A ONE-ENGINE RUN AND A FOREST TOMB
By the time we had finished our visit at Brandon, we were in the midst
of the beautiful Virginia autumn. Though much of the warmth of summer
was yet in the midday hours, the mornings were often crisp and the
evenings seemed to lose heart and grow chill as they saw the sun go
down.
Part of the houseboat was heated by oil stoves, but the forward cabin
had a wood stove, and above it on the upper deck was our little
sheet-iron chimney. It had a hood that turned with the wind and creaked
just enough for company. So, during mornings and evenings and wet days,
Gadabout smoked away, cozy and comfortable.
She was smoking vigorously on the day that we bade good-bye to Chippoak
Creek. That was a glorious morning--one of those mornings when the sun
tries to warm the northwest wind and the northwest wind tries to chill
the sun, and between the two a tonic gets into the air and people want
to do things. We wanted to "see the wheels go round" (not knowing then
that only one would go round); and we prepared to start for Kittewan
Creek, a few miles farther up the James.
Kittewan Creek is no place in particular, but near it are two old
plantations that historians and story-writers have talked a good deal
about. These two estates, Weyanoke and Fleur de Hundred, having no
longer pretentious colonial mansions, are often overlooked by the
traveller on the James, who thereby loses a worthy chapter of the river
story.
When our anchors came up out of the friendly mud of Chippoak Creek, we
let the northwest wind push us across the flats and into the channel.
Then we summoned the engines to do their duty. The port one responded
promptly, but the other would do nothing; and as we ran out of the
creek and headed up the river, the Commodore was appealing to the
obdurate machine with a screwdriver and a monkey-wrench.
The tide was hurrying up-stream and the wind was hurrying down-stream,
and old Powhatan was much troubled. Gadabout rolled awkwardly among the
white-caps but continued to make headway. Pocahontas, the big river
steamer, was coming down-stream. We could see her making a landing at a
wharf above us where a little mill puffed away and a barge was loading.
Evidently, the steamer was to stop next at a landing that we were just
passing, for there men and mules were hurrying to get ready for her.
Now the starboard bank of the river grew high and sightly, but on the
port side there was only a great waste of marsh.
The Commodore spent much time with the ailing motor. Once he lost a
portion of the creature's anatomy in the bottom of the boat. Nautica
found him, inverted and full of emotion, fishing about in the
bilge-water for the lost piece. She offered him everything from the
toasting-rack to the pancake-turner to scrape about with; but he would
trust nothing of the sort, and kept searching until he found the piece
with his own black, oily fingers.
"I believe the man that built this boat was a prophet!" he exclaimed as
his face, flushed with triumph and congestion, appeared above the
floor. "He said that if we put gasoline motors in, we should have more
fun and more trouble than we ever had in our lives before; and we
surely are getting all he promised."
[Illustration: STURGEON POINT LANDING.]
[Illustration: AT THE MOUTH OF KITTEWAN CREEK.]
As we rounded the next bend in the river, we got the full force of the
wind and, with but one engine running, it was a question for a while
whether we were going to go on up the river or to drift back down
stream. Fortunately, the James narrowed at this point, thus increasing
the sweep of the tide that was helping us along, and slowly Gadabout
pushed on, slapping down hard on the big waves and holding steady.
A short distance beyond Sturgeon Point was the indentation in the shore
marking the mouth of Kittewan Creek. Old cypress trees stepped out into
the river on either side, while a row of stakes seemed to indicate the
channel of the little waterway. Sounding along we went in with four
feet of water under us.
Our plan was to find an anchorage a little way up the creek, and then
next day to start with the rising tide for a run on up to Weyanoke. Of
course Weyanoke fronted upon the James, but our idea was to make a sort
of back-door landing by running up this stream and in behind the
plantation. There was no sheltering cove to lie in on the river front;
and besides, to make the visit at the regular pier was so hopelessly
commonplace. Any of the ordinary palace yachts could do the thing that
way. But it took a gypsy craft like Gadabout to wriggle up the little
back-country creek and to land among the chickens and the geese
and--bulls perhaps; but then all explorers must take chances.
Kittewan Creek is a marsh stream; yet for some distance in from the
mouth tall cypresses stand along the reedy banks. These trees protected
us from the high wind and made it easy for us to take Gadabout up the
narrow watercourse.
As she moved slowly along, we were looking for an ancient tomb that we
had been told stood on the left bank of the stream not far from the
mouth--"the mysterious tomb of the James" some one had called it. While
we could see nothing of it then, we resolved to search for it upon
returning from our run up the creek to visit Weyanoke. But we were
destined to see the tomb before seeing Weyanoke.
[Illustration: THE FOREST TOMB.]
[Illustration: THE OLD KITTEWAN HOUSE]
Upon reaching the first bend in the stream, our tree-protection failed
us and Gadabout became so absorbed in the antics of wind and tide that
she paid no further heed to any suggestions on our part as to the
proper way to navigate Kittewan Creek. Her notion seemed to be to run
down a few fish-nets whose corks were bobbing about on the water, and
then to go over and hang herself up on some cypress stumps at the edge
of the marsh. We insisted upon her going a little way farther up the
creek. But a compromise was all that could be effected; anchors were
dropped and operations temporarily suspended on both sides.
We had a much belated dinner, and then all went ashore to make
inquiries and to get supplies at a house that stood on a bluff above
the bend in the stream. It proved to be a very old building and quite a
landmark. It was called the Kittewan house. There, we learned that the
tomb we were looking for was on the bank almost opposite where our
houseboat lay.
We found it close to the creek. It was an altar-tomb, broken and
timeworn and almost covered with an accumulation of earth and moss and
leaves. One corner support and one side of the caving base were gone,
letting ferns and lichens find a home within, tender green fronds
touching the shadowing slab above them.
The strange, unremembered grave was that of a woman. For, when we had
scraped clear a little of the slab, we came upon the name Elizabeth.
Our floating home was near enough to lend shovel and broom; and we
undertook to free the tomb (that was itself being slowly buried) and to
bring to light again the chiseled story of the long-ago Elizabeth who
lay in this lonely place.
When the granite slab was uncovered and swept clean, we were able to
read most of the words upon it, although the stone was cut almost as
deep by the little fingers of rain and of frost as by the graver's
heavy hand that had itself gone to dust long ago. Slowly we found the
words telling that there rested the body of Elizabeth Hollingshorst,
whose husband, Thomas Hollingshorst, was a shipmaster; that her father
was Mr. Piner Gordon of the family of Tilliangus in Aberdeenshire,
Scotland; and that she died November 30, 1728.
The father's name, Gordon (so proud a one in Aberdeenshire), and the
use before it of the prefix Mr. (a term then synonymous with
"gentleman" and never lightly given in those days of well-defined rank)
show that this Elizabeth was of gentle birth. The words "Ship Master"
tell of how the breath of the old North Sea had called Thomas
Hollingshorst from the banks and braes and led him to point the bow of
his merchant ship across seas, bound for England's far-away colony.
Little would he dream--crowding canvas to speed his cargo to the
Virginia plantations--that his gentle-born Elizabeth was to find a
grave in that feared American wilderness.
The longer we worked over the ancient stone the more we came to feel
the pitiful meaning of it.
We felt that this Elizabeth was a true heart and a brave one, who
ventured the perilous sea-voyage of the early days with her shipmaster
husband. She did not come as other women came--to make a home in the
new land and to have friends and neighbours there. She came, a passing
stranger, upon her husband's trading ship; a ship that would anchor but
to exchange its English wares for the planter's tobacco, and then turn
prow again to the perils of the sea. When illness came in the new, wild
land, how distant must have seemed Aberdeenshire in those days of the
little ship and the slow sail! And here, longing for one more sight of
Scottish heather, this Elizabeth died.
Seeking for her a last resting-place, the stranger ship moved up the
river and came to anchor at the mouth of this creek. They lowered her
gently over the ship's side into a long-boat and then rowed up the
stream into the forest. Here by the creek's side they buried her, and
(doubtless by the ship's own compass) they orientated the forest grave.
Then again the ship sailed across seas and bore sad tidings to some
family of Gordons in Aberdeenshire.
In those days it must have been long before the returning vessel could
sail up the James, this time bearing the graven tomb from Scotland. For
a little while, the stillness of the forest was once more broken,
startling the timid woodland folk; and then these strangers from
overseas were gone. Again the great silence fell and the wilderness
took the grave to itself. Slowly it set upon the tomb its seal of moss
and lichen and vine. Unmindful of the mark of human loss and grief, the
wild folk came and went. Joyously the cardinal flashed his crimson wing
above the darkening stone; the deer came to drink from the stream and
lifted their heads to scent the breeze that came with the dawn through
the cypress trees, across a forgotten grave; hard and incurious, the
Weyanoke Indians slipped by like darker shadows in the forest gloom;
and only the little night birds seemed to know or to care as they
called plaintively in the marshes at twilight.
As we were about to leave the tomb, we bethought us that the
anniversary of the death of this Elizabeth was drawing near. We heaped
the holly with its glowing berries above the crumbling stone. And still
we lingered; for the Gordons of Tilliangus seemed very far away from
this daughter of their house. As the sunset lights were fading, we saw
a new moon pale on the tinted sky; and we thought of how for almost two
centuries crescent moons had trembled from silver to gold above this
forlorn grave on the bank of the Kittewan.
A short row in the dusk out upon the stream, and we stepped aboard
Gadabout. She never seemed more cozy and homelike. A great bowl of pink
and yellow chrysanthemums from Brandon's old garden and trailing cedar
and ferns and red-berried holly added to the cheer. Soon our
home-lights streamed from the broad windows out across the water, and
some faint glow must have touched that lonely tomb on shore.