All About Cobb's Island

Warrenton, Va., Aug. 13th, 1880.

Editor Forest and Stream:--

I see, in your last issue, a card from a Poughkeepsie man disputing my account of Cobb's Island, and rather sarcastically asking for further information. For his benefit, as well as your sportsmen readers, I will give a brief history of the famous sporting resort.

Many years ago--when you, I and the wearied proofreader who revises this were boys--there dwelt in a shanty on a barren sand bank, that had risen, like the fabled isle Calypso, from out of the depths of the ocean, a rough, weather-beaten fisherman named Cobb, who gained his living by casting his nets as well as shooting ducks, wild fowl and geese, vast quantities of which, in the winter, flocked to the great Broadwater region lying near. When he first bought his domain it was but four or five acres in extent, and the price paid was $30 in gold and ten bags of salt. Never was money ever placed to greater advantage, for Old Neptune, generally so merciless and cruel, and who remorselessly gathers in much of that garnered wealth that is seeking other climes--yet sometimes in his royal humor gives a royal gift--and this simple fisher, like the one in the Arabian Nights, was in luck. Day by day, hour by hour, by the ceaseless, restless action of the waters did his island increase; and nature, to ward off all danger of its being swept away by a tidal wave, formed by breakers, in the figure of a half moon, that broke the strength of the northwest waves, and shattered them into harmless foam when they struck the island. It is a sight to see those billows in a high wind--racing one behind another like crack horses strung out in a sixteen mile race--coming in on the home stretch, and then dashing themselves against the bar with a noise like the booming of distant artillery. In calm weather it sounds like a monody played in low numbers, and
"The league long roller thundering on the reef"
seems a requiem to many a poor fellow who sleeps his last sleep on the island, for Cobb's Island soon became a wrecking station. On this dangerous coast many a stately vessel has been dashed to pieces and their crews drowned in the vicinity of this island. Indeed, the old man Cobb and his stalwart sons made many thousands of dollars salvage from wrecked vessels, as well as rescuing many lives. In one ship alone, that went to pieces on the island, their share of the profits of the cargo they saved amounted to $8,000. All that is over now, for there is a United States life saving service station on the island, under the charge of Mr. Crump, who, by the way, is a genial, fine-souled fellow.

Time passed on -- as time, that maddest of wags, will always do--and from a little sand bank of only a few acres, old man Cobb found himself possessed of a domain of several hundred. Trees had grown up, gardens been laid out, and his boys, becoming men, became, as was natural, ambitious; and disdaining the humble life, and its sure but slow gains of their progenitors, they determined to spend the few thousands they had earned in their dangerous calling by fitting up a watering place. They built a hotel of that rambling style of architecture known as the Virginia tavern, also a few cottages. A wharf was constructed, a tugboat purchased to bring guests from Cherrystone, and then the place was thrown open to the public. A great rush ensued, and the island, from its varied attractions, soon gathered a large crowd.

My first visit to the island was four years ago. I was then the Southern correspondent, as well as writer of sketches and tales, for the FOREST AND STREAM, and if the gentleman from Poughkeepsie will turn to its columns he will find that I was unsparing in my denunciation of the management of Cobb's Island. In truth, affairs were in a bad way. The Cobbs themselves, not fitted by education or training to run a watering place, got a man by the name of Segar to conduct it; and he conducted it on the Boss Tweed principle. He actually did not keep account books, and the Cobbs were in profound ignorance of the outlay as well as the income, and the profit and loss were utterly unknown to them. Under his sway Cobb's Island became almost a robber's den, and woe to the unlucky sportsman who fell into their clutches. All, from the chief clerk to the boot-black, took a hand in plundering him. It was legalized robbery. They did not point a pistol at the guest's head and cry, "Stand and deliver," but they got his money all the same. The habitues of the island behaved in the polite way of the Spanish bandits, who, when they see an unwary traveler journeying along all unconscious of danger, prepare an ambush for him, and suddenly the startled pilgrim is brought to a halt by seeing a half a dozen huge bell-mouthed blunderbusses pointed at his body, while a voice, in persuasive accents, is heard crying: "Charity, gentle stranger; for the love of God, charity." Then the guides charged the sportsman, as the Poughkeepsie man observed, $5 per day, and even more, if they thought they could bleed him, and besides, they took half the game he killed; everything was extra, too, and charged accordingly. It was simply outrageous; and as a journalist I fought tooth and nail against Segar's administration of this sportsman's paradise. I started the Virginia press in a crusade against this seaside resort that was swindling the public; and also in the FOREST AND STREAM I denounced the place, and did more than any one person to break up that disgraceful ring.

Two years ago the whole concern bursted. Mr. Segar left with some ten thousand dollars, the Cobbs tell me, that he grabbed as his share, leaving them literally nothing, nay, leaving them deeply in debt. In perfect disgust the Cobbs threw the whole thing up. They sold the tugboat for a mere song, and went back to their occupation of oystering, hunting and fishing.

Last year Tom Spady joined with the grandson of old man Cobb and reopened the place in a quiet way, and, being a sensible man, he has remedied all the former abuses. There is absolutely no extortion, and everything is open and without guile. The rates of board are cheaper than any resort on the Atlantic coast, being $30 a month, $12 per week and $2 per day. So far from the guides charging sportsmen anything they want, there are printed schedules of prices hung up all over the hotel. I copy one:--

Thus it will be seen that the charges are very reasonable. The guides furnish everything, decoys, boats, etc., and as each hunting trip last several hours, generally a half a day, they earn their money by the hardest kind of work. I know of no manual labor that is equal to their duties of crouching close behind a blind on a salt meadow, with the blazing sun beating down, straining your eyes to catch sight of the birds, so as to whistle them to the decoys, and almost blinded by the dazzling glare, and then chasing the wounded birds, often waist deep in water. All this in cold blood, they not having guns, and, of course, not being braced up with the excitement and stimulus that the shooter feels.

In the winter the board at the hotel is the same as the summer, and the charges for a day's duck and geese shooting is $3 per day; and never once during the last summer or this did the guides claim any of the game killed. On the contrary, they would cheerfully pack them in ice and send them off as directed. I forwarded all the birds I killed to friends and heard no protest. I know it is but right as regards winter shooting, that the shootist should have all the game he kills. If I see a disposition in any public place to victimize sportsmen I would be swift to brand it through the press.

The guides at Cobb's Island, for the most part, are good-natured, kind, and, as I wrote in my last, thoroughly honest. I have often left valuable things in the boat, and totally forgotten them, but they have always been returned.

There are all kinds of people in this world, a remark you have probably heard before, and there are various grades among the sportsmen, as well as any other class, and I have seen some mean men among the hunting fraternity. Why, down to Cobb's Island, about three years ago, there came this party of five, and they were so parsimonious that they would not patronize the bar, but bought their whiskey by the bottle, and actually slept five in a bed.

And now, having explained myself (I hope to the satisfaction of everybody), as Captain Cuttle would observe, "I had my say, and what I say I stands to."

CHASSEUR.