ACROSS RIVER TO FLEUR DE HUNDRED
The next day we determined to run around to the river front of
Weyanoke. We were yet charmed with the idea of being back-door
neighbours of the old plantation; but not at quite such long range.
When the tide served, Gadabout dropped down the twisting Kittewan.
Though she paused involuntarily in trying to round the island where the
sweet gum flamed against the pines, and caught her propeller on a
cypress stump as she sighted the dormer windows of the old house on the
hill, yet she came in good time to the clear channel and, passing the
tangled underwood that hid the forsaken tomb, she reached the mouth of
the creek before the tide turned and started up the James on the last
of the flood.
Weyanoke plantation is a peninsula lying in a sharp elbow of the river,
so that it was a run of a few miles from the mouth of Kittewan Creek,
on one side of the peninsula, around to the Weyanoke pier on the other
side.
Upon reaching the sharp bend in the river at the point of the
peninsula, we could see one reason anyway why Grant should have chosen
this as a place for crossing the James. Here, the banks of the river
suddenly draw close so that the stream is less than half a mile wide.
However, it makes up in depth what it has lost in width, the channel at
this point being from eighty to ninety feet deep. Even at the last of
the tide the water here flowed swiftly and with ugly swirls and oily
whirlpools that made the river seem vicious.
Now, we ran toward the southern shore to look at the ruins of a fort
built in the War of 1812. The sun was setting beyond the high bluff
that backed the fort, and the place lay blurred in the shadow; but
apparently time, and perhaps the hard knocks of war, had not left much
of Fort Powhatan. Two creeks that enter the James near the old fort
received our close scrutiny, for every side stream tempted us. We would
wonder how far Gadabout could follow each winding way, and what she
might find up there.
[Illustration: UPPER WEYANOKE.]
A short run farther up the river took us abreast the pier at Upper
Weyanoke; and, passing around it, we cast anchor within a stone's throw
of the plantation home.
[Illustration: AT ANCHOR OFF WEYANOKE.]
We sat out in the cockpit a long time that night enjoying the strangely
quiet mood of the Powhatan. The old river flowed so peacefully that it
mirrored all the sky above; and we looked down into a maze of stars
with the sea-tide running through. Then a blinding light put out all
our stars as the night boat from Richmond came down the river and
trained her searchlight so that it picked Gadabout out of the darkness.
Our whistle saluted with three good blasts. The searchlight responded
by making three profound bows--so profound that they reached from the
high heavens down to the water at our feet. Then, it suddenly whipped
to the front to pick out the steamer's course again through the
darkness of the night.
While lying at anchor in front of Upper Weyanoke, we made further
visits at the plantation home. Despite the ravages of war and of two
destructive fires, relics of old-time life are at this plantation too.
It was pitiful, but amusing as well, to hear how some of these escaped
the war-time vandalism. The soldiers who had stripped the home--even of
carpets--when they left the plantation to cross the James, would have
been chagrined could they have looked back over the river and have seen
old family treasures coming out from secret nooks and old family silver
from a hollow tree.
Mrs. Douthat told us how Nature favoured Grant in the crossing of the
James. Though comparatively the river is so narrow at the point of the
Weyanoke peninsula, yet to get to the stream at that point it was
necessary for the Federal forces to traverse an extensive swamp.
Apparently the swamp was impassable; but the officers found, running
through it, a most peculiar formation--a natural ridge of solid earth.
It was a ready-made military roadway upon which the troops could pass
through the swamp and reach the river. Mr. Douthat always declared that
"The Almighty had built it for them."
Across the James from Weyanoke lies Fleur de Hundred. One day, with a
daughter and a son of the Weyanoke household aboard, we sailed over to
visit the old plantation. We knew that we should find nothing in the
way of plantation life there, as the estate has long lain idle; and we
knew also that no mark was left on the broad acres to tell of the life
of colonial days. But the broad acres themselves were there, and they
would remember the old times no doubt; and perhaps, lying in the
sunshine and with nothing in the world to do, they might tell us
things.
We knew somewhat about Fleur de Hundred ourselves. In 1618 Sir George
Yeardley, governor of the colony (the same who owned Weyanoke),
patented these lands and gave them the name that has scarcely been
spelled twice alike since. Sir George sold the plantation to Captain
Abraham Piersey.
We sought to trace the successive owners on beyond Abraham; but they
married and died at such a rate that we got lost in the confusion
somewhere between the altar and the tomb, and gave the matter up. Two
well established customs among the early colonists seem to have been to
die early and to marry often. Perhaps they usually reversed the order;
but, at any rate, dying in middle age after having married "thirdly" or
"fifthly"--yes, even "sixthly"--makes top-heavy family trees and
puzzling lines of descent.
In this instance, we were quite content to skip to the opening of the
nineteenth century when Fleur de Hundred became the property of John V.
Willcox, in whose descendants it has ever since remained.
Landing upon a pebbly beach beside the ruins of a pier, we took a long
walk inland to the present-day home. While historic Fleur de Hundred is
now allowed to lie idle, its plantation life all gone, yet its home
life continues and the old-time hospitality remains, as we found in
that afternoon visit. And when we set our faces toward Gadabout again,
Nautica had roses and lavender and violets from an old garden that
refused to stop blooming with the rest of the plantation, and the
Commodore treasured a rare pamphlet upon early Virginia that only
Virginia courtesy would have entrusted to a stranger.
Through the quiet of the sleeping plantation, we took our way toward
the river. Some bees had found late sweetness along the overgrown
roadway. The air was still and sweet with the scent of sun-drying
herbs. A lagging sail was on old Powhatan. About us on every hand lay
the historic soil of Fleur de Hundred. We wondered where the
manor-house had stood in those early colonial days when Sir George
Yeardley, the governor, made his home here, with many indented servants
and half the negroes in the colony to serve him; and where had been the
several dwellings and store-houses, stoutly palisaded, that had formed
quite a village for his day.
[Illustration: PRESENT-DAY FLEUR DE HUNDRED.]
It is not recorded that the Governor was a great smoker, but he was an
enthusiastic grower of tobacco and may almost be said to have been the
father of the industry. Doubtless, in his time, most of these fertile
acres were covered with the strange weed that the Englishmen had got
from the village gardens of the red man.
But here were grown maize and wheat also; and to grind these Sir George
built--over there on the point of the plantation--the first windmill in
America.
In the eyes of the savages, he must have waxed to the stature of a
great medicine man, when he made of wood the long arms that beckoned to
the winds and made them come to grind his grain. Through all time, had
not their fathers (or rather their mothers) had to steep grain for
twelve hours; then laboriously pound it in stone mortars; and then sift
it through baskets woven of river reeds?
Less matter for wonderment was that long-armed creature on the point of
land to Hans Houten and Heinrich Elkens, sailing up the James in the
White Dove with good Holland sack for barter. These sturdy mariners
from the dyke-and-windmill country would regard the contrivance with
more critical eyes than could the red man from the bow-and-arrow
wilderness.
But we saw nothing of windmill or of palisaded village or of royal
governor; and field and meadow and woodland all seemed too sleepy to
tell us much about them. They only served to recall the tantalizing,
broken bits that the records give of the picturesque life that was
here--of colonial pomp and savage dignity, of London trade and Indian
barter, of English games and merriment, of colonial trials and
tragedies: all this of which we know, yet know so little.
And so we left the old plantation dreaming in the autumn sunshine--left
it to the poets and to the story-tellers, who seem to have adopted it.
They know how to weave the spells that bring back old manor-houses and
gallants and ladies and tall London ships and the vanished scenes of
love and of war. The place belongs to them; old Fleur de Hundred--half
real and half ideal--an old-time bit of story-land.