Virginia: the Old Dominion Part 20

CHAPTER XXVI

THE END OF THE VOYAGE

Before daylight on the following morning Gadabout was awake and astir.

She had resolved to catch the early tide and finish her James River cruise that day by a final run to the head of navigation at Richmond.

For the last time the clacking windla.s.s was calling the sleeping anchor from its bed in the river; the Commodore was hanging out the sailing-lights; and Nautica (who could not find the dividers) was stepping off the distance to Richmond on the chart with a hairpin.

How dreary a start before dawn sounds to a landsman! The hated early call; the hasty breakfast with coffee-cup in one hand and time-table in the other; the dismal drive through dull, sleeping streets; the cheerless station; the gloomy train-shed with its lines of coaches wrapped in acrid engine smoke.

But the houseboater knows another way. For him, the early call is the call of the tide that finds ready response from a lover of the sea.

Does the tide serve before dawn, man of the s.h.i.+p? Then before dawn its stir is in your blood; your anchor is heaved home; your sailing-lights, white and green and red, are bravely twinkling; your propellers are tossing the waters astern; and you are off.

You are off with the flood just in from the sea, or with the ebb that is seeking the sea; and with it you go along a way where no one has pa.s.sed before--an evanescent way that is made of night shades and river mists. And after a while you come upon a wonderful thing--almost the solemn wonder of creation, as, from those thinning, s.h.i.+mmering veils, the world comes slowly forth and takes shape again.

When the real world took shape for Gadabout that morning on the James, she was some distance above s.h.i.+rley and the river was a smaller river than we had seen at any time before. By the chart, we observed that it was a comparatively narrow stream all the rest of the way to Richmond.

We had now entered upon a portion of the old waterway that Nautica insisted had been done up in curl-papers. Here, the voyager must sail around twenty miles of frivolous loops to make five miles of progress.

Upon coming to a group of buildings indicated on the chart and standing close to the right bank, we knew that Gadabout had navigated the first of the fussy curls. Around it, we had travelled six miles since leaving s.h.i.+rley, and now had the satisfaction of knowing that the old manor-house itself stood just across from these buildings, less than a mile away.

On a little farther, we pa.s.sed a fine plantation home called Curle's Neck. A long while after that, another large plantation, Meadowville, came alongside. But the curious thing was that, at the same time, alongside came Curle's Neck again. We had travelled something over four miles since leaving it, yet there it stood directly opposite and less than three quarters of a mile from us.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VARINA.]

Perhaps the river observed that we were getting a little out of patience; for, almost immediately, it sought to beguile us by bringing into view one of its show points, a landing on the left bank with a large brick house near by. The chart told us that this was Varina; and the guide-books told us a pretty story about how here, in their honeymoon days, lived John Rolfe and Pocahontas.

Although that honeymoon was almost three centuries gone, and there was nothing left at Varina to tell of it, yet somehow our thoughts quickened and Gadabout's engines slowed as we sailed along the romantic site.

To be sure, to keep up the spirit of romance one has to overlook a good deal. The fact that John Rolfe had been married before and the report that Pocahontas had been too, somewhat discouraged sentiment. And then, was it love, after all, that built the rude little home of that strange pair somewhere up there on the sh.o.r.e? Or, had Cupid no more to do with that first international marriage in our history than he has had to do with many a later one? Can it be that politics and religion drew John Rolfe to the altar? and that a broken heart led Pocahontas there?

Poor little bride in any event! A forest child--wrapped in her doe-skin robe, the down of the wild pigeon at her throat, her feet in moccasins, and her hair crested with an eagle's feather; bravely struggling with civilization, with a new home, a new language, new customs, and a new religion.

How many times, when it all bore heavy on her wildwood soul, did she steal down to this ragged sh.o.r.e, push out in her slender canoe, and find comfort in the fellows.h.i.+p of this turbulent, untamable river! And how often did she turn from her home to the wilderness, slipping in noiseless moccasins back into the narrow, mysterious trails of the red man, where bended twig and braided rush and scar of bark held messages for her!

Then came the time when the river and the forest were lost to her. The princess of the wilderness had become the wonder of a day at the Court of King James. Almost mockingly comes up the old portrait of her, painted in London when she had "become very formall and civill after our English manner." The rigid figure caparisoned in the white woman's furbelows; the stiff, heavy hat upon the black hair; the set face, and the sad dark eyes--a dusky woodland creature choked in the ruff of Queen Bess.

When Varina was left behind, we fell to berating the tortuous river again. Of course we did not think for a moment that the troublesome curlicues we were finding had always been there. When the river was the old, savage Powhatan, we may be sure it never stooped in its dignity of flow to such frivolity. These kinks were silly artificialities that came when the n.o.ble old barbarian was civilized and named in honour of a vain and frivolous foreign king.

Now, just ahead of us, was the most foolish frizzle of all. It was a loop five miles around, and yet with the ends so close together that a boy could throw a stone across the strip of land between. At a very early day, sensible folk lost patience and sought, by digging a ca.n.a.l across the narrow neck, to cut this offensive curl off altogether.

Some Dutchmen among the colonists were the first to try this (and Dutchmen understand waterway barbering better than anybody else); but they were unsuccessful. Their efforts seem to have resulted only in giving the place the name of Dutch Gap. Many years ago, the United States Government took up the work and, in 1872, the five-mile curl was effectually cut off by the Dutch Gap Ca.n.a.l.

A good deal of interesting history is a.s.sociated with this loop of the James. Here, but four years after the coming of those first colonists, the town of Henrico or Henricopolis was founded. The place made a somewhat pretentious beginning and was doubtless intended to supersede James Towne as the capital of the colony. Steps were taken to establish a college here. If they had been successful, Harvard College could not lay claim to one of its present honours, that of being the earliest college in America. But the Indian ma.s.sacre of 1622 caused the abandonment of the college project and of Henricopolis too.

We pa.s.sed into the ca.n.a.l, which was so short that we were scarcely into it before we were out again and headed on up the river. The banks of the stream grew higher and bolder, and we were soon running much of the time between bluffs with trees hanging over.

On some of the bald cliffs buzzards gathered to sun themselves; and they lay motionless even as we pa.s.sed, their wings spread to the full in the fine suns.h.i.+ne. It was almost the suns.h.i.+ne of summer-time. In its glow we could scarcely credit our own recollections of some wintry bits of houseboating; and as to that story in our note-books about our being ice-bound in Eppes Creek, it was too much to ask ourselves to believe a word of it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DUTCH GAP Ca.n.a.l.]

In colonial times there were a number of fine homes along this part of the James, but most of them have long since disappeared. Just after pa.s.sing Falling Creek we came upon one colonial mansion yet standing.

It belonged in those old times to the Randolphs, and is best known perhaps as the home of the colonial belle, Mistress Anne Randolph.

Among the beaux of the stirring days just before the Revolution, she was a reigning toast under the popular name of "Nancy Wilton." The second Benjamin Harrison of Brandon was among her wooers; and it is to his courts.h.i.+p that Thomas Jefferson refers when expressing, in one of his letters, the hope that his old college roommate may have luck at Wilton. He did have. And we remembered the sweet-faced portrait at Brandon of "Nancy Wilton" Harrison.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FALLING CREEK.]

Soon, our course was along a narrow channel saw-toothed with jetties on either hand. The signs of life upon the river told that we were nearing Richmond. We pa.s.sed some work-boats, tugs, dredges, and such craft, and everybody whistled.

Over the top of a rise of land that marked the next bend of the river, we saw an ugly dark cloud. It had been long since we had seen a cloud like that; but there is no mistaking the black hat of a city.

So, there was Richmond seated beside the falls in the James--those water-bars that the river would not let down for any s.h.i.+p to pa.s.s; there was where our journey would end. To be sure, long years ago, the pale-faces outwitted the old tawny Powhatan by building a ca.n.a.l around its barriers. Their s.h.i.+ps climbed great steps that they called locks; and, pa.s.sing around the falls and rapids, went up and on their way far toward the mountains. But the river knew the ways of the white man, and kept its water-bars up and waited.

After a while the pale-faces took to a new way of getting themselves and their belongings over the country; they went rolling about on rails instead of floating on the water; and before long, they almost forgot the old waterways. Nature waited a while and then took their abandoned ca.n.a.ls to grow rushes and water-lilies; and she covered the tow-paths with green and put tangles of undergrowth along; and then she gave it all to the birds and the frogs and the turtles.

So, it came to pa.s.s that river barriers counted once more--that the barrier across our river counted once more. We did not know whether the ca.n.a.l ahead of us was wholly abandoned; but we did know that it was so obstructed as to no longer furnish a way of getting a vessel above the falls.

The Powhatan was master again; and a little way beyond that next bend it would bar the progress of Gadabout just as, three centuries earlier, it had barred the progress of the exploring boats that the first settlers sent up from James Towne.

Well, it was high time anyway for our journey to end. We had been several months upon the river--several months in travelling one hundred miles! One can not always go lazing on, even in a houseboat; even upon an ancient waterway leading through Colonial-land.

The old river may carry you to the beginning-place of your country; it may bear you on to the doors of famous colonial homes, full of old-time charm and traditional courtesy. But if so, then all the more need for falls and rapids to put a reasonable end to your houseboat voyage.

We came about the bend in the stream and, at sight of the city before us, were reminded of the keen prevision of its colonial founder. When Colonel William Byrd, that sagacious exquisite of Westover, came up the river one day in 1733 to this part of his almost boundless estate, and laid the foundations of Richmond here in the wilderness beside the Falls of the James, he foresaw that he was founding a great city. A "city in the air" he called it, and his dream came true. Its realization in steeples and spires and chimneys and roof-lines opened before us now upon the slopes and the summits of the river hills.

Soon we were skirting the city's water front. We pa.s.sed piers and factories and many boats. We went from the pure air of the open river into the tainted breath of the town. Among many odours there came to be chiefly one--that of tobacco from the great factories.

And that brought to mind a strange fact. In all our journey up the river, we had not seen a leaf of tobacco nor had we seen a place where it was grown. Tobacco, upon which civilization along the James had been built; that had once covered with its broad leaves almost every cultivated acre along the stream; that had made the greatness of every plantation home we had visited--and now unknown among the products of the fertile river banks!

At last Gadabout was at the foot of the falls and rapids. Like those first exploring colonists we found that here "the water falleth so rudely, and with such a violence, as not any boat can possibly pa.s.se."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE VOYAGE ENDED. GADABOUT IN WINTER QUARTERS.]

Of course there was a temptation to do with our boat as the colonists once proposed to do with theirs--take her to pieces and then put her together again above the falls, and so sail on up the old waterway to the South Sea and to the Indies. But the exploring spirit of the race is not what it used to be, and we simply ran Gadabout into a slip beside the disused ca.n.a.l and stopped. An anchor went plump into the water, making a wave-circle that spread and spread till it filled the whole basin--a great round water-period to end our river story.

THE END.