mountaineers were inveterate
and even enthusiastic trout-fishermen. They fished
for sport, they fished for food, and they fished to
secure the wherewithal to barter for powder and shot,
coffee and sugar, at the nearest country store. They
used the worm only, but each valley had its champion
fisherman, who was most jealous of his reputation, and
who could tell tales of trout that would have put to
the blush the greatest Ananias that ever sat in a
chimney corner of an Angler's Rest or Fisherman's
Arms in Scotland or Wales. They fished up stream
did these unkempt, illiterate children of the woods,
with short lines fastened to the end of hickory poles
fifteen feet long, and a worm on a single hook. They
were not mere pot-hunters, either, but were fond of the
sport and recognised in their rough fashion that
trout-fishing, even as they followed it, was altogether
a superior affair to catching chub and cat-fish and
horney-heads with a float in the low country rivers.
1 Many of the " summer resorts," it is true, were among the
mountains, but the mode of life there followed by most visitors
was not conducive to an intimacy with the surrounding country

TWO EPISODES ON RUMBLING CREEK 215
They firmly believed that there were no trout any
where else in the world but in their mountain gorges,
and consequently that no other people in the world
knew anything about catching them. They were
Anglo-Saxons, or Irish for the most part, by origin ;
they had no standing and no money ; their principles
were of the most lax description, and they could rarely
read or write. They seldom went off their mountains
into the very moderate civilisation that lay close at
their feet except to vote, and nobody from civilisation
in those days ever paid them a visit but a sheriffs
posse on the search for whiskey-stills, an odd cattle-
drover, or a refugee from justice.
It is my firm and well-founded belief that, in the
year 187-, I assisted in the very first invasion of the
Alleghanies south of the Potomac ever undertaken with
fly-rod and tackle. If we were not actually the first
party in the whole South to make such an assault, we
were most certainly the first that struck what was
known as the Windy Gap section of the Blue Ridge
mountains. And what consternation and astonishment
our advent created upon the now familiar waters of
Rumbling Creek I propose to make the subject of a
brief reminiscence. Our base of operations for this
notable campaign was the town of Bunkerville, a place
celebrated, I need not say, for the manufacture of
tobacco ; and it was moreover the home of the three
other sportsmen who with myself composed the
party. These three gentlemen we will call (and this
indeed without much departure from accuracy) the
Colonel, the Doctor, and the Judge. As Southerners,
though keen sportsmen otherwise, they were as a
matter of course at that time novices in the art of fly-

2i6 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
fishing ; but the Colonel and the Judge had recently
paid a visit to Scotland, and there utilising their leisure
in acquiring some practical insight into the noble
science, had returned home great enthusiasts. Their
enthusiasm they had transmitted to the untravelled
Doctor, and he had been duly entered, and carefully
coached, upon the barren surface of the Colonel's mill-
pond. Most people at so short a distance from the
Blue Ridge, for it was little over forty miles from
Bunkerville, knew that there was a good store of trout
hidden away somewhere among those great forest-
covered peaks, that could be just seen on clear days like
faint blue clouds above the horizon. But the Colonel's
great ambition was to inaugurate fly-fishing as a
Southern sport. He had brought a large assortment
of tackle from Mrs. Hogg's famous little repository in
Edinburgh, and, as he was a man, who did nothing
by halves, had paid fifty dollars in New York for
one of the then newly invented split-cane rods.
He talked trout all day on the main street to
audiences who had never risen above a languid
interest in chub and a float, and half the night upon
his porch to his family, who could not very well get
away from him.
The train would take us about halfway to our
destination. The remainder of the distance we were to
drive in the Colonel's ambulance, which his old coach
man Caleb, with tent, provisions, and the rest of our
baggage, was to take forward the previous day to the
point where our route left the railway. Bunkerville
was but a country town, and excitements were both
scarce and mild. So it was almost a matter of course
that its weekly organ should indulge in sundry jests

TWO EPISODES ON RUMBLING CREEK 217
at the expense of our venture. The Colonel was
recommended to take revolvers instead of "fishing-
poles," and he was congratulated, I remember, on
his foresight in " securing the services of the first
medical man in the community," which it was hinted
he would be likely to need. But old Caleb, the
Colonel's coloured coachman and gardener, who had
been included in the expedition as part of the
establishment, took it much more seriously. The
Colonel had owned him before the war (not then so
very long over), and now it was jokingly said he owned
the Colonel ; at any rate he was one of the old and
privileged sort. Now there was nothing a well-con
stituted Southern negro despised and dreaded so much
as rough wild scenery and rough low white men.
Caleb did not fancy this job at all, and confided to me
at some length his sentiments on the subject. He
declared that there were more mean men upon those
mountains than there were hairs upon his own head.
It passed his understanding, moreover, that any
civilised white men should deliberately precipitate
themselves into a wilderness inhabited by savages
and bears. He had heard, upon the very best
authority, that the mouth of hell was situated in the
neighbourhood of our proposed operations, and that
every dark of the moon the devil himself, with live
coals for eyes, rode astride of a big black bear along
the summit of the Windy Range. Fox-hunting and
partridge-shooting Caleb accepted with approval as
the sport of gentlemen, but these new-fangled ideas
of the Colonel about trout-fishing gave the old hench
man the utmost concern, seeing the places and the
company into which they would lead him. And all

2i8 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
this, too, when the mill-pond at home was full of
chub, and the Colonel could sit on the bank, with his
fishing pole resting on a fork, and have his meals
regular, and boys to bait his hook, and an iced julep
whenever he felt in the humour for refreshment.
No — Caleb could not understand it ; and more
particularly as he had to go himself, he condemned
the whole business in most unqualified terms. If this
is what came of emancipation he, for his part, would
recall the days of slavery with the utmost pleasure ;
though considering what a much greater personage
Caleb had been before the war, the concession, it
must be confessed, was not such a great one as it
might at first sight appear. He finished the long
speech, of which this is a summary in plain English,
by displaying a single-barrelled pistol he had pur
chased that day for a dollar, "jes ter skeer off the
bars," he said. And when two days later he met us
at the station with the waggon and our baggage, and
confided to the writer that he had it loaded in his
coat-tail pocket, I could not help feeling that a
terror much more real than the old negro's imaginings
had been added to our journey.
We were not indeed launching ourselves upon the
mountains entirely without an introduction. For it
so happened that an old sergeant ^ of the Colonel's
ragged, but valiant, regiment was a sort of headman
among the mountaineers of the valley for which we
were bound. He could write a little, or, as he
expressed it, "could scratch some," and had sent
word to his old commanding officer to come along
whenever he felt like it. " I'll be mitey glad," he
^ See page 143.

TWO EPISODES ON RUMBLING CREEK 219
wrote, " tu teche you alls how tu cotch trout.'' He
little thought what we were going to teach him.
We drove for twenty miles through a rolling arable
country whose bright red soil showed off to exquisite
perfection the rich greens of the growing crops and
the freshly mantling woodlands. As we approached
the mountains the fields turned gray, the homesteads
grew humbler, and the red unmetalled roads changed
to stony tracks, strewn with boulders and crossed
continually by impetuous streams fresh from their
mountain home. Old Caleb, in a steady half audible
monotone, cursed the country, as his horses, unused
to rocks, slipped heavily on to the pole, or lunged
forward on their collars with spasmodic and uneasy
jerks. " You an' me, Charley," we heard him growl
to his near horse, who had almost been on his nose,
bin used ter travellin' on roads not to crawlin' up,
the bed of a creek among wild Injuns."^ By the
time we reached the actual foot of the range, where
the ex-sergeant's house, we had good reason for
believing, was situated, the sun had sunk behind the
great wall of mountains which here towered above us
to the height of some 4,000 feet ; but against the
crimson trail that it had left we could plainly see the
outlines of the stunted pines and wind-swept chest
nuts that crowned the topmost ridges. All below,
however, was rapidly merging into a black chaos. Of
the terrors which that vast void contained Caleb was
no doubt thinking when his horses halted abruptly in
1 It may be worth noting, lest Caleb should be taken too
seriously, that even a hundred years before the date of our
visit, the noble red man was but a memory on these mountains.

220 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
their tracks, and the old man, calling out that there
was a bear in the road, begged us to take the reins
while he extracted the pistol from the depths of his
long coat-tails. It was not a bear however this time
but Pete Robison, who, it must be confessed, was
remarkably like one. We must leave to imagination
the cordial greetings that passed between him and the
Colonel, and merely remark that he piloted us safely
to his log-house, which stood upon the bank of
Rumbling Creek, just where it issued from the moun
tain. Here, on Pete's circumscribed grass plot in
front of his house, we unlimbered, lit our fire, pitched
our tent, and with the invaluable help of the Sergeant
made everything snug for the night. It was late
before we had finished our supper, and sitting round
the camp-fire smoking, began seriously to discuss
operations with Pete. The latter was a middle-sized,
but powerful and sinewy man, with a head and face
so covered with masses of tangled black hair, that
Caleb might have been almost excused for mistaking
him in the dark for a bear. He was now, too, in
high good humour, for, though better off than most
mountaineers, he rarely tasted good wheat bread,
butter, sugar-cured ham, or Mocha coffee, and still
more rarely all at one meal, with a glass of old
Bourbon whiskey afterwards. " You've brought a
right smart chance of whiskey along with you, I
hope, Cunnel ? " said he.
" Two gallons," said the Colonel, pointing with his
pipe-stem to a demijohn (not old Bourbon) within the
circle of light ; " why .'' "
" Them mount'n boys is apt to be a bit techy with

TWO EPISODES ON RUMBLING CREEK 221
strangers," he answered, jerking his thumb up towards
the dark masses above us.
And Pete then proceeded to explain that scarcely
any strangers were ever seen upon the mountain,
except a sheriffs posse hunting horse-thieves or
whiskey-stills, and that our presence, even as fisher
men, might excite suspicions which he would find it
necessary to allay. But he declared that his inter
vention would be greatly simplified if he had a good
supply of whiskey at his back. In any case, he
proposed to cut us some fishing-poles the first thing
in the morning.
The Colonel's reply was to reach over for the bundle
of rods that happened to be near him, and pass them
to Pete.
" Well, I'll be dorgonned," said the electrified back
woodsman. " Is thar a jinted pole in each o' them
gray bags ? "
" There is," said the Colonel.
Pete seemed overcome with an emotion too deep
for words. He had only once handled one of these
strange weapons it appeared, and that was when he
was away in the army. But many a time and often
had he descanted upon that notable incident to his
brother fishermen in the mountain. It was not, how
ever, he declared, till he had thrown one or two
scoffers into the creek, that they had consented to
believe in his tale, and in the existence of such fabulous
implements. And now, behold, on his own river, and
right under his very nose, lay a whole bundle of
them !
But Pete was to be much more astonished than

222 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
this before the night was many minutes older.
" Cunnel," said he, when he had recovered from this
first shock, " I reckon' you'll be lookin' for me to dig
you some worms in the mornin'."
" Worms be hanged," said the Colonel. Pete was
perhaps a little surprised, possibly hurt, at the warmth
of the Colonel's tone, but still unsuspecting, he replied
that he had heard people used crayfish, maggots, and
even paste in the low country, and suggested that we
might have brought a supply with us.
It was a great moment this for the pioneer of the
noble art of fly-fishing in the South, as he opened his
fly-book by the light of the cedar-log fire, and dis
played to the confused eyes of the champion fisherman
of Windy Range the dainty treasures of Mrs. Hogg's
repository. Pete rubbed his eyes for a moment with the back
of his hand in deep perplexity. " Them hooks is a
heap too small, Cunnel, to carry a bait, and with all
them feathers and truck on 'em too."
"They ain't intended to carry a bait," said the
Judge striking in ; " the feathers are the bait."
" Good Lord ha' mussey, you ain't proposin' to
cotch Rumblin' Crick trout on them ar fool things } "
'' Yes, we are, and a heap of 'em too," said the
Colonel with much dignity.
The mountaineer's face was in shadow and, un
fortunately, I could not catch its expression after this
astonishing announcement, but we heard a familiar
click and the sound of a solid projectile hitting the
side of the tent, and then rolling gently down its dewy
surface. We knew it was a quid of tobacco, and

TWO EPISODES ON RUMBLING CREEK 223
understood the mingled feelings which prompted the
discharge. " Well, gentlemen," said the Sergeant, after a brief
but significant interval of silence, " I believe I'll say
good-night. I reckon I'd better get them worms in
the mornin', and see if I can't scare up some hooks."
I should like to dwell for a moment on the
splendour of the sunrise on these Southern mountains,
and endeavour, if only in some inadequate fashion, to
recall the manner in which the golden glory, driving
before it the dark shadows and the light vapours of
early dawn, steals downwards over this vast sea of
many-tinted dew-laden leaves. But space forbids,
and Pete, true to his word, had come provided with a
tin of worms, and some fearsome-looking hooks
attached to a foot or so of coarse gut. We duly and
properly expressed our gratitude, and declared that
we would gladly fall back on his supplies if our own
methods failed, but in the meantime we should try
those first. " Well, gentlemen, you alls is out on a
frolic anyway (a frolic indeed ! ), and it ain't no
business of mine ; but when you git tired flicken' them
feather-hooks aroun' I reckon you'll find the worms
come in sorter handy."
To say we had absolutely no qualms about the fly-
taking inclinations of these trout would be untrue.
But there was nothing whatever in the surrounding
conditions here to keep them from following their
natural instinct, and upon the whole we felt tolerably
confident. There were perhaps ten miles of available fishing
on Rumbling Creek above our camping-ground.

224 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
Below, the trout grew rapidly scarcer, till, after a short
neutral territory which they shared with various sorts
of coarse fish, they disappeared altogether in favour
of the latter. In the high mountains, however, they
admitted no inferior species to share their glancing
rapids and swirling pools of crystal water. They
were the ordinary American brook-trout, thefontinalis,
silver in colour, red of fin, and pink of flesh ; and
here, as one would have expected, they ran small,
sometimes three, more often four or five to the pound,
with a thin sprinkling of what Pete called whalers,
fish, that is to say, of a pound or more.
Every mile or so up the river were small clearings
in the forest, where scanty crops of corn, oats, or
tobacco struggled with weeds and briars in stump-
strewn enclosures, or beneath the giant skeletons of
what had once been living trees, killed by girdling to
save trouble to the indolent occupants. In each
clearing stood three or four cabins of unhewn logs
chinked with mud, and flanked by rude chimneys of
sticks and clay. We must not pause here to intro
duce the reader to the angular sallow-faced matrons
who sit at their spinning-wheels inside, or to their
equally sallow, but more nimble, bare-footed daughters
in big sun-bonnets, hoeing in the poor garden-patch
or washing the scanty family linen in the stream
below ; or yet to the old crones blinking over their
knitting-needles on the shady side of the house.
They are nearing their hundredth year some of these
old witches, and have known no other life since they
can remember, nor is it likely that the girls at the
brook, except by an accident, will ever know any other.

TWO EPISODES ON RUMBLING CREEK 225
And there is nothing incongruous in dropping into
the present tense as we find ourselves doing here, for
twenty years has made no difference on Rumbling
Creek. There is, perhaps, no drearier existence led
by any Anglo-Saxon females in the world than that
endured by these mountain women. What to them
are the everlasting hills and the fairyland of leaves
and glancing streams among which they are immovably
fixed .' Not much, indeed, at any time, and least of
all when fast bound in the icy stillness of fierce winter,
or even later when in the dawn of spring the biting
March winds roar through the naked forests and
whistle through the gaping chinks in their crazy
cabins. For the men there are many compensations.
They fish, and hunt, and fight, and get drunk, and
that, too, more often on whiskey that pays no tax.
But for the women it is different. American travellers
profess amazement at Connemara, but we fancy the
Connemara woman, upon the whole, suffers no more
deprivation, and most certainly leads a cheerier life,
than the wives and daughters of a considerable portion
of these Southern mountaineers.^
It was probably eight o'clock in the morning
before we got to work, and long before that hour
news had sped up the mountain that there was "a
parcel of low country folks, camped down below and
fixed up for fishing." Natural curiosity, and an
instinct for whiskey, soon provided us with an
^ This description, it should be understood, is not applicable
to the inhabitants of the limestone or natural grass regions of
the Alleghanies, who, though rough and unsophisticated, are
generally prosperous enough in their circumstances. Q

226 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
audience ; and while we were yet completing our
preparations, half a dozen woodlanders had solemnly
ranged themselves before us, and with lack-lustre
eyes, and jaws working mechanically on the inevi
table quid, were with great deliberation trying to take
in the situation. Three of them had fishing-poles,
fifteen feet long at least, over their shoulders ; another
carried a long brass-mounted Kentucky rifle. Pete
now presented us to them in due form. He explained
that we were not a sheriff's posse, nor were we sur
veyors come to inspect their ever precarious titles, nor
were we cattle-men, or anything else unpleasant, but
merely harmless individuals from Bunkerville out on
a frolic with a demijohn of whiskey, and " a sorter
notion of tryin' the trout." To this low level did
Pete's eloquence reduce us, and at the word trout he
gave such a prodigious wink at his friends that it
could have been seen halfway up the mountain.
Three of the natives had smooth, yellow faces with
receding chins, and sloping shoulders, the other two
were short and squat, and apparently covered with
hair. They wore coarse cotton shirts and homespun
trousers tucked into long boots, one or two of them,
however, being bare-footed.
The whiskey was brought out, and having shaken
our hands all round in flabby and fish-like fashion,
they declared they were mighty glad to see us, which
at the moment was beyond a doubt sincere. They
also remarked that there were plenty of trout in the
creek, adding significantly " for them as knowed how
to cotch 'em." Old Caleb in the meantime was
moving fussily about, with much parade of anxiety.

TWO EPISODES ON RUMBLING CREEK 227
and with a most solemn face, picking up stray articles,
and putting them ostentatiously into his waggon.
The drift of his movements became apparent when he
touched our elbow in passing and remarked : " Yo'
keep yo' eyes, sah, set plum on them thar men. Them
kind'll steal the teeth out'n yo' head befo' you knows
whar you is."
Pete now brought out our rods for general
admiration, which was freely accorded by our new
friends ; but that feeling was soon sunk in an amused
contempt for our ridiculous " featherhooks." Though
much the youngest in years of the party, I was a
veteran compared to the rest in the matter of fly
fishing, and proceeded to explain that I had myself
in England killed thousands of trout in this fashion.
" England, oh Lordy ! " said one of the little men.
" Why, that's the country whar there's a king as takes
a tenth of all you raise, ain't it ? " The name seemed
to stir a chord too in the memory of one of his
attenuated companions, who, rubbing his forehead cis
if to quicken thought, drawled out : " That thar's the
place Grandma useter run on 'bout so, away out
yonder t'other side of everythin', ain't it ? Her
folks come from out thar, when she was a bit of
chap." " Well," interrupted the Judge, " it's where all our
folks came from some time or other, that's as sure as
shooting. So come, let's get to work."
But the Colonel had yet another surprise in store
for the mountain. As we have said, he was a man
who did nothing by halves, and while in the old
^ Vernacular for cAild.
Q 2

228 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
country, had not failed to provide himself with
waders and brogues. In these he now appeared, and
fairly paralysed the rude audience. It was a great
sight to see him thus attired, with a new basket hung
on his back, a landing-net in one hand and his gorgeous
rod in the other, descend into the pellucid shallows of
Rumbling Creek. Such a spectacle could never have
been conceived even by the wildest imagination on the
mountain. But the Colonel, honest man, looked
proudly conscious of the solemnity of the occasion,
and maintained a dignity befitting the inauguration
of a great sport. As he waded into the streamy tail
of a most beautiful pool, one could almost fancy
him consecrating the waters, before proceeding to
open this new epoch in the history of Southern
angling. The mountaineers stood in a row upon the bank,
with eyes and mouths wide open in amazement at
such a spectacle, Pete with his baits in reserve at their
head. The Colonel was not a great expert, but he was
quite good enough for the trout of Rumbling Creek,
that had never seen an artificial fly in their lives, and
there was moreover a breeze behind him. As he let
out his line and made the usual preliminary casts,
there was an audible stir among the spectators. The
first two or three serious throws up the pool provoked
some stifled merriment ; but at the next — heaven and
earth ! — up went the point of the Colonel's rod and a
six-ounce fish, fast on his tail-fly, leaped a foot into
the air. Never shall we forget the excitement among
those lethargic mountaineers. They fairly danced

TWO EPISODES ON RUMBLING CREEK 229
upon the shore. " Heist him out, Cunnel ! " they
yelled. " Fling him on the bank, or he's a gonner,
sho'." But the Colonel did nothing of the kind at this
supreme moment. With rod at the perpendicular, in
the most approved manner taught him in Scotland,
and his spare hand on the reel, he proceeded with the
most admirable presence of mind to wind up the
game little fish, and in the most collected manner
possible, to humour his struggles, and finally to bring
him head up into his landing-net. In less than a
minute he had another fish on, and successfully
repeated the same operation, the mountaineers in the
meantime keeping up a chorus of ejaculations not
found in Webster.
When the pool had been thoroughly fished, the
great pioneer waded leisurely to the bank, and taking
off his hat began to wipe from his forehead the signs
of that emotion which he had so admirably in other
ways suppressed, and thus delivered himself to the
amazed ¦ mountaineers : " There, gentlemen, that is
the way to catch trout. I hope to see the day when
not a bait or a worm will be dropped into this
beautiful stream on whose banks you have the good
fortune to live." As the Judge said, the Colonel
looked as if he had just been elected President of the
United States. If the thrill of the performances of
which this was the inauguration did not shake the
United States, it shook these mountains from end to
end. Men, who had believed themselves the only
trout-fishers in the world, were knocked flat upon
their back, so to speak, by strangers whose apparent

230 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
greenness in the art had provided for the mountain a
brief interval of unqualified deHght.
Exactly how many dozen trout we took on that day,
and on the two next, is of no consequence. For our
selves, and accustomed from childhood to the brushy
streams of the West of England, it was simple work
killing these unsophisticated creatures. The Colonel,
too, though so recent a convert, proved a most efficient
one. The Judge contributed his dozen or so each
day, and the Doctor, after spending two days, as he
declared, in climbing trees, was quite rewarded on the
third and last by half-a-dozen fish.
The news sped up the valley like wildfire, that there
were strange fishermen below, and that " one big man
in gum pants was trompin' up the middle o' the crick
with a dip net, flickin' a silver pole about like a buggy
whip, and rakin' out the fish like ole Scrat." Many a
mountaineer that day left his corn-row unhoed and
his tobacco-hills half finished upon distant heights.
And as we pushed our way up stream through avenues
of forest trees, and groves of cedar, and blazing banks
of rhododendrons, some gaunt son of the mountain
was always hovering near by in a state of curiosity
almost too great for words.
Our camp fire on the second night presented a very
animated scene. Caleb had piled a waggon-load of
wood on the fire, and the flames leaped high heaven
wards. Conciliation being so vital a point, we had
brought half a sack of flour and a bag of coffee, and
nearly a dozen mountaineers assisted at the greatest
trout-fry, as Pete said, that had ever been known in
the mountains. The theme of conversation as they

TWO EPISODES ON RUMBLING CREEK 231
sat round and smoked their long pipes well into the
night can be easily imagined, and after two rounds of
the whiskey they began telling stories of trout and
bear against each other of a kind that would make
the post-prandial performances of the ordinary British
fisherman seem tame in comparison.
We parted on the fourth morning upon most
friendly terms with the whole mountain, and they
were profoundly grateful for a souvenir of a couple
of dozen " featherhooks," which all disappeared in a
single day, so Pete told me afterwards, in tree-tops and
snags. As with our third day's catch carefully packed for
sceptical friends in Bunkerville, old Caleb once more
got his team off the rocky mountain roads on to the
old red highways, he gave a great sigh of relief
" Praise de Lord," I heard him say, " I'm done wid
it fur dis year anyway." He little knew what was
going to happen the next year ; and how much truer
his estimate of the mountain-men accidentally turned
out to be than his master's.

II

It only remains now to narrate as briefly as possible
what actually did happen on this next occasion, when
the Colonel, the Doctor, the Judge, and Caleb, the
first three being full of pleasing anticipations, ven
tured on their second expedition to Rumbling Creek.
It was an episode too that created so much excite
ment, and gave rise to so much misplaced mirth, at
the expense of the adventurers, I had myself much

232 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
cause for satisfaction that circumstances had prevented
my making one of them. The only person, indeed,
who came well out of the affair was Caleb, who, it
will be remembered, held views with regard to the
mountaineers that nothing could shake. He had
already been too much given to regarding himself as
the fountain of all wisdom and the embodiment of all
sagacity, but after this second campaign he became
so intolerably puffed out with self satisfaction that it
almost caused a total breach between him and his
master. That the whole trouble, too, arose from an
irresponsible newspaper paragraph made the fiasco
all the more grievous to those concerned. Now it so
happened that this next spring my own plans would
not fit in with those of the Colonel's party. More
over, I lived in another county, and approached this
particular part of the Blue Ridge from an entirely
different angle. I decided therefore to go alone, early
in May, and, abjuring tents, waggons, and other en
cumbrances, to travel on horseback, and take my
chance of such hospitality as Pete's log house at the
forks of the creek afforded. It was a bright May
morning when, bound once more for Rumbling Creek,
I mounted my horse, with no incumbrances but a
pair of well filled saddle-bags and a fishing rod.
Owing to the badness of the roads and sundry delays,
it was nearly dark before the fifty miles was accom
plished, and I arrived at Pete's door. Nothing, how
ever, need be said about my own visit, except that it
was uneventful and successful, the sport being good,
Pete's accommodation sufficient for the circum
stances, and the mountaineers entirely friendly. But

TWO EPISODES ON RUMBLING CREEK 233
upon the third and last evening of my stay, on
returning to the cabin, I found Pete, with a news
paper in his hand, surrounded by mountaineers, all
of whom, by this time, I more or less knew personally.
My host was then almost the only man on the moun
tain that could read, and he now had on his horn
rimmed spectacles, looking both solemn and im
portant. The other men dropped away in rather
unusual fashion. There was no banjo playing or fish
stories that night. But as we were busy after supper
cleaning and slightly salting the last catch of fish
for transportation home the next day through a hot
sun, I took very little notice of the incident. Before
bed time, however, Pete called my attention to the
paper he had been reading. It was the Bunkerville
Sentinel, and had been forwarded to one of the moun
taineers with a paragraph marked, and the decipher
ing of the paragraph had been of course entrusted to
Pete. " These boys," said he, " are mightily put out
at a piece that's sot down on that thar paper ; I told
'em it was all foolishness, and thote I'd cam'd em
down some, but they's right techy." The paragraph
ran thus : — " Our esteemed fellow townsman. Colonel
D  , was so delighted with his fishing experiences
last year on Rumbling Creek, he is reported to have
made arrangements with the State Fish Commissioner
and the actual owners (who live in Richmond) of the
large but profitless mountain tract through which
these waters run, to reserve both the North and South
forks of the Creek. These are to be kept, it is said,
as a nursery for stocking depleted or barren streams
in other parts of the State, and the Colonel is to be

234 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
granted the sole right of catching trout therein. The
Colonel, we all know, was a gallant and brave Con
federate officer. But we should have thought he had
had, Hke the rest of us, enough fighting, and we are
really surprised to find the veteran once more upon
the war path." Part of this was evidently due to
some suggestions that were in the air for making
experiments in stocking accessible streams, the rest
was, of course, more or less of a joke. I don't sup
pose the Colonel thought twice about it. I am quite
sure I did not, and rode home the next day. " Yes,"
said Pete, as I shook his hand at parting in the
morning, " I wish them mount'n boys hadn't seen
that thar all-fired newspaper foolishness. They'se
mighty ignorant and powerful techy, and if they take
a notion inter their heads no crowbar won't drive it
out." It was some three or four weeks after this that, on
opening the Bunkerville Sentinel, which circulated
through the adjoining counties, I found myself con
fronted by several flaming headlines. "^ Brutal
assault on peaceful anglers. Party from Bunkerville
savagely chased out of the Windy range. The Colonel
says he has had enough of trout-fishing, but refuses to
say more. The fudge goes back on Isaak Walton, and
gives it as his deliberate opinion that trout-fishing is
not the recreation for a contemplative man — not on
Rumbling Creek anyway"
" The doctor declines to commit himself, but he has
intimated to his friends that he proposes in future to
confine himself entirely to the homely chub and cat-fish
of civilisation"

TWO EPISODES ON RUMBLING CREEK 235
" Uncle Caleb is to-day the biggest man in Bunker
ville, and talks of nothing else but Ms trout hunt. He
says he told his master all along that it warn't safe for
no gen'l'mens to go among them white trash in the
mounfns." The story, as I have remarked, went all through
Virginia, and even got into the Philadelphia and New
York papers, as an evidence of the barbarism of the
Southern mountaineers. It appears that, in driving
up in the same fashion that we had done the year
before to Pete's house, my former companions noticed
a certain depression in that great man's manner, which
he accounted for by saying he was "pestered by a
jaw ache." This of course I heard afterwards. But
they had intended in any case to drive a Httle way up
the stream, and camp in an open spot that had been
noted down the previous year. This they proceeded
to do, and pitched their tent on a strip of turf, lying
between the creek and a steep wooded slope. The
fire was lit, supper cooked, and the big demijohn of
whisky set out ready for the expected company. But,
with the exception of Pete, who was anxious and
mysterious, none came. Nothing suspecting, the
three fishermen rolled themselves in their blankets,
and Caleb, as before, retired to his waggon, to his
gloomy anticipations, and his single barelled pistol.
As Caleb was the first of the party I happened to
meet after the adventure, running across the old man
on the cars one day, I may as well, in as brief a form
as possible, give the full and true account of the
matter as he gave it to me.
" Well Suh," said Caleb, " it mout have bin twelve,

236 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
and then agin it mout have bin one o'clock, and the
gen'le'men's was asleep in de tent and snorin' right
good too. I was sorter wakesome myself What
with the fuss the crick raised on the rocks, and what
with listenin' fur bars, and the lonesomeness of the
location, I couldn't git no sleep. All at onst, I thote
I heerd a trompin' and stirrin' roun' way up on de
mount'n above my hade. Well Suh ! befo' I knowed
anythin' mo', a whole pile of rocks come leapin' and
tarin' down the hill, crashin' agin the trees, some on
'em, and others pitchin' doun on ter the grass-lot by
the tent, and hummin' on par'se de waggon tur'ble.
Two of 'em hit de waggon spang bang, and at the
same time I let out a holler that fotched the Cunnel,
the Doctor, and the Jedge skippin' out 'n the tent in
the biggest sorter hurry. The Doctor who was
the hindermost wern't hardly clear of the ropes, when
a rock as big as my hade, lit plum on de tent, went
spang through it and bust the tree of the saddle
which he'd bin usin' for a piller. I dun seen this
arterwards, an its de solemn troof fur sho'. Well
Suh the rocks cum pilin' doun that grass lot
tremenjous. The gen'l'mens couldn't see good fur to
dodge 'em, and got right smartly bruised, till they
crep right in under the ridge of the crick bank.
" I lep' up den in de waggon an' fired my pistol
right at de mount'n, an' ther was the biggest yellin' you
ever hern from up dar in the sky like, an' three or fo'
rifles went off, makin' streaks of fire up agin the dark
wood. I jes heard Mar'se Robert shout : ' Damn you,
fool nigger ! ' when I hollered out I was shot, an'
rolled over in de waggon, an' laid thar studyin' on de

TWO EPISODES ON RUMBLING CREEK 237
day of judgment, an' thinkin' to myself, ' Dis yer's
trout-fishin', is it .' It look to me a heap mo' Hke de
war come back.' Presently I begun to think it wur a
bit o' rock, not a bullet, that had struck the side o' my
hade ; an' I felt mighty thankful it hadn't fotched me
on a wuss part.
" Presently the rumpus guv over, an' the gen'l'mens
crep' out from under de bank. The Doctor had got
his arm mighty nigh broke, an' the Jedge was bleedin'
from the face, and had been mashed by a rock on de
shoulder. The ole Cunnel he hadn't bin teched nuthin'
to speak of, an' he begun shout'n an' cuss'n he'd clean
out them mount'ns, if he had to bring out the whole
State melesha. I b'lieve ef the Doctor an' the Jedge
hadn't bin crippled, the Cunnel would have charged
up that thar mount'n wid his fishin'-pole, as we hern
the survidges whoopin' an' hollerin' an' darin' us to
come up.
" ' But,' says I to myself, ' the very fust thing we've
got ter do is to git from yer.' Praise de Lord, too, de
horses was hitched clar out'n the track o' them rocks'
An' while the Cunnel was holp'n the two other gen'l'
mens, I jes lit out quietly, without sayin' nuthin', an
had the whole tent an' truck flung in de waggon, an
the horses hitched up in the worst hurry you ever saw.
" Mar'se Robert, I b'lieve, was layin' out to wait till
sun-up and fight de mount'n himself But I said :
' Look yer, Mar'se Robert, you an' me got other folks
ter study. We kin come back an' attend to this
fightin' business afterwards ; but them two gen'l'mens
aint fit to lie out in dese yer bushes no mo'.' The
Cunnel sorter quieted down then, an' we holped the

238 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
Doctor an' the Jedge inter the waggon. Mar'se
Robert he was 'bleeged to climb in afterwards. An'
I tell you, Suh, when I got the lines in my ban's, an'
the moon shinin' good, too, I didn't wait fur de word
go ; an' by sun-up we was ten miles from de foot of
them blamed mount'ns. The Doctor was sufferin'
mightily, an' the Jedge was powerful stiff an' bruised.
But the Cunnel was snortin' an' runnin' on turr'ble.
He ain't a swarin' man, as you know, but, bless
grashus ! he did let out, as we went bumpin' home
over them rocks.
"When, jes' arter sun-up, we struck the big dirt
road once mo', I laid out to speak a piece o' my mind
to him. ' Mar'se Robert,' says I, ' you rec'llect I dun
warned you  ' I didn't get no fudder. The
Cunnel hollered out he'd pitch me dar over the fence
ef I opened my mouf agin. Lordy, he wor powerful
mad. He know'd thar'd be the biggest laff all over
de county when dis yer frolic cum out, as thar
pintedly was. Some even o' dese yer Yankee papers,
I hern tell, got pieces in 'bout it."
And so they had, as I have already mentioned.
The adventure was a nine days' wonder. Nothing
could be done in the way of punishing the culprits,
for there was no evidence as to their identity. But it
confirmed the general impression of those days, that
the mountaineers were dangerous, as well as bar
barous. Those, however, who knew something about
them, took a rather different view, and the truth
gradually came out. The newspaper paragraph, I had
seen them so perturbed about earlier in the season>
gave the clue to the whole matter. It seems that from

TWO EPISODES ON RUMBLING CREEK 239
this they had contracted an idea that their streams
were to be forcibly closed to them by some vague,
newfangled piece of legislation, with which the
Colonel's name had been so unhappily coupled.
And it was evident that Pete, with his metaphorical
crowbar had been unable to eject it from their heads.
An illiterate, savage, clannish race, who were always
half conscious of smarting under a social ban, they
not unnaturally resisted, in their own wild way, this
supposed attempt upon their liberties, looking upon it
as an intolerable infringement of their most cherished
rights. It was only a mere handful of us, however,
who were interested in the practical side of the ques
tion, and to our ears there soon came rumours that
these wild men had not only found out their mistake
but were actually ashamed of themselves.
Pete, it appears, had known nothing definite of their
intentions. Being a sort of link between the mountain
and civilization, and, moreover, a leader who was
quite sure to oppose disorder, as well as being a friend
of the Colonel's, these hostile intentions had been kept
back from him. He had only vague ideas that resent
ment was in the air. And being, after all, himself a
mountaineer born and bred, he could not afford to see
further than he was intended to among his own
people. The next spring, however, he sent word to
me that I could come up and fish the whole of both
forks, and he would guarantee that not a soul would
pester me or any of my friends. How I acted on his
advice, and revisited his humble abode, not only the
next, but for many seasons afterwards, has been
indicated in a previous chapter.

240 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
But nothing would ever induce the Judge or the
Doctor to go trout-fishing in the mountains again.
As for the Colonel I have reason to think that old
man Caleb in the end proved too much for him.
Fortunately, however, just at this time, the larger
rivers, which had been stocked with black bass, began
to show great sport with the fly.
These were not dominated by mountaineers, but
could be comfortably worked from hotels and such
like resorts, so Caleb could raise no possible objection.
It is probable that some compromise was arrived at,
for the Colonel took vigorously to bass-fishing, and
Caleb always accompanied him. Indeed, he frequently,
so I was told, took a hand himself, and could be seen
watching his cork float from under the shade of a
willow or sycamore, while his master, with the same
gum pants and silver pole, and dip net, that had so
astonished the bloodthirsty mountaineers of the
Windy Gap, waded out into the broad, streamy
shallows, and performed miracles upon the, then some
what unsophisticated, bass of the Greenbriar and the
Upper James.

SOME PLANTATION MEMORIES
In the whole of Virginia — and that is saying much
indeed — there was no more glorious prospect than
the one upon which our first plantation looked out.
Around us spread, in pleasant undulations of fallow
and forest, of tillage and pasture, the warm, rich
coloured but ragged landscape where Virginian home
steads, gentle and simple, lay supinely amid their
groves and apple-orchards. Behind us the incompar
able peaks of the Blue Ridge Mountains lifted their
heads many thousands of feet in to the sky. Before
us a tributary range, scarcely less beautiful, if less
majestic, spread heavenwards a boundless sea of
woodland upon which the bloom of spring, the lush
greenery of summer, the fire of autumn, the white
terror of winter, proclaimed in a succession of splendid
pageants the flight of our placid lives.
These mountains, however, had but recently looked
upon scenes that were sufficently stirring. For it was
in the period immediately following the war that the
plantation known then as the " Old Robertson Place "
came into our hands. From that vantage point we
witnessed, and indeed partook in what may in one
sense be called, the close of the old Southern life.
R

242 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
Historically and financially the long tale of the
Slave States ended, as every one knows, with the
surrender of Lee in April 1865. But for many years
after that, the same families in most parts of Virginia,
both white and black, that had lived under the
" Institution " and fought in defence of it, were stiU
upon the land. The blacks were free, the whites were
ruined — in a sense — it is true. But the latter still had
their property, and the negroes, though no longer
slaves, were nevertheless there as labourers to work it
upon terms that were, in fact, more favourable to all
parties than slave labour. The actual paralysis that
followed the war was over. Landowners had scraped
together sufficient stock and implements, and made
arrangements with the newly freed negroes to work
their lands, and the same generation that had lived
together in a kindly fashion as masters and slaves had
settled down as master and servant. Above all, the
prices of tobacco and grain were high, and the material
outlook seemed upon the whole promising.
Our plantation (the very phrase nowadays is old-
fashioned in Virginia) lay " 'way back " from the
railroad. Fifteen miles of a road such as no civilised
community outside the Southern States could have
even contemplated without dismay, lay between us and
the station. No one but a Virginian, or some one
broken into the Virginia attitude towards roads,
would have dared, I think, to venture over ours upon
wheels. And yet our neighbours had traversed it cheer
fully for some generations, and saw nothing seriously
amiss with it. The wrecks of waggons and bullock-
carts, the fragments of wheels and broken shafts, that

SOME PLANTATION MEMORIES 243
marked its course with such terrible significance, had
no alarms for the native— they were all in the day's
work. The Virginian of slavery days, east of the Blue
Ridge at any rate, had never grasped the conception
of what road-making meant. In Mashonaland, in
the Rocky Mountains, in the far backwoods of Canada,
a primitive highway is the natural accompaniment of
the dawn of civilisation. But Virginia is the oldest
community of Englishmen outside England. It is an
ancient and even a distinguished province. For over
two centuries it has had something like a territorial
aristocracy Hving upon its soil. Their pleasures and
their interests were wholly rural. No people have
ever existed in the wide world to whom country
locomotion was more important. And yet in most
parts, not only till the Civil War but up to this very
day, the two-horse plough has been the only factor in
road-mending and construction. Over these unspeak
able tracks of mud, pleasantly broken by slabs of rock
and meandering tree-roots, it was not only the waggon
of rural commerce that had to jolt, but the family
coach itself to rock and stagger on its way to dance
or wedding, to church or merry-making — and with
what loss of dignity can be well imagined. These old
relics of past splendour (using the latter word in its
Virginian sense), with their leather springs, have long
vanished now. But I can recall many a venerable
specimen that survived the war, and can see them even
now writhing in all the agonies of a bottomless mud-
hole, the negro coachman craning forward with loud
shouts of wonderfully worded exhortations to his
struggling horses. It was many years indeed before
R 3

244 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
these rickety emblems of ante-bellum, dignity disap
peared entirely from the road. One after another
however they made their final trip to the village wheel
wright, to be hopelessly condemned even by that
resourceful functionary, and left to rot upon the
wayside amid the wrecks of humbler vehicles. Much
sorrowful consolation, I have reason to think, used to
be afforded by these bleaching skeletons to the whilom
family coachman as he passed by with his mule or his
ox-cart, and dropped the tributary tear to the ghost
of the old domestic chariot, which he had once
steered with such ^clat. Some of these old carcases
survive to this very day — in remote corners of barnyards
and orchards — buried in briers and weeds, a harbour
of refuge for the " broody " hen and roosting turkey.
This road of ours, it was true, was perhaps the worst,
if there could have been a worst, in the county. It was
lifted for a considerable part of its course off the red
clay of the lower country, and wound its tortuous
way over the shoulder of mountain-spurs, where the
winter rains did not stand, but tore into atoms every
feeble effort that was made to soften the natural
obstacles of rock and gully. It was a road that would
have made even a Rocky Mountain teamster hold
his breath. But our local patriots were quite equal to
the occasion, and used to declare, when twitted by
people who were fortunate enough to Hve off it,
that it was, at least, a fine winter road. That is to say,
you couldn't sink permanently into a mud-hole — if
nothing smashed you eventually got over it. But then,
again, it was almost as bad in summer ; whereas in the
lower country, when the mud hardened on the track, a

SOME PLANTATION MEMORIES 245
reckless driver with a fast horse and a strong buggy
could make six miles an hour with luck for a short
distance. Our neighbourhood was beyond doubt a bit isolated,
and this perhaps accounted for the fact of oldtime
ideas dying harder than in other parts with which I
became afterwards familiar — particularly among the
negroes. Of these, great numbers of the best of the
old rigime were still, at the time I write of, living and
in their prime, and some of them were in every sense
as reliable and as trustworthy as good English farm-
servants. Their families, had generally got out of hand,
but the older darkies were often the very models of
industry, and even honesty. One old man in particular
whom we found upon the plantation, renting an out
lying cabin and a few stony acres in a mountain hollow,
was in some respects of this description. So far as cleared
land went, he had what he would have himself called
" a mighty po' chance fur terbaccer," which at that time
was the crop which dazzled and filled the eye of the
emancipated slave. But old Uncle Archie had two or
three stalwart sons who worked out for wages, and
when he went into this dignified retirement he forgot
that the patriachal era was over in Virginia — between
parent and child as between master and slave. The
old gentleman was quite surprised when his " chaps '
showed a disposition to appropriate their own wages
to their own uses. Archie had built this cabin himself
after the war in a corner of the plantation, at the foot
of a heavily timbered mountain, whence a crystal
brook, breaking from the shade of the forest, went
babbling over his patch of open tillage land. Upwards

246 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
over this wide expanse of oak and chestnut foliage
the old man had gazed with sanguine eye, and pictured
the tall trees tumbling in every direction, and vast
tobacco lands opening, beneath the sturdy strokes of
his obedient and filial offspring — inspired, of course,
and directed by the wisdom that lay beneath his own
snowy brow. But Archie's " chaps " showed no
disposition whatever to develop a family estate for
their clothes and rations, when they grew to be worth
ten dollars a month to any farmer in the neighbour
hood. " I've dun frailed them chillern " (they were
eighteen and twenty) " till my arms jes ache," the old
man used to complain, " but it ain't no manner of use
— these new-fangled notions of projeckin' roun' fust
hyar den dar, there ain't no satisfyin' young folks these
times." So the forest above Archie's cabin continued to
wave in all its pristine luxuriance, and to this day I
have no doubt the wild turkey still leads her young
in summer-time beneath its friendly shades, and the
squirrel gambols amid its giant trunks, and the spotted
woodpecker still wakes with cheery tapping its
mysterious echoes.
Uncle Archie, it will be gathered, was a laudator
temporis acti of the most pronounced kind. I think if
he could have had his own way he would have reversed
the issue of the war and put his whole race back into
slavery again. The times, according to Archie, were
all out of joint. The revolt of his sons sat sorely
on his mind. He had been an industrious, hard
working man all his life, and had belonged to a kind
but hard-working master — one of those thousands of

SOME PLANTATION MEMORIES 247
small slave-owners of whom the usual literature on
this subject shows its ignorance by taking no account.
Rough, decent men, whose appearance, education,
habits, and means were those of small working farmers,
neither more nor less, who owned perhaps a single
family of coloured folks, and not seldom laboured with
them on the small farm that supported all.
Archie had looked forward to running a bit of
rented land with his own family upon somewhat the
same principles — inclusive of the whip, if needed.
He was an ardent member of the Baptist Church, and
had hoped, no doubt for a leisurely as well as a
dignified old age in which he could pursue on fence-
rails and at cross-roads that taste for religious
discussion and controversy which his soul delighted in.
Still he raised a tobacco crop of a sort, enough to
prove, at any rate, that the filial instincts of Jake and
Wa^h were not wholly dead ; and his corn-patch
supplied at least his daily bread. A pig or two, more
over, called him owner, and carried ruin and destruc
tion in the point of their snouts all over the plantation ;
and a cow, which, even with a forefoot tied to its
horns, could jump any fence in the neighbourhood,
completed Archie's stock.
The old gentleman was quite as honest as he knew
how to be. He never succeeded in paying any rent,
it is true ; but the desire to do so was the burden of
many an eloquent harangue, which was something.
Archie, however, as a weather prophet and as a char
acter which memory is thankful for, was well worth
the twenty-five dollars a-year which constituted his
nominal tribute. He died in the odour of sanctity —

248 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
lecturing us all to the last on the degeneracy of the
world since the " s'render," and foretelling the doom
of Sodom and Gomorrah for a land where age and
authority were getting to be at such a discount. We
had a negro burial-ground on the plantation, and
thither Archie's remains were dragged in solemn state_^
by his neighbour William Henry Higginbottom's bull.
There was snow on the ground, I remember ; but it
was a Sunday, and half the negroes in the county
were there. It was always said that the patriarch
would " walk," and " walk " he did, sure enough, for
he was seen in the full moon of the April following
his death sowing a big field near the house that had
been fallowed for oats ; for it should be remarked that
he was the great grain -sower of the neighbourhood,
and it was natural enough that his spirit should be
restless while the dust of the harrows was actually
flying over his new-made grave. He was seen again,
too, in the same week by Lizzie, our cook, hovering
in spectral fashion around the tobacco-plant-beds he
had sown just before his death. We were, indeed,
already somewhat overrun with ghosts — thanks to the
possession of two graveyards, whose inmates, if negro
- tradition were to be believed, were of the most
uneasy kind.
I may remark in passing that the ghosts, or, in
negro parlance, the "Hants," of our neighbourhood
seem to have retained, even in the after-world, their
devotion to agriculture. For whether white or black
it was in the dawn of spring that they were always
" looked for " ; nor, like orthodox ghosts, did they
haunt bedsides or passages, but were to be seen rather

SOME PLANTATION MEMORIES 249
in the neighbourhood of corn-cribs, wheat-fields, or
tobacco barns.
The mention of Archie's funeral obsequies recalls
another of his neighbours and our tenants, who held a
remote corner of the plantation, and this was the
aforesaid William Henry Higginbottom. Most of
the negroes after the war took their late masters'
names, but no Higginbottom had ever been heard of
in those parts. This was serious, it is true, but not
unnatural, seeing that the bearer of so much name
had come from the lower counties since the war, and
was in some sort an alien as well as a suspect. Negro
nomenclature was of a brief order as a rule, and it was
probably in tacit disapproval of William Henry's
personality, and of the sort of mystery attaching to
him, that he was usually called by all his three names,
and, in spite of his grizzled locks and furrowed face,
never achieved the honoured sobriquet of " Uncle."
In face William Henry was the most forbiding, in
form he was the most comical, negro I ever saw. We
found him inhabiting a cabin close to the house, and
thought at first his looks might belie him. It took
about a month to find out from experience that they
did not. Hence his removal to the slope of tha
mountain where he undertook to raise corn and
tobacco on shares.
William Henry was, to use the vernacular of the
neighbourhood, a " mighty low man " — in a physi
cal sense, that is to say — for he was barely five feet,
while he had a head upon him the size of a Missouri
pumpkin. He could neither laugh nor could he joke
like the rest of them. I never saw him even smile.

2SO SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
but there sat upon his dark seamed face a perennial
frown. In winter and in summer he wore a long
tail-coat that had once been black ; and if the front
view of him was hideous, his reverse side was much
the funniest in the whole county to look upon. But
what made William Henry famous, even more than
his whispered crimes and his grotesque appearance, was
his bull, or in the local phraseology his " gentleman
cow." For when he moved to his mountain farm with
nothing but his household truck, it seemed a problem
to the neighbours how his stony acres were to be
cultivated ; but William Henry was equal to the
occasion, and one fine day his establishment was seen
to be augmented by a two-year-old bull that was as
mysterious in origin as the owner himself There
was no direct evidence that our Mephistopheles was a
great criminal, but he was said to be capable of any
enormity. That he stole that bull I am afraid there
was no doubt, and it was whispered that he drove it,
with the help of the Evil One, whom he was supposed
to resemble, in the night over the almost pathless
mountains that divided the plantation from the
adjoining county.
Wherever William Henry got his bull, he certainly
made it earn its keep. He hitched it to his rude
•plough and his clumsy harrow. It pulled the rough
hand-sled on which he hauled his fire-wood and his
fence-rails ; while on its broad back, behind a sack of
corn, he himself might often be seen perched upon his
way to the mill. Such spectacles as these, however,
were not unfamiliar in the old happy-go-lucky Virginia

SOME PLANTATION MEMORIES 251
life. But even in Virginia, so far as I ever saw or
heard of, the bitting, bridling, and saddling of a bull
was an unprecedented performance.
But William Henry was nothing if not unconven
tional. And it was with no sense of humour whatever,
but in a solemn seriousness which heightened the sub
limity of the spectacle, that he used to clap an old
broken hunting-saddle on to the broad back of the
patient ox, and seat himself astride thereon, and turn
his face on Sunday mornings towards the negro church
at Mount Hermon. Mr. Higginbottom, it is perhaps
needless to remark, was no church member. The
vacant seats upon the mourners' bench had no
attraction for him, nor had the eloquent black fore
finger or strident appeals of brother Moses ever
moved a muscle of the scowling furrowed face.
But, for some mysterious reason, William Henry was
always to be found at Mount Hermon on a preaching
Sunday — silent, inscrutable, and hideous in a back
pew — while outside, hitched to a tree in the shade,
stood the Durham bull, with its saddle and bridle, all
unconscious of any indignity of treatment.
The first time we ever sighted this never-to-be-
forgotten spectacle was, I remember, upon the Sunday
on which Archie's funeral sermon was preached, in
the summer following his death, and all the negroes
in the neighbourhood had flocked to hear how brother
Moses thought the illustrious dead was getting on in
Paradise. We were sitting in the porch as the ad
vanced-guard of the returning congregation came into
view upon the highway. This consisted of those
negroes who could either beg, borrow, or steal their

252 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
master's mules for the day, or those who, being
tenants at a money rent, had some attenuated
quadruped of their own. As the capering, chattering
crowd came along amid a cloud of red dust, William
Henry Higginbottom could be seen holding a clear
lead of several lengths, mounted on his bull, which
was travelling at a steady, swinging trot that was
thoroughly business-like. That its back was no arm
chair was evident, for William Henry's long coat-tails
were flying in painful agitation, as, with a rein in each
hand, he leaned back in approved Southern fashion
till his short legs, which were short even for so " low "
a man, came not far off the level of the straight horns
of his extraordinary steed. The ordinary negro
mounted on his master's mule, and attired in his full
Sunday war-paint of black broadcloth and white shirt-
front, was a sight entirely edifying ; but William
Henry Higginbottom, leading the queer crowd upon
his bull, solemn and gloomy, without the faintest
suspicion of any humour in the thing, was a spectacle
to have lived for.
But there was a serious side to our plantation life
of course, and John Jones, who was our largest
tenant, took life very seriously indeed. He held
nearly a hundred acres, and actually hired labour on
his own account. Indeed he was justly regarded as
" a 'sponsible man." He got a good house with his
holding, built of squared logs and shingle-roofed, and
a garden-patch, and the run for a cow, which, like
Archie's, no fence could turn. John farmed his land
on shares — we providing the horses and implements,
he the labour ; and, like some of his kind, at that period

SOME PLANTATION MEMORIES 253
he was an indefatigable worker. From dawn till dark
he never rested except to feed his teams and get his
meals, and I have even known him to work all night
when the weeds in his corn or the suckers on his
tobacco had got ahead of him. In spite of his
practical qualities, however, John was as comical a
character in his way as William Henry. He thought
he could write, for one thing — an almost unknown,
performance at that time— and he was inordinately
proud of it. Furthermore, he had, as is rare among
his race, a bad stammer with terrific facial contortions.
This, as we know, is sometimes sufficiently trying in a
Caucasian, but in a negro of quizzical appearance it
is simply irresistible ; and John's appearance was
not calculated to bear any further embellishments
of the kind. He was of the round, smooth, beardless,
and oily type of Ethiopian, as black as a coal
without a touch of cross about him. He was a
stranger to the neighbourhood, and came to us, I
remember, one autumn before wheat-sowing, which
was the season of the year all over Virginia for
making contracts, and wheat by the way at that time
was worth not half a dollar but three times that amount
per bushel, h can see him now as he stood at the foot
of the verandah steps, with his mouth twisted nearly
round to his ear trying to tell me who he was and
what he wanted. His mania for writing, though it
was in no way connected with hesitation of speech,
came out instantly, and he insisted on being allowed
to write down his late employer's name and address
for reference. This was a great experience for us, so
I fetched this phenomenal scribe a pen and ink and

254 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
set him down at the office table while we watched the
performance. It was a heroic struggle, and resulted
in the most extraordinary specimen of orthography
probably in existence. I have got it yet. John
surveyed it himself with one eye closed for a few
seconds, and evidently felt that it was a failure.
" He'd got sort er onused to writing," he said, " since
he'd been down ter the mines, but he'd jest like to
mark down his own name on the paper lest he should
forget it." This ceremony was got through with less
execution, but it was as well I had not to depend on
the result to save John's name and memory from
oblivion. Still, the hieroglyphics stood for John Jones
in their maker's estimation, and as a signature it was
fairly uniform, though it was quite as like Thomas
Evans or Henry Browne as it was John Jones. I
never saw a man so devoted to signing his name. I
believe he would have backed a stranger's bill for all
he was worth, if he had been worth anything, rather
than miss the opportunity.
When he settled on the plantation, I used to draw
up agreements for all sorts of trifling transactions
between us, to give John the pleasure of signing his
name and myself the pleasure of seeing him do it.
He would settle himself to the job as if to some
weighty and solemn function. Slowly and with
deliberation he would lay his left cheek down almost flat
upon the table, and closing his left eye, which at such
close quarters became unavailable for the purpose in
hand, the squint of his right as it peered over the
broad bridge of his nose at the objective point upon
the paper was appalling. Little, indeed, but a big

SOME PLANTATION MEMORIES 255
white eyeball was to be seen, and then after many
flourishes of his pen above his head it descended on
the sheet and left the fearful impress that signified
John Jones. I generally managed to have a paper for
John to sign when we had friends staying with us, and
it was always voted much more entertaining than old
Reuben's banjo performance, though Reuben was
reckoned the best hand to "pick a banjer" in the
whole neighbourhood.
The actual banjo of the plantation was not the
stirring instrument it is in the hands of the Moore and
Burgess minstrel, and a certain wild abandon it undoubt
edly did possess in the cabin frolic after a wedding or
corn-shucking, disappeared when introduced into the
parlour of the " big house." Reuben, as has been said,
was reckoned the best hand to pick a banjo in the
neighbourhood. But when called upon to perform in
private for our visitors he did not shine, and as an
entertainment could not be compared for a moment
to John Jones signing his name. Reuben, too, was a
preacher — not a salaried, responsible minister like the
dusky Boanerges who thundered weekly in the log
church at Mount Hermon, but an amateur whose
spasmodic exhortations formed a righteous excuse for
his immediate neighbours to gather in his cabin on
Saturday evening and work off their excess of religious
zeal. Reuben in his hours of toil, which were not
exacting, was a carpenter, and he occupied a cabin on
the summit of a hill immediately in front of our
windows. So on still nights we ourselves often had
any benefit that was to be derived from the wild
incantations of our eloquent dependant. This, I fear.

256 SKETCHES FROM OLD>VIRGINIA
would have been heavily discounted by the certain
knowledge that Reuben could not have been trusted
for five minutes with the cornhouse key, or for as
many seconds within grabbing distance of the store
room sugar-barrel ; while John Jones, who had never
yet " professed," might safely have been submitted to
either trying ordeal. Reuben, however, did not con
fine his sermons to proper times and seasons, but his
anxiety for the souls of men followed him to his
intermittent labours. As he nailed the shingles on
to the roof of a waggon-shed he seldom failed to hurl
down misquotations from the Bible on the head of the
man who held the ladder ; and as he swung his cradle
in the wheat-harvest amid the long line of reapers, the
busy swish of the blades was often — much too often
— accompanied by his fitful bursts of eloquence. The
cabin that he then occupied acquired something of a
clerical reputation, for no less than three of what for
brevity's sake we may call lay brethren took it in our
own time. Possibly the near neighbourhood of the
graveyard, with its turfless mounds of red earth and
its tangled unkempt clusters of grape-vines, briers,
and sassafras-bushes, may have given the old log-
house some sanctified associations.
People sometimes ask if the genuine plantation
negro was as comical a person as tradition represents.
I can only say that to me their quaint humours
were an unceasing source of refreshment. They
made up, or almost made up, for those lamentable
shortcomings which grew worse as the war and " the
s'render'' faded further and further into the past.
They have almost ceased nowadays to be a local

SOME PLANTATION MEMORIES 257
peasantry identified with their native counties and
districts, but are to a great extent a wandering
race — here for a year, there for a year ; first in a
factory, then in a mine, then back again for a brief
spell at farming. And this, though not to the
advantage of their morals, has been distinctly so to
their financial condition. Indeed, under the agri
cultural depression that has lain upon the Southern
farmer for so many years, intensified as it is by
oppressive tariff laws, it was inevitable that the negro
of the rising generation should leave the land. He
has been a greater success, too, as a navvy or factory-
hand, than he was as a farm-servant ; but as a man
he is an infinitely more unpleasant and much less
humorous person, as is only natural. Hundreds,
too, who in the days I write of were unredeemed
plantation hands, whooping and holloaing at the
plough-tail without a thought beyond a corn-
shucking or a cake-walk, are now sleek waiters
in hotels, who know as much of the devilry of
city life and the outer world as there is to know.
Through whole counties in Virginia the exodus of
the negro to busy centres can be easily seen in the
roofless cabin or the solitary chimney standing by the
brookside or the forest-edge amid the broom-sedge
and the briers. However strong are the forces which
remove an ancient peasantry from a not unkindly
and certainly a racy soil, there must be a melancholy
side to it with those who have seen the change.
In the days I write of no such exodus, in our part
of the world at any rate, was thought of, and the
Ethiopian, if unambitious, was at least cheery. Per-
s

258 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
haps he was seen at his best in the first warm days of
spring, when his limbs after the cold winter got
" souple and limber," and the whole country echoed
with his rude rustic melody. We always recall the
month of May upon our plantation as an ideal Arcady,
— when through the lush and dewy nights the opening
chorus of the tree-crickets and the plaintive call of the
whip-poor-will welcomed the coming summer ; when
a sea of snow-white apple-blossoms caught the morning
sun as he topped the hills upon the east of us, while
upon the west the fresh greenery of summer was
clothing with its leafy mantle the splendid masses of
the Blue Ridge that towered above us. All around us
glowed against the warm red soil the freshness and the
lushness, the leaf and blossom, of dawning summer,
and the cheery stir of rural life gave animation to a
scene which nature had fashioned and bedecked with
such unsparing hand. The one-horse ploughs ran
merrily up and down the corn-rows. The harrows
clanked cheerily along their dusty course. No
wonder that in such a climate farmers were sanguine,
and that even the oldest of them estimated their crop
with a persistent optimism at double what it turned
out to be. Hope animated every rural breast. The
mating dove filled the orchard with melodious notes.
The cock quail piped in the fence corner with tireless
throat, while his partner hid snugly away in the
adjoining clover-field the fifteen or twenty eggs whose
products were in the still far-off crisp days of
November to spring before our keen-nosed pointers.
Above all the pleasant echoes of field and
woodland at that season of the year, used to ring the

SOME PLANTATION MEMORIES 259
voices of the negroes. No people were more suscep
tible to stimulating atmospheric conditions than they.
Nowadays, so small has the world — the English-
speaking world, at any rate —become, that the field-
hand is more likely than not to hill up his tobacco to
the accompaniment of " Knock'd 'em in the Old Kent
Road," or even "Tommy Atkins." In those days,
however, a mighty gulf lay between Virginia and the
world outside her borders : the old plantation songs
were still the sole music of the plantation, and I can
in fancy even now see Reuben's son Gabriel, as he
swung his plough round on the headland, lifting his
shiny face skywards and bulging out his chest as he
roared — " O — O my lovely Lemma,
I — I do love you so ;
" I — I love you better tha-a-n
I ever did befo'.
O-oh— O-oh."
Then from the dewy low ground, where some rival
swain in leisurely fashion was slaughtering the bushes
that at this season threatened the very existence of
the Virginia oat crop, came an answer to the vocal
challenge : — " O — O my lovely Lemma,
I — I know you of old ;
You got all de money,
All de silver an' gold."
Then from another quarter — far into our neigh
bour's domain — -would roll the strident notes of that
sonnet to " Scindy," which was the most popular air
in our part of the world : —
S 2

26o SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
" Away up in de mountain
I took my horn and blow ;
I tink I hear Miss Scindy callin',
' Yonder come my beau.' "
But Gabriel, though three-quarters of a mile off, would
be equal to the occasion, and catch up the second
verse : — " O Scindy, do you love me ?
She said she loved me some,
.An' I threw my arms around her,
Like a grape-vine round a gum."
If the dawn of summer in Virginia, when the fields
grew gay in colouring and the shadows deepened in
the forests, animated the Ethiopian breast, the autumn
in dreamy, balmy splendour was by no means without
consolation either to blacks or to whites, who lived, so
to speak, with nature. The tobacco was hung up and
curing in the barns ; the crops, such as they were,
were stored away — all but the Indian corn, which still
hung its big heads from the bare stalk stripped of its
leaves and its top fodder. The leanest of stock, too,
had grown fat in the rank growth that covered pasture
and stubble fields alike, and carpeted even the very
forests. All nature rested from its labours — and man, too
(in Virginia), for the most part. There was plenty
for all present needs, and weeks of bright, still weather
often intervened before the chill breath of winter with
its flurries of snow stripped the forests of their golden
mantle, and the heavens of their long unclouded bril
liancy. The sunny days of October and November were

SOME PLANTATION MEMORIES 261
days of plenty on the plantations. The lean times
were over. Hogs were fat, and the new crop of corn
was ready to grind into meal for those hot cakes
which were the Ethiopian's staff of life. The mill-
wheels in the valleys were humming, and along the
tortuous red roads went shambling work-horses or
mules, whose backs presented the familiar spectacle of
a bare-legged negro urchin just visible behind a big
sack of meal.
How delightful, too, were some of these old water-
mills in Virginia ! — not very old, perhaps fifty to a
hundred years at the most, but still venerable-looking
with their weather-stained and spray-moistened tim
bers and big rumbling wheels, to whose music four or
five generations at any rate had gossiped and fore
gathered as to a local landmark whose site nature had
firmly fixed beyond the caprice of change or fortune.
Pleasant places above all were these old-fashioned
water-mills in the fierce hot August days ; and how cool
was the draught which blew up from the foaming cal
dron beneath the wheel as it churned round and round
amid a white wreath of crystal water fresh from dark
mountain hollows, where trout leapt between banks of
flowery evergreens and beneath overarching avenues
of beech and chestnut 1 And the millers, too, of Vir
ginia — all that I ever knew, at any rate — were cheery
beings of stout frame and well-powdered exteriors and
strong lungs, who would crack jokes above the whirr
and throb of their rude machinery with all comers,
black and white, and tell stories of the gigantic crops
that men made before the war in the brave days
of old.

262 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
No living soul could look forward to an English
autumn for its own sake with pleasure or recall it with
tenderness. Certain enjoyments, it is true, belong to
it, but that is wholly another matter. The season
itself is one of sadness, of drippy decay, of blustering
winds, of rarely unmitigated gloom. But October
and November in Virginia, and indeed not seldom
December also, are not merely the sportsman's satur
nalia, but are largely composed of days in which mere
existence is a joy, and every one worth living for
itself alone — a dream of golden foliage and cloudless
skies, of dewy mornings crisp and fresh, of balmy
noons, of sunsets wondrous and incomparable.
There is no breath of melancholy in the light and
stimulating air, no suggestion of decay in the dazzling
splendour of the woods : winter will come, we know,
but it will fall like the curtain of a theatre on some
splendid pageant which we have enjoyed till the last
moment, and shall hope again to enjoy. Mid-winter,
it must be said, had little to offer to the plantation-
owner in Virginia. Without doors, there was snow
and rain, cold and sleet, iron frost or red mud of
a depth and tenacity beyond the dreams of English
men. Within, it is true, there were spacious brick
fireplaces and big brass andirons, on which oak-logs
of noble proportions crackled and blazed, throwing a
cheery light over the wainscoted walls. Visiting was
no longer thought of, farming was at a standstill,
shooting was over, though the horn of the fox-hunter
now and again woke the echoes of the gloomy morn
ings. The thud of the axe rang from the dripping or
frozen woodlands, and spoke of the ceaseless cry for

SOME PLANTATION MEMORIES 263
firewood that came from the draughty insatiable chim
neys of cabin, farmhouse, and mansion.
The very mountains, that in the greenery of their
summer dress and the gorgeous splendour of their
autumn robes were beyond all description beautiful,
looked now only savage and almost terrible, with
their miles and miles of black and leafless woodland
stretching over their snowy carpet to the cheerless
skies. Worst of all these dreary weeks to the planter
was that which intervened between Christmas and
New Year, — that season which to other Christians
with a white skin is a period of festivity and rejoicing.
Here the negro had it all to himself, and male and
female, leaving their master to get on as best he
could, abandoned themselves to those social joys so
dear to the Ethiopian breast. "Cake-walks" and
frolics and preachings filled the cabins with sound and
merriment ; whiskey of a fearsome sort flowed freely,
and stimulated with its unwonted fires the merry
antics of the coloured revellers. Even William Henry
Higginbottom once gave a party at Christmas, though
to be sure it was one of those social speculations
called a " pay-party," where every guest paid twenty-
five cents at the door, the profits going to the genial
host, who provided food and music. As for the cake-
walks, who has not heard of them .' — though that
indeed is a poor substitute for the privilege of having
witnessed the inimitable spectacle of the sable beaux
and belles strutting in couples arm-in-arm before the
judge, with solemn efforts to outdo each other in
elegance of movement and dignity of bearing, and.
thus win the toothsome prize.

264 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
But volumes could be filled with the queer charac
ters of both colours, the quaint customs and the unso
phisticated ways that obtained in the country districts
of Virginia in the days I write of These days are
gone for ever. Half the cabins in the State have
rotted away or been burnt for firewood. Agriculture
of a large and careless sort is almost dead. The negro
still in a measure follows the plough or wields the hoe,
but more often, as I have already remarked, is a
factory-hand, a miner, a waiter, or what not, and
wears on Sunday a covert coat and a pot-hat, while
his wife struts at his side attired in a caricature of the
latest New York fashion.

A TURKEY HUNTER
Nobody ever quite knew what the Captain took
his rank from, though that was a trifle in Virginia.
It was said that at some remote period before the war
he had navigated a batteau on the rapid waters of the
Staunton river, and had carried tobacco and grain for
the planters in days when railways were distant and
high roads, as now, the worst in the Anglo-Saxon
world. So though an expert only in the handling of
a punt-pole the Captain may be said in a sense to
have been a member of the mercantile marine of his
country. He had never in truth set eyes upon the
ocean, nor had any desire that way ; nor did he come
of a people that were much given to going down to
the sea in ships. In fact he would often tell us that
he " had no use for so much water."
Four main roads met in front of the Captain's door,
a circumstance which suited exactly his gregarious
temperament. And they were roads indeed ; roads
such as only a Virginian would have faced upon
wheels, or even calmly contemplated day after day as
the Captain from the security of his front porch
contemplated them. One of these red rutty tracks
came toiling up from regions to the eastward wholly

266 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
given over and sacred to tobacco ; and if you had
followed it on towards the sunset, and had not broken
your neck or disappeared in a mud-hole, you would
have found yourself eventually within sight of the Blue
Ridge faintly outlined against the distant sky. The
other came from counties lying to the northward that
had seen much better days, and after passing the
Captain's house shot off in a straight line regardless
of obstacles for the frontier of North Carolina which
was barely a dozen miles away. In fact the Captain,
who was born just here at the forks of the old Bethel
and Shuckburgh pikes, had, as you may say, a narrow
escape of being born a North Carolinian, and that
would not have done at all. For everybody in
Virginia at any rate, knows that when a North
Carolinian boasts of hailing from the Old North State
he takes very good care to add if he can conscientiously
do so, " but right close on the Virginia line." It is ill
guessing what the Captain would have done if he had
been born i a North Carolinian, for he was a most
ardent patriot, and a patriot in Virginia in those days
meant a patriotic Virginian, — which is a highly
intelligible sentiment.
The Captain had a strange domicile ; he lived in
the shell of an old coaching inn, and a very famous
hostelry it had been in its day. First, however, came
the railroads, and then the war with its chaotic ruin
finally extinguished every spark of its ancient glory.
For twenty years it had been slowly rotting, plank by
plank, shingle by shingle. The Captain, however,
reckoned it would last his time and would hardly
anticipate nature by falling in upon him bodily. A

A TURKEY HUNTER 267
rough board at the corner of the fence carried an
inscription, rudely traced in lamp black, to the effect
that the weary traveller could still get accommodation
for man and horse ; while upon the next panel was
inscribed in still larger letters the much less hospitable
notification. No hunting or fishing here. Such, it may
be remarked, was the local and legal fashion of
proclaiming that the proprietor was a game preserver ;
but of this anon.
As for the house, it was a rambling and now crazy
edifice of wood from which every vestige of paint
had long since faded. The main central portion still
stood fairly upright, but the two wings lurched away
on either side as if threatening to part company alto
gether with the parent stem. Long galleries ran around
the outside of the queer structure both in the upper
and lower stories, and helped, no doubt, to bind it to
gether and prolong its precarious existence. Moss
had taken hold of the twisting shingles of the roof
The tin gutter-pipes had shaken loose, and swung in
strips from the eaves. There was hardly a pane of
glass in the whole building except in the two or three
rooms occupied by the Captain and his rare guests ;
and even there strips of the local newspaper did duty
for many a vanished pane. Such of the Venetian
shutters as survived swung loose, often upon only a
single hinge, and with the dangling gutter-pipes made
such an uproar on a windy night, that an abode which
was ghostly enough by day was truly terrifying in a
midnight storm. The Captain, however, cared for
none of these things. The decay amidst which he
lived never caused him, we will venture to say, even a

268 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
passing pang. The very extent of the dilapidations
paralysed perhaps any feeble spark of energy he may
have possessed ; and he lived as jollily as the proverbial
sandboy amid his ruins. For there were rows of barns
and stables in the oak grove behind the house, some
of which had collapsed, the logs lying in a heap as
they had fallen, while others leaned over at an angle
that would have been impossible but for the heavy
props that the Captain and his negroes had been
absolutely forced to put up in self-defence. And this
was necessary, for besides the pair of mules the estate
still boasted of, an occasional traveller of the humbler
kind from time to time sought the hospitality of the
dilapidated tavern. The Captain, like every good
Virginian, was greatly given to reminiscences, and his
favourite theme was the animated splendour of the
Plummer House in the old days when his father
owned it. A somewhat notable rendezvous it had, in
truth, once been, as was natural, seeing that it stood
in the angle where the old highway from the Carolinas
to the North crossed the route along which the planters
from the regions lying eastwards used to travel in
some rustic state towards the fashionable spas in the
Virginia Mountains. Family coaches, dragged through
the dust or mud by sleek horses and piloted by negro
coachmen, were almost daily visitors in those halcyon
times throughout the summer season ; while gay
young dandies on well-bred nags rode in and out of
the shady yard by the score, drank juleps on the
verandah, or flirted and danced in the now lonely
rooms with the fair members of First Families who
happened to be at that stage of their annual pilgrimage

A TURKEY HUNTER 269
to the healing waters of the Alleghany Valleys. Never,
perhaps, has highway tavern had a greater fall. The
tobbaco-waggon, plunging and crashing onwards to
the still distant market-town, is nowadays almost the
only vehicle that ever pulls up before the deserted inn,
and even the waggon-drivers in these hard times bring
usually their own rations and camp, if benighted, on
the patch of turf under the old chestnut tree at the
cross roads. Still the Captain, who is gregarious and
has long outlived financial ambition, gets some
satisfaction, at any rate, out of their society. And
sometimes a casual horseman, unduly reckless of his
pocket and still more regardless of his inner man,
would stay and face that nightmare of fat pork, soda-
biscuit, and black coffee which the Captain's wife
provided in exchange for a twenty-five cent piece.
Though the Captain would have registered himself
as a hotel-keeper, as a matter of fact he was first and
chiefly a turkey-hunter, and to support this inexpen
sive profession he owned, fortunately, about two
hundred acres of land. Though the latter were
perhaps as poor as any two hundred acres in Virginia,
which is saying much indeed, the Captain's wants
were so few and slight that when he had paid his
taxes (amounting perhaps to some fifteen dollars),
dull care may be said to have been wholly lifted from
the establishment till the next visit of the tax-gatherer.
The farm was cultivated in irregular and spasmodic
fashion by a couple of negroes who worked it on
shares, using the Captain's mules and giving their
landlord half the tobacco, two-thirds of the corn, and
three-fourths of the wheat and oats. In a dry year
the whole lot of it could, we think, have been put

270 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
into a waggon and drawn to market by a pair of
stout horses even over the Shuckburgh pike. Only
a portion of the estate would any longer produce even
such skeleton crops as the Captain's negroes raised.
The rest lay sick unto death with a sterility such as
in any other countries known to man would be
absolutely inconceivable where soil existed at all.
Scrub pines and briars and sassafras and broomsedge
had covered the corpse of most of the Captain's
property in their not unkindly grasp ; and for the
rest it was a moot question whether they or the
homestead would give out first. Even Uncle Moses
and Jake Plummer (Jake had belonged in the days
of slavery to the Captain) had begun to complain,
and think that the residential advantages of their
master's property were almost too dearly purchased.
But the Captain troubled himself little about such
things. For him the year had two seasons only : the
one when it was possible to shoot, and the other when
it was not. In the former few men were more active ;
during the latter, including of course the spring and
summer, none probably ever took their ease with
more unswerving deliberation. For every morning
after breakfast, when it was not raining, the Captain
carried his chair down from the rickety porch and set
it against the rough trunk of a shady acacia tree, and
as the shadow moved round with the sun the Captain
moved his chair round with it. So that while the
morning found him with his eye upon the lower road,
the evening found that watchful orb surveying the
approach from the Piedmont country. This was not
so much for possible customers, who might or might
not share the Captain's midday meal, for that great

A TURKEY HUNTER 271
man was not in the least degree mercenary, but for
such as might haply prove sociable and responsive to
his urgent appeal to " get down and chat him some."
The Captain's notice that his place was forbidden
to casual gunners has been alluded to. It may seem
strange that such an ardent sportsman, who hunted
the entire country for some miles round, should have
been so churlish about his own little domain of two
hundred acres. But the danger-signal on the fence
was not hoisted for the benefit of the Captain's neigh
bours, who were rarely sportsmen, being small farmers
mostly with large farms (if the seeming paradox be
admissible), but against that type of humanity which
our friend designated as " them city fellahs," and for
whom he was accustomed with great warmth and
frequency to declare he had " no manner of use." In
former days the few gentry who lived in that neigh
bourhood had been wont to shoot partridges and
rabbits in friendly unchallenged fashion over each
other's and their humbler neighbours' land ; but since
the great upheaval social centres had wholly changed.
What wealth and leisure existed was now in the
towns, and it was from there that the gunners chiefly
came. " Gawd knows who they are," the Captain
used to say, as he sent a charge of tobacco juice
at a sitting grasshopper, " or whar they come from,
a-whirlin' over the country as if it belonged to 'em
with ther brichloaders and neepaty, napity^ dawgs,
^ This was, we believe, an entirely original phrase of the
Captain's, inspired by an occasional glimpse of the dainty,
weU-groomed Laverack setters that had been recently intro
duced into the country.

272 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
and fancy coats, and pants, and fixins. No, surr, I
reckon no city chap'll fire a gun off for a right smart
ways up and down this yer pike. I've fixed that,
anyway." And so he had, for the danger-signal was
upon every farm, though not against the Captain, for
five miles round. Not being a " city fellah," I had
no cause myself to complain of this ; and indeed I
often shot with the Captain's party, though never, if
it could possibly be helped, upon the same beat with
that great man himself, for he was not a pleasant
companion after the partridges (" bird hunt'n," he
would have called it), nor were his dogs shining
examples to a young and heady setter in whose future
you might feel an interest. He regarded you on such
occasions rather as an opponent than a partner ; and
his great object was to bring down every bird
wherever it might happen to rise, before you could
pull on it, and so being in a position to boast of
what he called " beating the crowd " when the game
was counted out at the end of the day. As the
Captain was only a very moderate performer at this
work it resulted in his eye being wiped not seldom ;
and this he took so very much to heart that it was
almost as distracting (for we had a great personal
regard for the Captain) as having him cut down your
birds as they rose in front of you or even upon your
off side. I can see him now, in his big straw hat and
flapping tail-coat, bustling up to the setting dog with
elbows out, his gun at the ready, and an almost
fierce expression of rivalry in his eye and general
demeanour. His dogs would certainly not have been
accused of being " neepaty, napity," for they were

A TURKEY HUNTER 273
lumbering, poking brutes nearly as big as donkeys,
with much more intelligence and nose than speed, till
you unhaply knocked over a bird within range of
their immediate vision, when they were fast enough
in all conscience, and you would be fortunate indeed
if you got there in time to save a wing-feather. The
Captain had a gun, too, that was something worse
than a curiosity. It may be unnecessary, perhaps, to
remark that it was a muzzle-loader, but its ancient
stock was a masterpiece of splicing and riveting ; the
barrels were worn as thin as a sixpence, and though
they had so far withstood the Captain's " loads," as
he called them, the nipples were accustomed upon
occasions to blow off with a great sound, burying
themselves in tree trunks or vanishing into space.
This seemed in no way to disconcert the Captain
himself ; but it made his friends feel that it was almost
as dangerous to be behind as in front of him. It was
for every reason a good thing, when you arranged a
day over the Captain's preserves, to make up a party
of four, taking your own friend and your own dogs
over one line of country, while the Captain and some
third party, who either did not know him or was used
to him, took another. And the spirit of rivalry was
always strong enough to make this eminent sports
man accede most readily to such a plan. For not
only was his method of shooting irksome and his gun
dangerous in a mechanical sense, but his principles as
regards safety of firing were hopelessly distorted.
These latter, I recollect, were illustrated most forcibly
upon a rather unfortunate occasion. A Canadian
sportsman of some repute had come down to the
T

274 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
district for the best fortnight of the partridge-shoot
ing, and we had included in our programme a day
over the Captain's preserves. A party of four was as
usual arranged, and it was easily contrived that we
should separate, myself with the Canadian taking one
beat and the Captain with his friend taking the other.
We had a big stubble field, however, to traverse upon
this occasion before the company separated, and in
it a covey of birds was flushed wild, owing to the
jealousies of our various dogs. Beyond the Captain
at the extreme right of our line was his friend (not
mine, thank goodness), and he had taken advantage
of the brief halt to put his foot up on a fence, his back
being towards us, for the purpose of adjusting a boot
lace. A lagging bird in the. meantime rose before the
Captain, and swinging to the right flew straight for
the gentleman in question, who being about seventy
to eighty yards off, neither saw nor heard it. The
Captain, however, levelled his cannon with the greatest
deliberation and fired. Down came the bird, and up
sprang his friend with imprecations loud and deep,
it is true, but not a whit too strong for the occasion,
for he had received most of the half-spent charge in
his person. " It's all right, squire " (the victim was a
magistrate), sung out the Captain cheerily as he began
calmly re-loading his gun ; " I saw you had your back
turned towards me." The Canadian who, as a matter
of fact, was a British officer settled in Canada, an old
and accomplished sportsman, was horrorstruck, not
so much at the outrage but at the matter of fact
justification of it. It seemed to him that he had
struck a country where the less vulnerable parts of a

A TURKEY HUNTER 275
fellow-sportsman's body were ordinarily regarded as
a fair target if they happened to be in the way. He
refused in most uncompromising fashion to go another
yard with such an appalling prospect before him, and
declared that if I did not get him out of reach of the
Captain's gun at once, he would go home alone. It
was fortunate for all parties that our paths here
diverged. The story is, I believe, still told in Canada
as an illustration of what to expect at a Virginian
shooting-party. It was at turkey-hunting, however, that the Captain
really shone. At game-shooting he was a zealous
but, as will probably be understood, a not very satis
factory performer ; but at turkeys he was really
great, the wild turkey, that noblest of woodland
birds and wariest of feathered fowl, shows over a large
part of Virginia few signs of extinction. So long
indeed as the tall primeval forests, dense pine woods,
and abandoned fields cover so large a portion of the
country as they now do, the turkey will no doubt
successfully defy the efforts of the few hunters who
are sufficiently skilled in the art to menace his
existence. For the Captain's friend, the city fellah,
would never cause a single feather of that proud
bird's to tremble ; while as for the average sportsman,
who has anything to do at all besides shoot, life is
generally voted too short for a pursuit that consists
wholly of woodcraft, contains so many certain
blanks, and in which marksmanship plays so small
a part. But for the Captain life was not too short
for what was in fact its principal object. Par
tridge-shooting was only a secondary matter with
T 3

276 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
him, as he, indeed, was in that art but a secondary
performer. It was when the first sharp frosts of October had
fired the woods with the gorgeous splendour of decay
that the Captain began to stir himself after his long
siesta, and fetch down from over the mantel-shelf not
only the double-barrelled fowling-piece already no
ticed, but the long Kentucky rifle that had belonged
to his father and that he still used for squirrels and,
upon certain occasions, for the noble turkey himself
His crops were housed, such as they were : his
tobacco was being " fired " in the barn, such as it
was, and coming out all the colours of the rainbow ;
and Jake and Uncle Moses for the fifth or sixth year
in succession were vowing that they would quit
farming. And it was at this season that the young
broods of turkeys, who roamed the woodlands or
picked their way stealthily through the sedgy fields,
became lawful prey under the game-laws of Virginia,
to those who, in the local vernacular, could succeed
in " catching up with them." These flocks, or gangs,
numbered as a rule from eight to fourteen birds, and by
this time had grown to be nearly the size of the highly
educated old veterans, their parents, who watched
over their wanderings. In every great stretch of
woodland, or where continuous belts of timber
touched, or almost touched, each other, there one brood
at least would be found ranging, always within certain
more or less definite limits. Wherever, too, a mountain
spur threw its wooded crest a few hundred feet above
the low ground, it would be almost certainly fre
quented by a brood of the stately timorous birds.

A TURKEY HUNTER 277
The Captain had by instinct and experience a
very accurate notion each season where to find the
various gangs. But in addition to this not a farmer,
nor even a negro, passed along the high road in
August and September who was not ready to place
the results of his local observations at the service of
the " popular landlord of the Plummer House '' as the
county papers, when in a serio-comic vein, were
accustomed to speak of our friend. For myself,
though I made a point of having two or three ex
cursions of this kind every year with the Captain, I
could not boast of even the most elementary
proficiency in the art. Life, as I have said, seemed
too short, and such measure of skill as I possessed in
stopping the rapid twisting partridge of Virginia
would have been entirely thrown away in hunting the
turkey. For when that noble bird could be induced
to present you with a shot, it was usually a sitting
one ; and even when otherwise, the old familiar
metaphor of a flying haystack was in such case
almost literally applicable. But the essence of the
mystery lay in securing the shot ; and I am free to
confess that, save when under the wing of the Captain
and the shadow of his blunderbuss, the elusive tactics
of the king of forest-birds were too many for me.
The chief and vital accomplishment, without which
you could not hope to be a turkey-hunter at all, was
that of imitating the call of the wily keen-eared bird.
This sounds simple enough ; but as a matter of fact
it was about as difficult, or seemed to me so, as
learning the violin, and not nearly so useful for
general purposes. The implement used for this nice

278 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
deception was usually the wing-bone of the turkey
itself, which seems surely the very refinement of guile.
It was by no means difficult with a little practice to
imitate the tuk 1 tuk ! of your intended victim entirely
to your own satisfaction, and to that perhaps of some
inexperienced friends ; but if you could not convince
the turkey to an absolute certainty that you were one
of his relatives, or should he suspect for a moment
that there was treachery in the note, you might just
as well, so far as getting a shot was concerned, have
fired off both barrels at once into the air ; even better,
for sometimes a great alarm, such as the rush of a
barking dog towards a flock, will act upon it in a
paralysing or stupefying fashion. Indeed, many
turkey-hunters, the Captain included, kept a small
dog trained to run in and bark after the shot for the
purpose of scattering the birds. The Captain's
" tuckey-dawg," as he called it, was a singular looking
animal, being what was generally known in Virginia
as a " fyce," and the term, which, I think, is Elizabethan
English, was applied in the South to every species of '
small dog indiscriminately. The Captain's fyce was
of a yellow shade, with the head of a fox, and curly
tail of a squirrel, and the legs of a turnspit. He
would, in short, have been locally described as " a
bench-legged fyce." His chief mission was to tree
squirrels, and to bark up the trunk till the Captain
with his long small-bore Kentucky rifle arrived upon
the scene. For this great sportsman took sometimes
what he called " a spell of squ'rl hunt'n'," the large
gray squirrel being a popular luxury on the tables of
the Virginia country folk.

A TURKEY HUNTER 279
We used to start generally about sunrise on those
glorious autumn mornings. So far as my own feelings
were concerned there was none of the gravity and
responsibility of a campaign against the partridges.
I was out to enjoy myself in an irresponsible fashion,
to revel in the gorgeous colouring of the woodlands,
to drink in the fresh, balmy, resinous air of early
autumn, and take any bit of luck that came with
thankfulness. But the Captain, I need not say, was
very serious indeed on such occasions. I can see him
now climbing stealthily up the broken surface of the
rudely cultivated or abandoned fields that stretched
up to the edge of the forests clothing the ridge and
summit of the mountain, his keen and experienced
eye searching everywhere for some faint print on the
red clay or black loam that tells of the recent
wanderings of the gang and the direction in which
their footsteps have been bent. It is not, however, till
we enter the forest above the highest line of cultivation
that the time arrives for absolute silence and the
extremity of caution. There is up here little under-
bush or covert in which birds might be taken
unawares, for the tall gray trunks of chestnut, oak,
and poplar shoot up from a smooth carpet of dead
leaves, while far above our heads, broken here and
there with patches of bright blue sky, hangs the now
motionless canopy of leaves, one gorgeous blaze of
scarlet and gold. Slowly and cautiously, about a
hundred yards apart, we steal along between the tree-
trunks, up the long ridge of the mountain which,
dipping slightly here and there in its ascent, gives a
possible chance of coming unawares upon the turkeys

28o SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
in some hollow or beneath some ridge. The Captain
has his celebrated gun loaded with heaven knows
what, for to-day he carries his shot in a medicine-
bottle and his powder in a mustard-tin, the well-worn-
flasks, as very often happens, being laid up for repairs ;
and the fyce dog, with its bushy tail curled over its
back, prowls along behind him.
We are already very high up in the world, and the
silence of the Indian summer in these lofty forests is
intense. The bark of a squirrel, or the hoarse call of
a crow, seems to make the whole air tremble. Far
away below us lies the many-coloured rolling plain of
old Virginia, basking in the sun with its red fallows
and now golden forests and dark splashes of pine wood.
The white gleam of a homestead shows here and there,
while a score of scattered smoke-wreaths mark the
site of tobacco-barns where the newly-gathered leaves
are slowly curing. A faint gray outline rolls along
the western horizon ; it is the Blue Ridge, the first
outwork of the Alleghanies. The song of a plough
man, the bark of a dog, the thud of an axe come up
faintly from far below us ; but where we are walking
the mere snapping of a twig makes a noise like a pistol,
and has at all hazards to be avoided if I would hope
to keep on good terms with the Captain and catch,
perchance, the wary turkey napping below yonder
ridge. There is little other game or even bird-life in
these silent altitudes. The woodpecker taps as if he
revelled in the noise he made ; the gray squirrel, safe
to-day at any rate from the Captain, leaps from tree
to tree or scuttles up the horny trunks ; Brer Rabbit
(for this, it must be remembered, is the land of Uncle

A TURKEY HUNTER 281
Remus) is much too sociable to mount so high above
civilisation, though his old friend, the fox, now and
again on these occasions steals across one's vision. It
is just possible too that a brood of ruffed grouse, rare
though the bird is east of the Alleghanies, and almost
as shy as the turkey itself, might haunt these wooded
hilltops. But should one of these grand birds, by
some strange freak, get up under the very muzzle of
your gun, refrain, as you value the Captain's alliance,
from yielding to temptation ; for so far as turkeys are
concerned, a shot in these silent, echoing woods would
most certainly ruin everything for the day, or at least
for the morning. It is well, too, to keep an eye upon
the leaves over which you are carefully treading. For
the Captain at any rate would notice in a moment the
slightest disturbance of their surface, and can tell at
once whether it is the work of turkeys, and almost
estimate the length of time it is since they were
scratching among them.
Suddenly from just beyond the ridge, a hundred
yards or so to the left, a sound like an explosion of
dynamite seems to shake the whole mountain. The
Captain has fired off his gun, and he never fires at
anything less than a turkey on these occasions. A
hasty flank movement of a few yards brings me in
view of the situation, and a sound as of heavy wings
flapping follows the concussion of the shot. The fyce
dog, with tail well curled over his back, is charging
along and yelping in a state of great excitement.
The Captain is reloading his piece from the medicine-
bottle and the mustard-tin, with a sheet of the county
paper for wadding, and it is perhaps needless to remark

282 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
that his left barrel remains at full cock during the
operation. The whole gang have risen, it appears, at long
range from behind some old panels of a boundary fence.
The Captain fired, it seems, with a view to scatter the
birds, though he declares he crippled one. It may be
added that he has never yet been known to admit
missing anything clean ; and indeed, " the Captain's
cripples " have passed as an expression into the local
phraseology. And now comes the really serious part of the whole
day's proceedings. The birds are -thought to have
been at any rate partially scattered, thanks to the
noisy efforts of the bench-legged fyce well supported
by the Captain's artillery, and also to the fact of their
having been taken unawares. It now only remains to
select a favourable position upon the ridge where we
can both shelter ourselves from view and at the same
time command all the likely approaches. A great
chestnut trunk, fallen prone and dead these three or
four years, favours our design and offers an excellent
ambuscade ; so sitting down behind it we possess our
souls in patience for a time and discuss the situation
in a low tone. Then in the fulness of time the
Captain prepares to play upon his little pipe, and with
lips compressed and cheeks distended the performance
commences. Tuk, tuk, tuk, tuktuk ! But the only
answer comes from some solitary hoarse-voiced crow,
or the rat-tat-tat of a woodpecker ; and in the pauses
between the Captain's efforts the silence is only broken
by the dropping of acorns and chestnuts round us or the
light scrape of a squirrel on the leaves. It may be a

A TURKEY HUNTER 283
long time before my companion's industrious and care
ful piping is rewarded, or it may indeed be, as the song
says, for ever. In this case, however, response comes
at last to proclaim that one, at any rate, of the
scattered birds is moving on the slope of the mountain
below us.
Now the exciting period begins ; we cease to speak
even in whispers ; the fyce dog lies low and, cocking
his short ears, watches wistfully the rugged, hairy face
of his master, which is certainly something of a study,
as he holds treacherous converse with his unsuspect
ing victim. These, as may be imagined, are far the
most serious moments of the Captain's life. A false
note might mean ruin, and it is evident from the
answers that another bird has now joined the first
one ; we no longer dare show our noses even above
the log, and can judge of the birds' approach only by
their answering notes. In ten minutes or so the tuk,
tuk, gets very near ; the birds must be almost within
shot. The Captain's veins fairly swell, and the per
spiration stands out on his forehead with the responsi
bility of piping correctly at so short a distance. We
can now hear their feet actually treading on the dry
leaves, and it occurs to me how disastrous were a
sneeze at this moment. The turkeys are now beyond
a doubt within easy shot. The Captain is to give the
signal for action, and he grasps firmly his big gun,
with five drachms of powder in each barrel if there's a
grain this time, I'll warrant. It is not a pleasant gun
to be at close quarters with, and for my part I do not
like it. " Now 1 " says the chief, and at the word we
both spring into a kneeling position above the log. A

284 SKETCHES FROM OLD VIRGINIA
couple of big gobblers fill our horizon. They have
just time to lift their heavy wings. The Captain does
not take my bird this time : it is too serious an
occasion ; and we fire simultaneously.
There is a sensation for a moment as if the drum
of my ear is broken, and my head sings like a tea
kettle. A cloud of smoke hangs like a pall over
everything for a second or two, for the Captain not
only uses black powder in such large doses, but buys
it at the country store. Both birds are dead, of
course ; nothing but the equivalent of " buck fever,"
and we are neither of us likely to suffer from that,
could produce any other result. The Captain has
fallen back on his elbow for the moment ; most people
would be flat on their back from such a shock. " Dor-
gonne it, that ar blamed nipple has blowed off again 1 "
And so it had. Still, no one is hurt, except the
turkeys, and we go home rejoicing under the weight
of our somewhat heavy spoils ; while I seriously turn
over in my mind whether it would not be worth while
for the Captain's friends to raise a fund among them
selves for providing him with a gun that would stand
his "loads," and be less of a trial to his shooting-
partners.

THE END

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