Following down James River, constantly receiving accessions from
mountain streams, we soon come to Lynchburg, most picturesquely built
on the sloping foothills of the Blue Ridge, and having fine
water-power for its factories, a centre of the great tobacco industry
of Virginia, supporting a population of about twenty thousand people.
Lynchburg was a chief source of supply for Lee's army in Eastern
Virginia until, in February, 1865, Sheridan, by a bold raid, destroyed
the canal and railroads giving it communication; and, after evacuating
Richmond, Lee was endeavoring to reach Lynchburg when he surrendered
at Appomattox, about twenty miles to the eastward, on April 9, 1865,
thus ending the Civil War. The little village of Appomattox Court
House is known in the neighborhood as Clover Hill. When Lee
surrendered, casualties, captures and desertions had left him barely
twenty-seven thousand men, with only ten thousand muskets, thirty
cannon and three hundred and fifty wagons.
The James River, east of the Blue Ridge, drains a grand agricultural
district, and its coffee-colored waters tell of the rich red soils
through which it comes in the tobacco plantations all the way past
Lynchburg to Richmond. In its earlier history this noted river was
called the Powhatan, and it bears that name on the older maps.
Powhatan, the original word, meant, in the Indian dialect, the "falls
of the stream" or "the falling waters," thus named from the falls and
rapids at Richmond, where the James, in the distance of nine miles,
has a descent of one hundred and sixteen feet, furnishing the
magnificent water-power which is the source of much of the wealth of
Virginia's present capital. The old Indian sachem whose fame is so
intertwined with that of Virginia took his name of Powhatan from the
river. His original name was Wahunsonacock when the colonists first
found him, and he then lived on York River; but it is related that he
grew in power, raised himself to the command of no less than thirty
tribes, and ruled all the country from southward of the James to the
eastward of the Potomac as far as Chesapeake Bay. When he became
great, for he was unquestionably the greatest Virginian of the
seventeenth century, he changed his name and removed to the James
River, just below the edge of Richmond, where, near the river bank, is
now pointed out his home, still called Powhatan. It was here that the
Princess Pocahontas is said to have interfered to save the life of
Captain John Smith. Here still stands a precious relic in the shape of
an old chimney, believed to have been originally built for the Indian
king's cabin by his colonist friends. It is of solid masonry, and is
said to have outlasted several successive cabins which had been built
up against it in Southern style. A number of cedars growing alongside,
tradition describes as shadowing the very stone on which Smith's head
was laid. It may not be generally known that early in the history of
the colony Powhatan was crowned as a king, there having been brought
out from England, for the special purpose, a crown and "a scarlet
cloke and apparrell." The writer recording the ceremony says quaintly:
"Foule trouble there was to make him kneele to receive his crowne. At
last, by leaning hard on his shoulders, he a little stooped, and three
having the crowne in their hands, put it on his head. To congratulate
their kindnesse, he gave his old shoes and his mantell to Captaine
Newport, telling him take them as presents to King James in return for
his gifts."