Mr. Cleveland's Retreat
Exmore, Va., Nov. 26. -- If Mr. Cleveland had searched the entire Atlantic coast for a retreat whose chief merit would be its inaccessibility, he could not have found a better place than Hog Island, where he has ten miles of water between him and the world, and where the only means of conveyance except the steam launch belonging to the club is the sailboats, which do not commend themselves to any one who appreciates comfort and the economy of time. With the weather of the past three days the trip across the Broadwater to the island has not been a desirable journey, and even if the President-elect were not carefully guarded by the hospitable protection of the club which owns the entire island and controls all of its shores, it is not likely that he would be bothered by visitors and office seekers.
The fact that Mr. Cleveland is on the island is about all the news that there is in his trip, and the people here can tell you very little more than is known in New-York. Those who saw him say he looked as if he needed rest, and, as he is intensely popular among these plain people and good Democrats, there is a profound local satisfaction that he came to old Virginia to get it. He will not be disturbed, and if plenty of peace and salt air and Virginia cooking can restore his fagged energies, he will return to New-York with strength enough to resume his experiences with the multitudinous gentlemen who are willing to serve their country.
Mr. Cleveland cannot help feeling very much at home with the few people who are on Hog Island. In the recent election the total vote of the island was eighteen, and every one of these votes was cast for Cleveland and Stevenson. Cobb's Island, just below, did not do quite as well, but all it had went to the same ticket. It cast its seventeen votes for Cleveland. As one of the islanders expressed it, "We are born Democrats, Sir. We never knew anything else and we don't want to know anything better. The Democratic Party suits us perfectly, Sir."
The Broadwater Club, which owns Hog Island, and which has taken steps to change the name to Broadwater Island, represents still another development of the latest tendency of millionaires and associations of rich men. Having, to a large extent, conquered the continent, they are now turning their attention to the islands. The first island in this country to become a large social factor was Carroll's Island in the Chesapeake Bay, where the duck shooting is famed in two hemispheres and where admittance to the club that owns it is beyond the price of fine jewels, the last share of stock, with a membership, having sold for something like $18,000.
Within the past two years the rich men of the country seem to have been busy acquiring islands, and at the present rate of purchase there won't be a desirable island left by the end of another twelvemonth. The Vanderbilts and Carnegie and some other rich men have bought the habitable islands off the coast of Georgia. The best islands off the coast of North and South Carolina are occupied by clubs, and now Virginia islands are getting into the hands of the men who can afford such luxuries. South of Cape Henry and the ducking shores which President Harrison visited last year as the guest of the Ragged Island Club, and north of Cape Charles is the Broadwater Club, whose President, Mr. Joseph L. Ferrell, is now entertaining Mr. Cleveland and his companions, Mr. L. Clarke Davis and Mr. Charles B. Jefferson.
It is a bleak and barren place, a ten-mile stretch of sand with a moderately good growth of pine, and with the marsh and marsh grass where the game worth shooting likes so well to hide. Around about you see artificial arrangements of pine bushes placed on every convenient point and commanding the vantage of every flight of the ducks. In these blinds the sportsmen hide and wait from daybreak for their prey. It is pretty cold work sometimes, but when the ducks fly well the gunners never think of the temperature. There is nothing in the world so enlivening and so warming as duck shooting on a frosty day.
The visit of the President-elect calls attention to one of the most interesting and best-preserved sections of our entire country. You who are filled with the haste and the breathlessness of close and bustling cities do not know what real rest and repose is until you come to this home of ease and plenty. There are two counties of Virginia which are separated by twenty miles of the Chesapeake Bay from the main part of the State and which form the sharp point of the Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia peninsula. They are almost as level as a billiard table and as flat as a plain surface can conveniently be.
The lower of these counties is Northampton, on the original shires into which Virginia was divided. It has more than 100,000 acres of area, it is 30 miles long, it has a mean width of only 5 miles, and it ends in a point in the Atlantic Ocean. It is largely marsh and islands.
Below Cape Henlopen, in Delaware, the Atlantic coast becomes broken by successions of inlets and islands and shallow sounds and shoals. The Sinepuxent Bay, famous for its gunning, and at this time being visited by many sportsmen, empties into the Chincoteague [Bay] where the sport is alway fine and where they raise the Chincoteague ponies and dredge the Chincoteague oysters. For twenty-five miles downward follow various islands and then comes Watchapreague Inlet, letting the water of the Alantic into the upper part of the fifty miles of shallow water which, bellying to a width of twelve miles, separates the outlying islands from the mainland, and, for the want of a better name, is known throughout its course as Broadwater. Just north of the centre of its broadest part, between Little Machipongo Inlet and Great Machipongo Inlet, lies Hog Island, with no distinctive feature save the lighthouse at its southern end. For genuine isolation it is unapproached and unapproachable.
Immediately south of Hog Island and across the inlet is Cobb's Island, which has been known to the world as a Summer resort for fully thirty years. It is one of the crudest places imaginable, but those who go there generally return to it. There is a virtue in the air that is indescribable. The island was for many years owned and controlled by the Cobb brothers after whom it was named, and they managed it in their own sweet disregard for modern improvements. If there was the slightest suspicion about a visitor he or she was at once taken to the mainland, and there was no need of locks and such things because everybody was honest and there was no one to do any stealing. A crowd did not dismay Mr. Cobb, and the story is told that when the accommodations of his hotel were insufficient he gave the surplus guests each a bench in the Methodist Church, and charged them the usual $2.50 a day. South of Cobb's Island are several small islands, and finally Smith's Island, on the lower end of which is the Cape Charles Light.
All along this region is the finest shooting that any one could want. Here you have ducks by the hundred, brant and geese in large numbers, curlew, snipe, and thousands of marsh or mud hens. Sometimes, when the northeast or southeast winds make high tides and drive the game from the marsh grass, the results of a day's shooting are almost past belief. In Summer the fishing compromises about everything from perch to shark. A curious fact is that many of the birds that are found on the ocean side of the narrow peninsula cannot be found on the bay side, although the distance is only a few miles.
But on the bay side, which is opposite Old Point Comfort, there are some of the finest oysters in the world and excellent quail shooting, and many old Virginia manors that retain the old-time hospitality and keep up the dignity of the landed aristocracy. Here you will find big Sunday dinners and fast horses and pretty girls, and the tournament still preserved for contests of skill. It is a country where the old English blood has been kept from the touch of the general immigration, and where there is a vast amount of pride on a slender total of wealth.
Seven years ago William L. Scott of Pennsylvania, who has since died, and A. J. Cassatt and other capitalists built what is known as the New York, Philadelphia and Norfolk Railroad, which runs from the southern edge of Delaware to Cape Charles City, a distance of ninety miles, of which fifty is perfectly straight line. This road is ballasted with oyster shells, and in its entire length has not a grade of any account, or more than a half dozen curves, none of which is sharp. The road connects with the Pennsylvania and makes its southern connections by transfer boats from Cape Charles to Old Point and Norfolk, a distance of over twenty miles.
The railroad did much to arouse the people from their sleep, but progress is not yet general, and the country retains its old-time interest. The main trouble is that the traveling facilities are bringing more sportsmen here all the time, to the disappointment of those who have enjoyed its abundance in days gone by.
From Accomac, which is the county above Northampton, came Henry A. Wise, who killed the Know Nothing movement. From the lower end of Northampton came some of the Custises, and at Arlington [plantation], the old estate just above Cape Charles, is a crumbling monument which immortalizes the matrimonial woes of a Custis in this fashion: "Under this marble tomb lies the body of the Hon. John Custis of the City of Williamsburg and Parish of Burton, formerly of Hungers Parish on the eastern shore of Virginia and County of Northampton, aged seventy-one years, yet lived but seven years, which was the space of time he kept a bachelor's house at Arlington, on the eastern shore of Virginia." A line states that this was put there at his own request.
But if you drive down there the people dismiss Arlington and Custis with a sentence and tell you of Cape Charles City and the Scott farm, where they raise truck by the ton and clear some $20,000 a year on vegetables. This the big farm which William L. Scott bought when he built the railroad.
Mr. Cleveland killed several fine black ducks yesterday and later in the day bagged a few snipe along the marshes of the island. To-day was rather calm for duck shooting in the bay, and Mr. Cleveland's bag of game was not so large as it might have been had there been more wind. Still he seemed very well satisfied with it.
The Old Dominion Club, near Wachapreague, have tendered him an invitation to visit their clubhouse and shoot on their preserves. They will probably send their yacht for him Monday or Tuesday. There will be quite a crowd of sportsmen down at the Broadwater, the Old Dominion, and Accomac Clubs the coming week. The latter is composed largely of New Yorkers, some of them personal acquaintances and friends of Mr. Cleveland, and he may also visit that club.