A Peninsular Canaan
Separated in a manner from the rest of the world, yet in such juxtaposition as to render it within easy reach, that peninsula bounded on the north and east by Delaware Bay, on the south and east by the Atlantic, and on the west by Chesapeake Bay, containing the greater part of the State of Delaware, nine counties -- about one-third -- of Maryland, and two counties of Virginia, lies balmily luxuriating in peace and plenty. The mysterious flood of the Gulf Stream flows close enough to this beautiful shore to soften the humid climate to a mean temperature of 54 to 58 degrees throughout the year, 74 to 77 degrees in summer, 34 to 38 degrees in winter. Figs and pomegranates flourish in the open air, with peaches, luscious as nowhere else in the world, apples, pears, melons, berries, and, in short, all varieties of fruit growing in temperate and semi-tropical regions. Wheat, oats, corn, and other cereals grow abundantly, vegetables yield a rich crop, and forest trees of valuable timber -- pine, cedar, cypress, and black and white oak -- abound. Not only does the lightest labor secure a speedy and abundant return from this generous soil, but Nature, as though it were her chosen spot, has stocked it with a lavish supply of her special bounties. The waters teem with oysters, fish, terrapin, and crabs, the long stretches of marshy shore with wild fowl, and the inland fields, morasses, and
swamps with partridges, gray snipe, and woodcock. With such a land so near us, the busy hum of the world's teeming life beating against its shores like its own Atlantic surges, while it lies quiet and tranquil, with its Italian climate and fruitfulness of Normandy, supplying as it does a large part of the berries, one-third of the oysters, and nearly all the peaches to the New York markets, it is remarkable that so little is really known of it.
One of the earliest English discoverers on this continent described the outlying Chesapeake shores of this peninsula, and its natural features have but little changed since that early time. When New York city was a wilderness inhabited by wild deer and Manhattoes, while around Plymouth Rock all was still a virgin forest, Englishmen were growing tobacco, dredging oysters, and shooting wild fowl in this region. The vast tide of civilization has swept westward, deluging the plains of Colorado, southward to the chaparral of Texas, and northward to the frozen shore of Alaska, but has left the peninsula still clinging to old manners and customs, old modes of life and traditions, with a firm tenacity. This is especially true the further southward one travels in this region, where, with but few exceptions, the descendants of the earlier settlers still live, with but a small increase of outside population. Separated from the outside world by the broad waters of the Delaware and Chesapeake, connected only by a narrow isthmus fifteen miles wide with the body of the continent one still finds here easy-going old-time life, the broad hospitality of our forefathers, the careless air of ancient gentility, just tempered by an aristocratic exclusiveness. So the peninsula lies winking at the hurly-burly of modern progress, but it begins nevertheless at last to feel dubiously the intestine stir of modern Yankee notions in the midst of its indolent life.
The peninsula embraces about 6000 square miles of area. Of this about three-ninths is comprised in the State of Delaware, four-ninths in the so-called Eastern Shore of Maryland, and two-ninths in the lower counties of Virginia. Throughout the upper portion and half way down the eastern shore of the Chesapeake the country is gently rolling, covered with verdant farms and clumps of oak and chestnut woods, the Maryland portion indented with numerous inlets or creeks running far up into the
land. The highlands of the Susquehanna seem, as it were, to break against the neck of the peninsula, sending rolling billows of hills sweeping down through the counties, until they gradually subside into the unbroken level of the lower portion. Along the Atlantic coast the land sinks into a long stretch of marsh land, low, and covered with rank sedge grass, varying from a quarter of a mile to three or four miles in width. This ring of flat marsh extends from Crisfield, on the Chesapeake side, to Cape Henlopen, on the Atlantic. Further inland, though slightly higher than this, the land is yet low and only partially cultivated, the rest being covered with a think growth of pines.
The northern part of the peninsula, along the line of the railroad which is the connecting link between it and the great cities north and south of it, has a progressive manufacturing community. The Delaware River has been called the Clyde of America, but even the ship-yards of the Clyde can scarcely compare with those of Wilmington and Chester. In this portion of the peninsula are the largest gunpowder and iron works in the country; flour mills which in the early days of the republic produced more flour than all the rest of the country put together, still flourishing, though now left behind by the great mills of the Northwest; cotton and woolen mills; leather and morocco manufactories. It is the Connecticut of the South. From this point south, however, this phase of life changes, the vim and progress of modern utilitarianism merging into the indolence peculiar to Southern life. At first rich farms with modern improvements supersede the busy industries of the north peninsula; and these again give place to the broad peach orchards and berry fields of Central and Southern Delaware. These yield in turn to the scantier cultivation and thinner population of Maryland, where broad dismal swamps of cypress and cedar and forest of pine intersperse the fertile meadows and corn fields, until at length the waves of life seem to strand on the levels of Northampton.
For sixty-five miles of the lower length of the peninsula there is no railroad, and that in a country rich in natural products, easy of cultivation, and delightful in climate; there are but few steam saw or grist mills in a region abounding in valuable timber, and where corn meal is the staff of life; there are no steamboat lines on the Atlantic side, and but few on the Chesapeake, where
almost the only means of being reached from the outside world is by water travel. Thus the southern peninsula, the garden spot of the county, to whose shore Nature seems to have invited man by every bounty she could lavish upon it, appears to be cut loose from the rest of the world, sleepily floating in the indolent sea of the past, incapable of crossing the gulf which separates it from outside modern life, and undesirous of joining in the race toward the wonderful future. Requiescat in pace, O Canaan of modern times, land overflowing with milk and honey, toward whose shores the footsteps of the pilgrim are directed backward! Who could visit thee and wish thee other than thou art?
Eastville is the county seat of Northampton, a quaint, sleepy little place, Virginia-peninsular in its character. A broad sunny high-road running through it from end to end composes the main street. A row of disconnected houses lines its either side, broad, cozy, and home-like, low-roofed and whitewashed.
Its importance is impressed upon the visitor by an aged and respectable-looking court-house and clerk's office, standing near together, somewhat withdrawn from the street, aloof from the business part of the town, like two old-time aristocrats in a crowd of canaille. The business interests of the community are embodied in two or three country stores, a couple of broad, roomy, comfortable-looking taverns facing each other jealously across the street, and a barber's shop modestly withdrawn from view behind the corner of a house. Such is Eastville, the metropolis of Northampton County.
The neighborhood is the centre of the ultra-aristocracy of this portion of Virginia, solidly wealthy people in the antebellum days, counting their slaves by hundreds and their acres by thousands -- old families whose ancestors date far back into the seventeenth century as men of importance and power. The well-known Custis family, high in social position and pride of birth, one of the later descendants of which was the first husband of Lady Washington; the Robins family, in honor of whose progenitor, "the Hon. Obedience Robins, Cavalier," the county received the name of Northampton, he having been born in Northamptonshire, England. Others of lesser fame follow -- the Eyres, the Parkers, the Costins, the Nottinghams.
Among the many creeks that deeply indent the shores of the Chesapeake stand numerous old mansions outlooking over the beautiful waters of the bay, with lawns in front smooth as green velvet, dipping down to the placid water's edge. Roomy old-fashioned buildings are these mansions, an air of easy, careless gentility, somewhat decayed, hanging about them. Such is the old Parker mansion, standing on a little peninsula at the junction of two of these inlets, a large fine old house, surrounded by a think cluster of trees, with large porches front and back, paved with marble slabs, and a long colonnade running from the kitchen to the main building. In these old Virginia mansions the kitchen is almost always separated from the house, only connected with
it by this covered way, thus securing coolness to the house, at the same time providing shelter from the rain for the dainty dishes, delicate yet simple, such as on only the negro cooks of the South can compound, in whose hands the simple-sounding staples of corn bread and pork become ambrosial, and, eked out with oysters and soft crabs, a royal banquet. In the old days the cook reigned supreme in her quarters, with a parcel of jolly, grinning little negro boys as pages. The mistress might rule the household, the master the fields, but in her own dominions the cook reigned supreme.
The old families inheriting patrimonial plantations and mansions seldom leave this country of their birth, collectively forming a population more strictly English than any elsewhere in the country. In their dialect can be recognized something of the negro twang, gained, as in other Southern States, through early nursing and constant association of the children with their "darky mammies," or nurses. Of course there is less of this now than in the time of the "peculiar institution," but it has left its indelible impress, so that even the most highly educated have traces of negro localisms and phrases. But mingled with this peculiarity incident to Southern life are old English phrases and words rarely used in writings since the days of Shakespeare, Ben Johnson, and Beaumont and Fletcher.
When we arrived at Eastville a knot of talkers were occupying the tavern porch where we halted, with chairs comfortably tilted back and feet elevated, Americanwise, above the level of the head. There is always a knot of talkers about a Virginia peninsular tavern porch. The old, indolent, easy-going, horse-trotting days have not altogether passed away. The earth yields kindly the necessaries of life, "hog and hominy," Nature provides the delicacies, so the peninsular Virginian places a beautiful trust in Providence and waits for the fig to drop into his mouth. The first thing that struck us was the superficial conglomeration of all castes; all are hail-fellow-well-met with each other and with any visitor whom chance may fling among them; all have the same peculiarities of speech; all dress alike roughly. That undefinable something that distinguishes the gentleman from the boor seems lost here, until a lengthened acquaintance shows it in time; but at first it is difficult to distinguish between classes.
"There is one way to classify them," said an epigrammatic gentleman, not of Northampton, speaking of this point. "Should you meet a man walking along the road with bare feet, he is a poor white; if he has shoes, he possesses a potato patch, and perhaps a corn field; if you see one driving a cart with one ox harnessed to it, he is a middle-class farmer; if you see one driving an open wagon, he is a gentleman; but if you see one driving a gig, he is a prince."
As we stood on the porch talking with a knot of men to whom we had been introduced, a negro girl bustled out with all the temporary importance due to one who announces the dinner hour, and vigorously rang a bell perched at the top of the tavern
porch, which emitted a cracked and melancholy yet welcome sound.
We found ourselves the centre of much curiosity and interest to the Eastvillians. The did not see us doing any thing but walking about with a sketch-book, the use of which they knew not; and as many of them had never heard of an artist, and knew no more of monthly magazines than of locomotives, their curiosity waxed great.
The tavern clerk sidled up to us, the first morning we were there, with the mysterious words. "If you have any keerd you'd like to show, I'll stick it up for you."
"Eh?" said the person addressed, somewhat startled. "I don't understand."
"Oh, I reckoned you was a commission merchant, and would like to put up your name."
"No, I am not a commission merchant."
"P'r'aps you're a salesman then?"
"No, I'm not a salesman either."
"Oh!" A pause; then; "Then what might yo' be doin'?"
"Oh, I'm only looking around to gain some information."
And so word went around that he was a detective.
O Sterne! how wouldst thou have delighted in Mr. F--! how thy keen yet kindly pen would have revelled in such a subject!--his kindliness, his quaintness, his loquacity, his long-spun anecdotes of bygone Southern statesmen whom he had met in days of former greatness; and, above all, his lingering, unctuous, loving talk about things that tickle the palate and please the carnal man, so liberally bestowed on this chosen region.
He tilts back in his chair, crossing his legs on the deal table in the queer old county clerk's office, with its flag-stone floor and high windows.
"Wa'al, Sir, it's all very well to talk about fixin' up yer tarrapin with spices an' things; but give me my tarrapin straight. You first bile him till the under shell comes off easy; then you take out the gall-sac, an' butter him, an' put pepper an' salt on him, an' then you have a tarrapin that is a tarrapin."
In this same county clerk's office, safely stowed away in an old corner cupboard, are a number of mildewed, tattered volumes containing the ancient records of Northampton, dating back as far as 1632. These contain a number of semi-official law cases, tried apparently by an unofficial court --queer cases, describing old peninsular life in a series of outline pen sketches, odd and interesting, in quaint characters difficult to decipher. So-and-so "fined seven hundred pounds of tobaccoe" (the currency of that time), "and costs of court. --, one hundred and twenty pounds of dittoe." Whether the Court was obliged to smoke the "tobaccoe" received as perquisites is not stated in the chronicles. Another case is that of a bull that escapes into "John Symmes his field." The witness deposeth: "Saw said Symmes take a gun and fire at said bull, but hit him not, whereupon Thomas his servant taketh ye gunne and shooteth ye bull in his backside, making him both to skippe and leape." John Symmes was not a crack shot, to say the least.
In another case a servant dies from exposure, and a semi-official coroner's jury brings in a verdict that "Richard Costin his negroe John came to his deathe by ye will of God and ye inclemencie of ye wether." And so numerous cases go to make up a whole picture of life, quaint and amusing, yet in their unofficial and unbusinesslike air much resembling the Northampton of the present day.
Some ten or twelve miles below Eastville
lies the old plantation of Arlington, the seat of the well-known Custis family -- a fruitful race, a drop or more of whose blood flows in nearly all of the leading families of peninsular Virginia. One fine day, under the leadership of Mr. F--, we drove down to this old plantation, formerly a great tobacco farm, now subdivided into numerous small estates, F-- chattering in his loquacious style, we listening, amused by the graphic pictures of old-time life our companion drew.
"D'ye see that house over theer?" pointing to an old brick mansion embowered in tress. "Well, that's Eyre Hall, where old Colonel Eyre lived. Ah! I recollect the old colonel well. A fine high-toned old gentleman he was. We used to say the two finest gentlemen in Virginia was Colonel Eyre and his overseer, Mr. Lockwood. The old colonel used to ride about on a blood mar' over his plantation. Whenever he passed a nigger, no matter what the man was doing, he had to stop his work and bow, and the colonel always touched his hat. He was a mighty polite man, the colonel. 'Kind?' Oh yes, I reckon he was a kind master. We all had to be kind to our niggers then, they was worth so much. The ain't as well treated now as they was then, I reckon." And so he talked on, unfolding the good and evil of the defunct "institution" with unconscious naivete.
Arlington is a broad-lying fertile plantation, stooping gently to the waters of the beautiful Chesapeake, that seem to bathe the shoulders of the old "tobacco place." The mansion has long since crumbled away, and no vestige of it remains; but near its former site are a number of old tombstones that once stood, as is customary throughout Virginia, close to the old homestead. The rather elaborate mausoleum that covers the remains of the father of Martha Washington's first husband bears an epitaph that is rather a remarkable production of its kind. Here it is:
"Beneath this Marble Tomb lies ye body of the Honorable John Custis. Esq., of the City of Williamsburg and Parish of
Aged 71 years and yet lived but seven years Which was the space of time he kept A Bachelor's House at Arlington On the Eastern Shore of
The epitaph tells all: he considered no time of his life living but that which he spent on the Eastern Shore. And yet it is much to be doubted whether it was so much the beauty of the Eastern Shore as the crossness of his wife at "Williamsburg in the parish of
Across on the other side of the peninsula, which is but narrow in this its lower part, stand a number of half-ruined and very dilapidated windmills, posted close along the broad marsh that lines the shore, like so many landmarks of the past. We examined one of them near at hand, interested in its quaint style as it stood alone, a drove of little black pigs rooting around its foundation, its arms stretched imploringly aloft without a vestige of sail to cover their nakedness. A long lever with a wheel attached at the end of it was the means whereby it was turned in the direction of the wind. These windmills have long since passed the age of usefulness, and are now abandoned in their loneliness to crumble away neglected until time shall remove the last vestige of them.
In the old plantation days a portion of a field was generally set apart for a negro burying-ground, where their bodies lay unmolested by ploughshare or hoe. Now that slavery is a by-gone thing, remnants of the former force of black servants still come to the planter begging that, as one by one their companions die, they may lay their remains in the last resting-place beside their relations. The burying-grounds are generally marked by a clump of trees, around which the farmer religiously ploughs, not disturbing the low mounds beneath which
lie the remains of perhaps the planters' former faithful servants.
Outlying along the Atlantic coast reaching from Cape Charles to Cape Henlopen, from the Chesapeake to the Delaware Bay, is a continuous chain of islands, corresponding to the Sea Islands of the Carolinas, separated from the main-land by a sheet of water varying in width from a quarter of a mile to seven or eight miles, bearing different names in its more considerable portions, such as Chincoteague Sound, the Broadwater, Sinepuxent Bay, and so forth. These islands varying in length from less than a mile to two or three leagues, are of two characters, either low and marshy, covered with a think growth of rank sedge, the refuge of countless millions of fiddler-crabs, the brooding-place of numberless gulls, marsh-hens (Virginia rail), and willits (a variety of snipe), or sandy, and covered with alternate strips of pine glade and salt-meadows, on some of which run wild a peculiar breed of ponies, called "beach hosses" by the natives. Off-lying from Northampton County, and separated from it by the Broadwater, is one of the most considerable of these islands, rejoicing in the not very euphonious name of Hog Island, a favorite resort of thousands of fish-hawks, which mate, brood, and rear their young at this spot, finding ample means of sustenance in the treacherous shallows of Broadwater shoals. Stretching here and there through this sound are numerous reefs of "oyster rock," spots whereon oysters have lived, propagated, and died for ages, until the accumulated mass of shells and live oysters has grown into a reef nearly as hard as a rock close to the surface of the water.
We who proposed making a trip to this island found ourselves on our way thither in a small open boat, under the care of an experienced guide, following the tortuous windings of one of the many creeks that intersect the off-lying marsh along the shore. North and south, as far as the eye could see, extended the broad salt-marshes, here and there relieved by a so-called island -- a patch of ground somewhat elevated above the surrounding marsh, clustered with a growth of pines or cedars, mostly scrubby and stunted. Overhead sea-gulls and forked-tail terns wheeled clamorously, while flocks of snipe and curlew swept in rapid flight along the more distant marsh. Along the banks of the creek numberless absurd little fiddler-crabs stood erect, waving each his one preposterously large claw at the intruder, or went popping into their holes that riddled the marsh in all directions. Here and there a column of oysters called "cats's-tongues," grown into an irregular, consolidated mass, thin, bitterly salt, and useless, stood in black clumps, tangled with weed and drift. So we passed out through the crooked windings of the creek, past a long low marsh called "Gulls' Island," on account of the numberless gulls, terns, marsh-hens, and willits that build their nests at this spot, and so into the Broadwater. The fishermen take innumerable eggs here during the season. One can see their black figures, stooping with baskets, gathering the eggs, while in the sunny air above them a cloud of clamorous gulls hovers with anxious cries.
Indeed, these marshes are plentifully stocked with Nature's dainties. None but those who have tasted can judge what a delicate morsel a spotted marsh-hen's egg is or how savory that of the gull -- surprisingly large for the size of the bird -- or the sharp-pointed egg of the willit. The nest of the marsh-hen is built in a clump of sedge above high-water mark, that of the willit on the ground beneath an overshadowing knot of grass, and the gull's upon a few sticks or drift, open to the air. Besides these dainties, wild fowl and snipe abound in their season, growing surprisingly fat. The waters are plentifully stocked with fish, and numerous terrapins -- the most sought after of all delicacies -- abound. These latter are generally caught in the autumn, when they commence digging down into the mud, where they lie torpid during the winter. The hunter, walking slowly along the bank, looking closely with practiced eye, presently sees a round spot of mud softer than the surrounding marsh. Into this he thrusts a long pointed stick until he strikes the back of Master Terrapin, when nothing remains but to dig him up from where he lies, as he thought, so securely. In the spring and early fall they are caught with nets in the deeper pools where they abound.
Leaving the creek and the marshes, we sailed across the beautiful Broadwater, just rough enough to make the boat dance merrily, passing numerous fishermen in little cockle-shells of skiffs on their way to spear drum-fish on the shoals. The drum somewhat resembles a large black-fish, and receives its name from a peculiar drumming noise it makes under the water, probably caused by the sudden expulsion of air from the air-sac or bladder. On a calm day their smothered thum! thum! can be distinctly heard in all directions. They are taken with a harpoon, which the fishermen throw with the greatest accuracy, striking the fish at a considerable distance below the water. When the fish is struck, the pole comes loose from the gaff of the harpoon, to which it is attached by a cord some six or eight feet long; this then serves as a float, constantly drawing the fish to the surface until it is exhausted. The drum, strong and lusty, sometimes run for a mile or more, dragging the pole through the water with surprising velocity. Away goes fish, and fisherman in pursuit, up and down the channel, until at length, fairly tired out, the victim is captured and hauled into the boat. We were told that these fish are sometimes taken weighing over a hundred pounds.
The inhabitants of Hog Island are nearly all fisherman and their families, the exceptions comprising one or two store-keepers and the United States light-keeper's family, the light-house standing on a little sand-knoll in the eastern part of the island. At the time of this visit the fish-hawks were mating, and as they circled overhead the air was filled with their peculiar note, sounding like the cry of a half-grown chicken. The party struck across the island to the sand-dunes, about a mile away to the eastward. Nothing could be drearier than these hillocks of bare sand, rolling in undulations of whiteness; yet withal it is a picturesque dreariness. In some places the sand-hills were eighty feet high, covering every vestige of trees they have buried, except at the sloping sides, where the occasional skeleton top of some dead pine protrudes through the surrounding whiteness. Beyond the hillocks, to the eastward, stretches a barren waste of flat sand resembling the ripples in water known to sailors as "cats'-paws." On the distant eastern shore the surf of the Atlantic breaks with perpetual rumble and roar, now loud and angry as the sound is borne down on the salt breeze, now with a muffled and distant thunder as the wind dies away.
The wooded portions of the island are in many cases swampy, and tangled with a thick growth of vines and underbrush -- excellent harborage for that most abominable of nuisances the wood-tick, as we found from personal experience.
On almost every tree on the borders of this swamp, standing stark and solitary, is
seen a huge mass of twigs, indicating a fish-hawk's nest. Some of these are of enormous size, the interstices between the sticks in some cases being occupied by families of grackle, or common crow-blackbirds. The small, solitary, stunted trees that stand at the feet of the sand-dunes are also frequently burdened by one and sometimes two of these huge, unwieldy nests, and in some cases they are perched on the bare sand atop of some bald, melancholy knoll.
The light-house stands at the southern extremity of these hillocks, which are continually shifting their position, moving ever inland and southward, destroying everything in their way. Even the light-house seems in some danger of submersion by this rolling sea of grit, and already fences and trees appear half drowned by it. Below the light the level waste of sand extends far away southward to the sea, the life-saving station looking like a speck in the extreme distance.
In the afternoon we took a stroll across the intervening sand-flats to the Atlantic coast, where a number of fishermen were drum-fishing with strong lines heavily loaded with lead, which they cast far out beyond the breakers.
Nothing could be more spirited than this scene. The day was windy, and the breakers roared thundering up the beach, filling the air with salt spray. Little sandpipers ran up and down at the edge of the water, following the under-tow down until it met the on-coming wave again. In the offing the dark and troubled Atlantic cut sharp against the horizon. In the foreground stood the fishermen, clad in a motley of water-proofs, sou'westers, and huge rubber boots reaching to the hips, standing thigh-deep in the water. Presently one of them hooked a fish. He threw his live over his shoulder, and turning, splashed through the surf up the beach, dragging his flouncing captive after him and landing it bodily.
These fishermen live in small cottages on the westward of the island, standing back each in a little yard, some with a row of fig-trees in front, their outward appearance poorly indicating the sumptuousness of the bill of fare of the meal the visitor will receive within -- ham and eggs, hot corn bread, drum-fish steaks, clam stew, coffee, and preserves. No matter how poor these people are, they always manage to live well, having for their every meal what people of the outside world consider dainties.
Perhaps the reader has never seen a Virginia bed; the huge pile of feathers, mattress upon mattress five feet high, Pelion upon Ossa, into the depths of which one sinks as into a valley, a mountain of feathers rising high upon either hand; the gorgeous conterpane resembling Joseph's coat in point of motley, the valance of snowy linen. The best bed in a poor Virginian's house is as the apple of the housekeeper's eye. It stands conspicuous, the first object that catches visitor's glance. In such a bed we (compelled to a night's stay upon the island by a coming storm and the unseaworthiness of out boat) found our weary frame recumbent, somewhat to disturbance of the original inhabitants, who took a bloody vengeance upon us. This bed stood not in the main room of the house, but in a large apartment in the second story, haunted by a ghostly spinning-wheel, two or tree old sea-chests, and some bonnet boxes. Immediately above it was the roof, sloping on either side to the eaves close to the floor. The storm soon broke in all its fury, but we only dimly heard it as we floated away into the fathomless sea of sleep.
We had a happy opportunity, soon after returning to the main-land, to inspect the means by which the United Sates mail service connects Northampton with the rest of the world.
Four o'clock in the morning, and dark as night, with just a faint inkling of light tempering the eastern sky. An early cup of coffee at a hospitable friend's, and then a ride of a mile to catch the mail-stage on the county road from Northampton to Accomac. The morning was raw and chilly it had rained the night before, and silvery wreaths of mist clung around the edge of the woodlands, betokening moisture and marsh within their gloomy shades. Chuckwill's-widows called hurriedly out of its piny glades, and the mocking-birds -- the nightingales of America -- were yet heard from the tangled thickets.
We had pictured the mail-stage to ourselves, not, perhaps, as the old-time mail, with its guard, its blue panels, and its crest, but still with a pair of brisk peninsular horses howling quickly along the county road, with rattle of chains and jolly lurchings from side to side. When we reached the county road the gloom had given way to the dusk of dawn. A curious spectacle came limping and hobbling along, with many eccentric lurchings and side movements -- a white horse with a preposterously deformed leg, harnessed to a crazy wagon, creeping through the shadows of the pine glades.
"Has the stage passed yet?"
"Wa'al, I reckon this yer's the stage," in reproachful accent. There was another occupant of the stage, Nottingham by name. They say if you hail any man as "Nottingham" in Northampton County, you hit his name two times out of three.
"Your horse is rather lame," we ventured.
"Wa'al, boss, I reckon he's jest as good a hoss as you'll find in Northampton County. He don't go fast, but he goes regular. Howsumever, we change hosses at Bell Haven, and then we git a fine one." Bell Haven is the intermediate station between Eastville and Anancock. Here the change of "hosses" was made, and when we stepped out from breakfast at the queer little tavern we found the late dilapidated white animal replaced by a vicious-looking black, with a straight neck, a backbone that sagged in the middle, and sharp little promontories at the points of his shoulders and hips.
"Jes' you tack the reins and start 'im," said the driver, standing at a respectful distance and tossing us the reins, of which we only managed to catch one. Off started the horse, ran over a large stone, caught the hub of the wheel in a corner of the fence, tearing away a couple of the rods of palings, and brought up with a lurch in the middle of the road. There he stood immovable, with legs apart, refusing to budge, resisting all entreaties and commands, and standing as though meditating. After the space of about five minutes he apparently came to a determination, for with another sharp lurch he started once more at an ambling trot. We had no more trouble with him from this point to Anancock, excepting an occasional halt in the middle of the road, as though the animal were debating the feasibility of turning back; but he reconsidered the point on every occasion, and finally carried us safely into Anancock. Certainly, considering how the mail-carrier of Northampton endangers life and limb, not to speak of patience, he deserves the palm for patriotic disinterestedness and self-sacrifice.
In some of the off-lying Atlantic islands before referred to, owned by private individuals, numbers of cattle and sheep are raised, running nearly wild, and requiring but little attention, finding ample sustenance in the rank salt sedge or in the scrub bushes that cover the more elevated sandy portions. It was sheep-shearing time, and as we were curious to see not only these island sheep, but the manner of shearing them, we had an excellent opportunity of examining both the one and the other under the pilotage of the owner of one of these islands -- one of those many temporary friends whose open-handed hospitality we have so much cause to remember.
B-- keeps bachelor's hall on the main-land, under the strict supervision of a self-relying, self-asserting, kind-hearted colored woman, Aunt Saber, an ex-slave of the B-- family, to whom she seems to have attached herself with all that faithful, uncompromising affection sometimes attending the old "patriarchal institution." After many vicissitudes subsequent to the war, during
which B-- had served in the Confederate navy, he returned once more to settle in Virginia, and Aunt Saber, who had nursed him when a child, came to keep house for him. She calls him "honey," scolds him vigorously, and oversees his household economy with the strictest attention.
B--'s lawn slopes gently down to the shore of a salt creek or inlet from the Broadwater, along the bed of which lie quantities of delicious oysters, which can be raked up not fifty yards from the house -- fat and delicate bivalves, not flaccid as those in a city restaurant, but plump, firm, and sweet, as they never are but when fresh from their native beds. At the shore of this creek, its bow on the gravelly beach, lay a large flatboat, with a leg-of-mutton sail, in which B-- and his guest proposed to cross to the island of the sheep-shearing. The crew consisted of B--, the writer, four men, and a small negro boy; the freight of two baskets of "grub", sheep-shears, and a demijohn of water, for rarely any thing but rain-water can be obtained at these islands.
They reached the island about night-fall, and after wading about a quarter of a mile through five inches of salt-water across an overflowed marsh, finally arrived at their destination -- the overseer's cabin. It was a little log-built hut, containing but two small rooms. The lower one, half filled by a gigantic bedstead, is used for kitchen, sitting-room, bedroom, and dining-room all in one; the upper, for some mysterious purpose that man knows not of.
Luckily a warm fire awaited the bedraggled travellers, and a hearty meal of the food Aunt Saber had put up for us, eked out with a dozen or two of delicate marsh-hens' eggs -- tidbits for a king. The overseer had carried a bushel or so of these beautiful little eggs over to the main-land to sell, but had luckily left enough for our consumption.
The night passed comfortably enough, except for the requisitions of the native occupants of the bed, a heavy smell of damp clothes in a close room, an occasional feeble grumbling of the men on the floor (where the overseer's wife had wrapped them up like four babes), and once the frantic yells of the little darky, who had the nightmare, and scrambled over the recumbent men amid muttered execrations. Beyond these little inconveniences, the night passed as comfortably as could be expected.
At dawn the next morning the men started to scour the island over and collect the stray sheep in a flock. They were scattered in all directions, some along the Atlantic surf, some across the marsh, some in the thickets in the southern part of the island. At length the sound of distant bleating was heard, and soon the drove -- constantly augmented by the stragglers that joined it from
all directions -- slowly and reluctantly moved toward the sheep-pen; a moment more and they rushed tumultuously into it.
The shearing was done on a long table, a carpenter's work-bench, the small negro being sent into the pen to catch the sheep for the shearers. It was amusing to watch him -- the cautious way in which he would approach the frightened drove huddled in a corner, he scarcely less frightened himself. Suddenly he makes a dive, misses his sheep, stumbles, and the whole flock gallops over his prostrate body. Another rush is more fortunate, and he fastens his black little hands in the shaggy wool on the back of some old ram, which drags him, grinning, yelling and with gleaming eyeballs, half around the pen before the animal acknowledges itself conquered. In the afternoon the wind blew up from the northeast and rain set in; the poor denuded sheep, shivering in the cold wind, looked so miserable that B-- in very pity stopped the shearing.
It was a cold passage across the water to the main-land. All were wet to the skin, silent, and grim, the little darky's teeth rolling like ivory castanets. Aunt Saber scolded when we arrived, of course.
"What yo' come across fo' in dis kine o' weather, anyway?" But she presently provided a roaring fire and warm clothes; then, seated in easy-chairs, with feet stretched to the grateful blaze, with a bottle of claret and our pipes of tobacco, we rather enjoyed than otherwise our late experience.
Judge -- sauntered in. His family live in one end of B--'s house, and he seems in the habit of dropping in in the evenings to have a friendly pipe and "powwow" with his landlord. He is a dry, taciturn man, but occasionally drops into narratives of his services during the late war.
"Gentlemen," he began, leaning back comfortably in his chair, "I remember serving in the Confederate service here on the Eastern Shore."
"I didn't know the war reached here," we said.
"Oh yes, we all marched out to protect the land from the invader -- till the Yankees came down under Lockwood."
"And what then?"
"Why, then -- we all went home again. Before we broke up I recollect laying in front of the Yankee lines at Nashville, up the county here. There was no way of getting water there except by crossing a road up which the Yankees shot at us. I do hate bullets, gentlemen, hate them infernally. So I got a big nigger to bring the water for me whenever it was my turn. One morning he comes in to me, and says he, 'Boss, I isn't like white genlums. I's afeard of bullets. I don'like'em. I wouldn't git no mo' water, boss, ef you gave me a half a dolla'.' Well,gentlemen," said the judge, reflectively, there's no doubt about it -- the nigger is the greatest coward under heaven."
A picturesque sight is Aunt Saber's kitchen, with a large open fire-place in which she can stand upright, a huge crane hung with a variety of pot-hooks and hangers, its mantel-shelf adorned with bottles and hung around with newspaper artistically scalloped at the edges, and standing in front of the blazing logs an array of pots, pans, spiders,
and kettles emitting odors of corn bread and the like, appealing balmily to the inner man. It is raining, and a couple of pickaninnies are warming their bare black toes in the ashes, sharing the genial warmth with a boxful of goslings nearly drowned out by the northeaster.
"Wa'al, now, honey," says Aunt Saber, standing with a frying-pan in her hand looking over our shoulder as we make a sketch of this interesting interior -- "wa'al, now, honey, ef you haven't got de head on you! now ef dat hain't my spiders jes ez natural ez life! Why, I might figger a week 'fo' I could do dat."
The Virginian plantation houses on this portion of the sea-side are generally built of frame, large and roomy. As in other places along the southern peninsula, they generally stand close to the shores of a creek. We
visited several comfortable and cozy houses of this kind, among the most so Mount Custis, about three miles from Drummondtown, the county seat of Accomac, one of the old Custis farms, as its name indicates.
The buzzards in the southern peninsula are very abundant and exceedingly tame, being protected by the law of Virginia, as in other Southern States, where the decomposition of refuse takes place with such rapidity that they are most useful as scavengers. They build in the depths of the swamps that abound throughout this country. We visited one of the nests of these birds in the gloomy recesses of a swamp, where an almost tropical tangle of trees and vines rendered it nearly impassable. One constantly sees these birds, either sailing in graceful gyrations through the air, flapping awkwardly up from the road-side to some low tree within easy reach of the carriage whip, or indolently sitting in rows along the top of a worm-fence, scarcely noticing the passer-by.
Numerous Revolutionary cannon are scattered throughout the peninsula. How they got there it is hard to say, but there they are, like so many veterans long past the years of active service, stranded in a country district. Sometimes they are seen lying recumbent in the grass, converted into a temporary horse and carriage by a small impish negro boy "tendin' baby;" sometimes standing erect at the village street corner, their muzzles in the ground, their butts serving as an excellent means where by the inevitable small boy can take his necessary exercise.
The soil of peninsular Virginia is rather kindly than rich. Certainly it has not that richness of virgin land of which it is said, "Tickle it with a hoe, and it laughs in a harvest;" but light manuring produces a quick return and ample crops, and that considerably earlier than in other places north of Norfolk. There is still a remnant of the old style of farming to be seen, of which it was said that there were only three crops raised in Virginia -- corn, hogs, and niggers, of which the hogs ate all the corn, and the nigger devoured all the hogs. One of the these "crops," however, is removed from the list.
The "poor white" is poor -- very poor. The small farmers of the North can not compare with these in absolute destitution of money.
"Doctor," said one of them, who had slowly recovered consciouness after being terribly injured by an exploding grindstone -- "doctor, I reckon I'm pretty badly bruck up, hain't I?"
"Yes, my man; you are hurt just about as badly, to stand a chance of recovery, as any man I ever saw."
Thet's so, thet's so. Wa'al, doctor, do you know, thet ez poor ez I am, an' ez much ez I need money, I -- I wouldn't ev hed this happen to me fer -- fer twenty-five dollars!"
Many of these poor whites are day-laborers on the neighboring farms, but others work a small patch of potatoes or corn on their own account, in ground mostly so filled with stumps and so given to overgrowing bushes as to be useless to any but themselves. One sometimes sees them working in their fields. Paterfamilias does the ploughing, Filius Minimus drops the corn, and the rest come in regular sequence, Mater leading the hoeing.
The poor are