MY FIRST COMING TO VIRGINIA.
There are few moments in life to compare with a traveller's first sight
of a new land which is destined to be for short or long his home. When,
after a fair and speedy voyage, we passed Point Comfort, and had rid
ourselves of the revenue men, and the tides bore us up the estuary of a
noble river, I stood on deck and drank in the heady foreign scents with
a boyish ecstasy. Presently we had opened the capital city, which
seemed to me no more than a village set amid gardens, and Mr. Lambie
had come aboard and greeted me. He conveyed me to the best ordinary in
the town which stood over against the Court-house. Late in the
afternoon, just before the dark fell, I walked out to drink my fill of
the place.
You are to remember that I was a country lad who had never set foot
forth of Scotland. I was very young, and hot on the quest of new sights
and doings. As I walked down the unpaven street and through the narrow
tobacco-grown lanes, the strange smell of it all intoxicated me like
wine.
There was a great red sunset burning over the blue river and kindling
the far forests till they glowed like jewels. The frogs were croaking
among the reeds, and the wild duck squattered in the dusk. I passed an
Indian, the first I had seen, with cock's feathers on his head, and a
curiously tattooed chest, moving as light as a sleep-walker. One or two
townsfolk took the air, smoking their long pipes, and down by the water
a negro girl was singing a wild melody. The whole place was like a mad,
sweet-scented dream to one just come from the unfeatured ocean, and
with a memory only of grim Scots cities and dour Scots hills. I felt as
if I had come into a large and generous land, and I thanked God that I
was but twenty-three.
But as I was mooning along there came a sudden interruption on
my dreams. I was beyond the houses, in a path which ran among
tobacco-sheds and little gardens, with the river lapping a
stone's-throw off. Down a side alley I caught a glimpse of a figure
that seemed familiar.
'Twas that of a tall, hulking man, moving quickly among the tobacco
plants, with something stealthy in his air. The broad, bowed shoulders
and the lean head brought back to me the rainy moorlands about the
Cauldstaneslap and the mad fellow whose prison I had shared. Muckle
John had gone to the Plantations, and 'twas Muckle John or the devil
that was moving there in the half light.
I cried on him, and ran down the side alley.
But it seemed that he did not want company, for he broke into a run.
Now in those days I rejoiced in the strength of my legs, and I was
determined not to be thus balked. So I doubled after him into a maze of
tobacco and melon beds.
But it seemed he knew how to run. I caught a glimpse of his hairy legs
round the corner of a shed, and then lost him in a patch of cane. Then
I came out on a sort of causeway floored with boards which covered a
marshy sluice, and there I made great strides on him. He was clear
against the sky now, and I could see that he was clad only in shirt and
cotton breeches, while at his waist flapped an ugly sheath-knife.
Rounding the hut corner I ran full into a man.
"Hold you," cried the stranger, and laid hands on my arm; but I shook
him off violently, and continued the race. The collision had cracked my
temper, and I had a mind to give Muckle John a lesson in civility. For
Muckle John it was beyond doubt; not two men in the broad earth had
that ungainly bend of neck.
The next I knew we were out on the river bank on a shore of hard clay
which the tides had created. Here I saw him more clearly, and I began
to doubt. I might be chasing some river-side ruffian, who would give me
a knife in my belly for my pains.
The doubt slackened my pace, and he gained on me. Then I saw his
intention. There was a flat-bottomed wherry tied up by the bank, and
for this he made. He flung off the rope, seized a long pole, and began
to push away.
The last rays of the westering sun fell on his face, and my hesitation
vanished. For those pent-house brows and deep-set, wild-cat eyes were
fixed for ever in my memory.
I cried to him as I ran, but he never looked my road. Somehow it was
borne in on me that at all costs I must have speech with him. The
wherry was a yard or two from the shore when I jumped for its stern.
I lighted firm on the wood, and for a moment looked Muckle John in the
face. I saw a countenance lean like a starved wolf, with great weals as
of old wounds on cheek and brow. But only for a, second, for as I
balanced myself to step forward he rammed the butt of the pole in my
chest, so that I staggered and fell plump in the river.
The water was only up to my middle, but before I could clamber back he
had shipped his oars, and was well into the centre of the stream.
I stood staring like a zany, while black anger filled my heart. I
plucked my pistol forth, and for a second was on the verge of murder,
for I could have shot him like a rabbit. But God mercifully restrained
my foolish passion, and presently the boat and the rower vanished in
the evening haze.
"This is a bonny beginning!" thought I, as I waded through the mud to
the shore. I was wearing my best clothes in honour of my arrival, and
they were all fouled and plashing.
Then on the bank above me I saw the fellow who had run into me and
hindered my catching Muckle John on dry land. He was shaking with
laughter.
I was silly and hot-headed in those days, and my wetting had not
disposed me to be laughed at. In this fellow I saw a confederate of
Gib's, and if I had lost one I had the other. So I marched up to him
and very roundly damned his insolence.
He was a stern, lantern-jawed man of forty or so, dressed very roughly
in leather breeches and a frieze coat. Long grey woollen stockings were
rolled above his knees, and slung on his back was an ancient musket.
"Easy, my lad," he said. "It's a free country, and there's no statute
against mirth."
"I'll have you before the sheriff," I cried. "You tripped me up when I
was on the track of the biggest rogue in America."
"So!" said he, mocking me. "You'll be a good judge of rogues. Was it a
runaway redemptioner, maybe? You'd be looking for the twenty hogsheads
reward."
This was more than I could stand. I was carrying a pistol in my hand,
and I stuck it to his ear. "March, my friend," I said. "You'll walk
before me to a Justice of the Peace, and explain your doings this
night."
I had never threatened a man with a deadly weapon before, and I was to
learn a most unforgettable lesson. A hand shot out, caught my wrist,
and forced it upwards in a grip of steel. And when I would have used my
right fist in his face another hand seized that, and my arms were
padlocked.
Cool, ironical eyes looked into mine.
"You're very free with your little gun, my lad. Let me give you a word
in season. Never hold a pistol to a man unless you mean to shoot. If
your eyes waver you had better had a porridge stick."
He pressed my wrist back till my fingers relaxed, and he caught my
pistol in his teeth. With a quick movement of the head he dropped it
inside his shirt.
"There's some would have killed you for that trick, young sir," he
said. "It's trying to the temper to have gunpowder so near a man's
brain. But you're young, and, by your speech, a new-comer. So instead
I'll offer you a drink."
He dropped my wrists, and motioned me to follow him. Very crestfallen
and ashamed, I walked in his wake to a little shanty almost on the
wateredge. The place was some kind of inn, for a negro brought us two
tankards of apple-jack, and tobacco pipes, and lit a foul-smelling
lantern, which he set between us.
"First," says the man, "let me tell you that I never before clapped
eyes on the long piece of rascality you were seeking. He looked like
one that had cheated the gallows."
"He was a man I knew in Scotland," I said grumpily.
"Likely enough. There's a heap of Scots redemptioners hereaways. I'm
out of Scotland myself, or my forbears were, but my father was settled
in the Antrim Glens. There's wild devils among them, and your friend
looked as if he had given the slip to the hounds in the marshes. There
was little left of his breeches.... Drink, man, or you'll get fever
from your wet duds."
I drank, and the strong stuff mounted to my unaccustomed brain; my
tongue was loosened, my ill-temper mellowed, and I found myself telling
this grim fellow much that was in my heart.
"So you're a merchant," he said. "It's not for me to call down an
honest trade, but we could be doing with fewer merchants in these
parts. They're so many leeches that suck our blood. Are you here to
make siller?"
I said I was, and he laughed. "I never heard of your uncle's business,
Mr. Garvald, but you'll find it a stiff task to compete with the lads
from Bristol and London. They've got the whole dominion by the scruff
of the neck."
I replied that I was not in awe of them, and that I could hold my own
with anybody in a fair trade.
"Fair trade!" he cried scornfully. "That's just what you won't get.
That's a thing unkenned in Virginia. Look you here, my lad. The
Parliament in London treats us Virginians like so many puling bairns.
We cannot sell our tobacco except to English merchants, and we cannot
buy a horn spoon except it comes in an English ship. What's the result
of that? You, as a merchant, can tell me fine. The English fix what
price they like for our goods, and it's the lowest conceivable, and
they make their own price for what they sell us, and that's as high as
a Jew's. There's a fine profit there for the gentlemen-venturers of
Bristol, but it's starvation and damnation for us poor Virginians."
"What's the result?" he cried again. "Why, that there's nothing to be
had in the land except what the merchants bring. There's scarcely a
smith or a wright or a cobbler between the James and the Potomac. If I
want a bed to lie in, I have to wait till the coming of the tobacco
convoy, and go down to the wharves and pay a hundred pounds of
sweet-scented for a thing you would buy in the Candleriggs for twenty
shillings. How, in God's name, is a farmer to live if he has to pay
usury for every plough and spade and yard of dimity!"
"Remember you're speaking to a merchant," I said. "You've told me the
very thing to encourage me. If prices are high, it's all the better for
me."
"It would be," he said grimly, "if your name werena what it is, and you
came from elsewhere than the Clyde. D'you think the proud English
corporations are going to let you inside? Not them. The most you'll get
will be the scraps that fall from their table, my poor Lazarus, and for
these you'll have to go hat in hand to Dives."
His face grew suddenly earnest, and he leaned on the table and looked
me straight in the eyes.
"You're a young lad and a new-comer, and the accursed scales of
Virginia are not yet on your eyes. Forbye, I think you've spirit,
though it's maybe mixed with a deal of folly. You've your choice before
you, Mr. Garvald. You can become a lickspittle like the rest of them,
and no doubt you'll gather a wheen bawbees, but it will be a poor
shivering soul will meet its Maker in the hinder end. Or you can play
the man and be a good Virginian. I'll not say it's an easy part. You'll
find plenty to cry you down, and there will be hard knocks going; but
by your face I judge you're not afraid of that. Let me tell you this
land is on the edge of hell, and there's sore need for stout men.
They'll declare in this town that there's no Indians on this side the
mountains that would dare to lift a tomahawk. Little they ken!"
In his eagerness he had gripped my arm, and his dark, lean face was
thrust close to mine.
"I was with Bacon in '76, in the fray with the Susquehannocks. I speak
the Indian tongues, and there's few alive that ken the tribes like me.
The folk here live snug in the Tidewater, which is maybe a hundred
miles wide from the sea, but of the West they ken nothing. There might
be an army thousands strong concealed a day's journey from the manors,
and never a word would be heard of it."
"But they tell me the Indians are changed nowadays," I put in. "They
say they've settled down to peaceful ways like any Christian."
"Put your head into a catamount's mouth, if you please," he said
grimly, "but never trust an Indian. The only good kind is the dead
kind. I tell you we're living on the edge of hell. It may come this
year or next year or five years hence, but come it will. I hear we are
fighting the French, and that means that the tribes of the Canadas will
be on the move. Little you know the speed of a war-party. They would
cut my throat one morning, and be hammering at the doors of James Town
before sundown. There should be a line of forts in the West from the
Roanoke to the Potomac, and every man within fifty miles should keep a
gun loaded and a horse saddled. But, think you the Council will move?
It costs money, say the wiseacres, as if money were not cheaper than a
slit wizzand!"
I was deeply solemnized, though I scarce understood the full drift of
his words, and the queer thing was that I was not ill-pleased. I had
come out to seek for trade, and it looked as if I were to find war. And
all this when I was not four hours landed.
"What think you of that?" he asked, as I kept silent, "I've been
warned. A man I know on the Rappahannock passed the word that the Long
House was stirring. Tell that to the gentry in James Town. What side
are you going for, young sir?"
"I'll take my time," I said, "and see for myself. Ask me again this day
six months."
He laughed loud. "A very proper answer for a Scot," he cried. "See for
yourself, travel the country, and use the wits God gave you to form
your judgment."
He paid the lawing, and said he would put me on the road back. "These
alleys are not very healthy at this hour for a young gentleman in braw
clothes."
Once outside the tavern he led me by many curious by-paths till I found
myself on the river-side just below the Court-house. It struck me that
my new friend was not a popular personage in the town, for he would
stop and reconnoitre at every turning, and he chose the darkest side of
the road.
"Good-night to you," he said at length. "And when you have finished
your travels come west to the South Fork River and ask for Simon Frew,
and I'll complete your education."
I went to bed in a glow of excitement. On the morrow I should begin a
new life in a world of wonders, and I rejoiced to think that there was
more than merchandise in the prospect.