GADABOUT GOES TO CHURCH
It was the day before Thanksgiving when the houseboat Gadabout, with
her good-byes all said, fished up her anchor from the river bottom in
front of Weyanoke, and started off to find another place to drop it
farther up the stream. She was ready for the holiday. The material for
her Thanksgiving dinner was all aboard: part of it canned and boxed as
the steamer had just brought it from Norfolk; and the rest of it, and
the best of it, plump and gobbling on the stern.
But Gadabout's preparations for the day had not stopped here. Not only
had she provided the season's feast, but she had diligently inquired of
her chart and of her neighbours where she might take her family to
church. The chart had told her of a little stream, called Herring
Creek, a few miles farther up the James, and had shown her a mark upon
the bank of the creek that it called Westover Church. The neighbours
had said that the chart was right; and had added that the church was a
colonial one still in use, and doubtless Thanksgiving services would be
held there. Fortunately, Herring Creek was a stream that Gadabout had
intended running into anyway, as it would be the anchorage most
convenient to the next colonial estate that she should visit--the
plantation of Westover from which the church had taken its name.
From Weyanoke to the old church was not very far; but, as Gadabout had
one or two things to stop for on the way and as she might be delayed by
the tide, this bright Wednesday morning found her bustling up the river
almost afraid that she would be late for service.
Doubtless, in her haste, she was quite put out when we threw the wheel
to starboard as she was passing Court House Creek, and carried her
somewhat out of her way. All that we did it for was to run in close to
look at some "stobs" just showing above the water. At the mouths of
most of the creeks along the James are such "stobs" or broken pilings.
They are the ruins of old-time piers, the last vestige of a vanished,
picturesque river trade.
Ancient pilings have lasted well in the James; and these evidently once
belonged to the piers of up-creek colonial planters. They tell of the
day when ships from England, Holland, and the Indies sailed up the
river for barter with the colonists. While the planters whose estates
fronted directly on the James received their importations upon wharves
before their doors and delivered their tobacco in the same convenient
manner, the planters up the creeks were at more trouble in the matter.
The bars at the mouths of the streams kept the ships from entering; and
they had to wait outside while the planters brought their produce down
upon rafts and in shallow-draft barges, pirogues, and shallops.
Some of the most picturesque of the colonial river trade was at these
little creek-mouth piers. Here came not only the tall ships from
England bearing everything used upon the plantations from match-locks
and armour to satin bodice and perfumed periwig, from plow and spit to
Turkey-worked chairs and silver plate, from oatmeal, cheese, and wine
to nutmegs and Shakespeare's plays; but here came also tramp
craft--broad, deep-laden bottoms from the Netherlands, and English and
Dutch boats from the West Indies. These picturesque vagrant sails
sought their customers from landing to landing, and sold their cargoes
at comparatively low prices. Such a ship was assort of bargain boat for
these scattered settlers up the creeks of the James; a queer, transient
department store at the little cross-roads of tidewater.
There would be exchange of news as well as of commodities, and a
friendly rivalry in the matter of tales of adventure--the planter's
story of Indian attacks being pitted against the captain's yarn of the
"pyrats" that gave him chase off the "Isle of Devils." Then up the
masts of the trading ship the sails would go clacking, and the prow
that had touched the warm wharves of the Indies would point up the
river again, bound for the next landing. And the shallops of the
planter--after loading from the little pier with casks and bales still
strong of the ship's hold, of the tar of the ropes, of the salt of the
sea--would disappear up the forest stream.
A short distance above Court House Creek, Gadabout stopped at a landing
to get some oil. She was rather hurried and flustered about the matter,
as the steamer from Petersburg was coming around the point above and
would soon be making this same landing, and a schooner that was loading
was right in the way, and the first line that was thrown out broke, and
the engine stopped at the wrong time, and--all those people looking on!
Besides, this was supposed to be an interesting fishing point; but how
was a little houseboat to get a look at it, lying there alongside a big
schooner that she couldn't see over? Altogether, Gadabout fumed and
fussed so much here, pitching about in the choppy water, jerking her
ropes, and battering her big neighbour, that it was a relief to all
concerned when she got her oil aboard, cast off her ropes, and, giving
the schooner a last vindictive dig in the ribs, set off up the river.
Even after getting away from the schooner there was not much to be seen
at the landing. Yet, in season, the little place would be quite quaint
and bustling; for it was one of the many fishing hamlets along the
river.
The James has always been a favourite spawning-ground for sturgeon.
Those first colonists, writing enthusiastically of the newfound river,
declared "As for Sturgeon, all the World cannot be compared to it."
They told of a unique and spirited way the Indians had of catching
these huge, lubberly fish. In a narrow bend of the river where the
sturgeon crowded, an adroit fisherman would clap a noose over the tail
of a great fish (a fish perhaps much larger than himself) and go
plunging about with his powerful captive. And he was accounted
"cockarouse," brave fellow, who kept his hold, diving and swimming, and
finally towed his catch ashore.
The colonists early turned their attention to sturgeon fishing. The roe
they prepared and shipped abroad for the Russians' piquant table
delicacy. The grim irony of it--half famished colonists shipping
caviar!
To-day the coming of the sturgeon puts life into the little hamlets
like the one we had just passed, and dots their sandy beaches with the
bateaux and the drying nets of the fishermen.
[Illustration: A FISHING HAMLET.]
We passed the down-bound steamer near Buckler's Point and her heavy
swell came rolling across toward us. Almost instinctively we turned our
craft crosswise to the river to face the coming waves; for to take them
broadside meant a weary picking up of fragments from the cabin floors,
and a premature commingling of the contents of the refrigerator. Just
beyond Buckler's Point we came to the opening into Herring Creek and,
passing readily over the bar, went on up the little stream. As we
sailed along we caught glimpses to port of the warm, red walls of a
stately building that we knew to be Westover.
[Illustration: A RIVER LANDING.]
We found Herring Creek a good, lazy houseboating waterway; a brown
ribbon of marsh stream wandering aimlessly among the rushes. Turn after
turn, and the marshes still kept us company--the quiet, lone marshes
that had come to have such a charm for us. Evidently, they were
beginning to feel that the year was growing old. Greens were sobering
into browns, and near the water's edge were tips of silvery white. The
frowsy-looking grassy bunches, here and there, were ducking blinds,
where hunters soon would be in hiding with their wooden decoys floating
near.
Like some great marsh creature herself, Gadabout followed the winding
way, puffing along contentedly. Sometimes, when the turns were too
sharp for her liking, she swung to them lazily, with a long purr of
water at bow and stern, and seemed about to wallow off through the
rushes.
Now something of a bank developed along our starboard side. It grew
into a bluff covered with pines and thick-coated cedars and
white-trunked sycamores and gray beeches. This woodland too had the
year writ old. The surviving green of cedar and pine could not hide the
telltale leafless trees that stood between. But more significant than
leafless trees was the luxuriant holly with its ripe, red berries,
gayly ready for Christmas decorations and to grace the birth of a new
year.
And yet, these were among the most glorious days for houseboating:
tonic days with a hint of winter in the chill, crisp air, and dreamy
days with a lingering of summer in the sun's warm glow. The enervating
heat was over, and the worrisome insects were gone. In peace we could
sail in the marsh stream or climb the banks for ferns and holly.
Gadabout moved with masses of pale reeds, spicy boughs of cedar, bay
branches, and glowing holly nodding on her bow. The air was no longer
filled with the song of birds; but it was alive and cheerily a-twitter
with their fat flittings from seeds to berries, from marsh to woodland.
Heartily we declared that it was better to go an-Autumning than
a-Maying.
After a while there were signs of people about. Little boats were
nosing into the bank here and there, and occasionally a white farmhouse
would peep over the bluff above our water-trail.
[Illustration: "LITTLE BOATS WERE NOSING INTO THE BANK HERE AND
THERE."]
It was along toward dinner time when, according to our count, the
houseboat had rounded as many bends as the chart seemed to require, and
ought to be near Westover Church. So, upon catching sight through the
trees of a brick building up on the bluff, we concluded that Gadabout
had reached her journey's end, and an anchor was dropped.
Toward evening Nautica and the Commodore went ashore. At the top of the
hill was a little graveyard, and standing in it was the old church that
we had come to see. It was a small building and plain, but of historic
interest. As originally built, about the middle of the seventeenth
century, it stood not here but down on the shore of the James at
Westover. One of the earliest churches in the country, and then
standing on one of the greatest estates in Virginia, it was a typical
centre of colonial life; and gathered about it, in the little graveyard
by the river, were the tombs of noted colonial dead.
About the middle of the eighteenth century the church was moved to its
present site. Enclosed within a brick wall and with the tombs of
generations of worshippers again clustering about it, Westover Church
had settled down once more to revered old age when the ravages of war
swept over the land. In that sad war of brothers over a union that this
church had seen formed, over soil that it had seen won from Great
Britain, the humble old House of God was left dismantled, its graveyard
walls thrown down, and its tombs broken. After the war, the church was
repaired, and it is still the place of worship for the countryside.
The rectory stood on a bluff near by, overlooking the wide stretch of
marsh and the far windings of the stream. We found that the latest of
the long line of rectors and equally important rectors' wives that
Westover Church has known were the Reverend and Mrs. Cornick, who told
us of the hopes of the little community that the Government would yet
pay indemnity for the injury done by Federal soldiers to the old
church.
The next morning brought so fine a Thanksgiving Day that our gratitude
rose up with the sun--though the rest of us awaited a more convenient
hour. The air was crisp; the sky was unclouded. When, in good time for
morning service, we went up the hill to the old brick church, we saw
horses and carriages lined along the fence. Inside the building some of
the people who had come early were having neighbourly confidences over
the backs of the pews.
Naturally our thoughts went wandering between service and sermon and
church. Sometimes (and through no fault of the good rector either), we
would find ourselves far back in the story of that colonial house of
worship, and full two hundred years away from the text. We would see
this old church as it stood at first on the wild bank of the James, and
the families of those early planters gathering in. They would come from
up and down the river; some in pirogues and pinnaces and sloops, and
some on horseback with the fair dames on pillions behind. Or, somewhat
later, lordly coaches would roll to the door bearing colonial grandees.
The plain little church had seen brave attire in those days, when the
parish worshipped in flowered silks and embroidered waistcoats and
laced head-dresses and powdered periwigs. Then, after the services,
would come the social hour, when dinner invitations went round, parties
were planned, and there was a general changing about of the guests that
were always filling Virginia homes. Doubtless, the lavish hospitality
of the master of Westover, who attended this church, caused quite a
Sunday pilgrimage to that mansion of his that we had glimpsed through
the trees as Gadabout entered Herring Creek.
We went out past chatting groups (stopping for the greeting of the
rector and his wife); past horses that were being unhitched and
vehicles that were cramping and creaking; on down to the stream where
geese were paddling in the marshes, and overhead the rectory doves were
wheeling in the sunny air. Rowing down the creek toward the houseboat,
we stopped here and there to gather reeds and holly.
"This is the first time that we have ever gone to church by boat," said
the Commodore.
"Yes," answered Nautica, "and it was just the way to do it. We have
attended a colonial church in a quite colonial way."
When we sat down to our Thanksgiving dinner, we felt almost like
landlubbers again; for while our home acre was a watery one and
Gadabout, boat-like, swung and swayed, yet we had real neighbours up on
the bluff and there was even a church next door. Later, we saw coming
down the stream some good after-dinner cheer--our rowboat with mail
that had been accumulating for days at Westover. Letters and papers and
packages and magazines were welcomed aboard. Comfortably we settled
down for an evening of catching up with the world.
Next morning Gadabout made an uneventful run down the stream, anchored
just within the mouth of the creek, and sent Henry off into the country
foraging.
Of course certain provisioning arrangements followed Gadabout from
harbour to harbour. Boxes of groceries came up from Norfolk or down
from Richmond by steamer; and also every few days a big cake of ice
arrived in a travelling suit of burlap lined with sawdust. But that
still left many things to be obtained along the way. As most of the
country stores were back from the river, the sailor, on horseback or in
a cart, made many a long provisioning trip.
Toward evening when there came a gentle bump upon Gadabout's guard and
the rattle of a chain upon her cleat, we went out to see what the
supply boat had brought. As soon as we heard the troubled sputtering,
"An' I mos' give up gittin' anything," we knew that the little
shore-boat was a nautical horn of plenty. And so she proved as her
cargo came aboard to an accompaniment of running comment.
"I don' know _where_ I been, an' if I had to go back, I couldn' do it.
That's butter there--that'll do till the nex' box comes. The store
didn' have much of anything; an' I struck out into the country, I did,
an' mos' los' myse'f. But the horse he knowed the way. I got another
turkey, anyhow. I'm cert'nly glad we jes' begun to eat 'em if we got to
eat 'em steady. The man had done sold him; but I used my silver tongue,
I did, an' he let me have him. There's some apples an' turnips an'
sweet potatoes. I got them at the store. An' where I got them eggs at,
I could get a couple of chickens nex' week if I could jes' fin' the
place."
So the fruits of the foraging came tumbling aboard--a promising, goodly
array. And Gadabout had no troubled dreams that night of a wolf
swimming up to her door.