Chapter III: Part 3

This curiosity was rather peculiar to New England. The Southerner, while perhaps as anxious to hear the news, was more restrained in asking questions. That good breeding and tact which were a Cavalier inheritance, taught him to wait decorously for his news as for his food. A foreigner in the last century, in travelling through the South, came upon a party of Virginians smoking and drinking together on a veranda. He reports that on his ascending the steps to the piazza, every countenance seemed to say, 'This man has a double claim to our attention, for he is a stranger in the place!' In a moment, there was room made for him to sit down; a new bowl was called for, and every one who addressed him did it with a smile of conciliation; but no man asked him whence he had come or whither he was going.

All foreigners bear the same testimony to this universal courtesy, which smoothed rough roads and made travelling enjoyable, in spite of its difficulties and dangers. When I realize what those difficulties were, I am surprised at the willingness with which journeys were undertaken. I read of Washington setting out on a mission to Major-General Shirley in Boston, and riding the whole distance of five hundred miles on horseback in the depth of winter, escorted only by a few servants; yet little is made of his experiences. Women, too, were quite accustomed to riding on long expeditions. An octogenarian described to Irving the horseback journeys of his mother in her scarlet cloth riding-habit. "Young ladies from the country," he said, "used to come to the balls at Annapolis, riding, with their hoops arranged _fore and aft_ like lateen sails; and after dancing all night, would ride home again in the morning."

Annapolis, before the Revolution, was a centre of gayety. Its rich families came up to town for the season each Fall, and in the Spring moved back to their country-houses with their various belongings. The family coach which was used to transport these possessions was a curious affair to modern eyes. It was colored generally a light yellow, with smart facings. The body was of mahogany, with Venetian windows on each side, projecting lamps, and a high seat upon which coachman and footman climbed at starting.

As this old coach lumbered up and down the streets of Annapolis, its occupants no doubt fancied that they had reached the final limit of speed and comfort in travel, and they looked back with scorn and pity on the primitive conveyances of their ancestors, just as posterity will doubtless look back from their balloons and electric motors on our steam engines. In one of Jefferson's early letters we chance upon a curious prophecy. Being about to make a visit, he asks to be met by his friend's "periagua," as a canoe was called, and suggests that some day a boat may be made, which shall row itself.

After all, I question whether there was not more pleasure in travel in those days, before boats rowed themselves, and when horses were made of flesh and blood instead of iron and steam; when the rider ambled along, noting each tree and shrub, pausing to exchange greetings with every wayfarer, and stopping by night beneath some hospitable roof to make merry over the cup of sack or the glass of "quince drink" prepared for his refreshment. If the traveller was of a surly and unsocial nature, he was indeed to be pitied; since, for him who would not accept his neighbor's hospitality, there remained only the roadside tavern or "ordinary," and woe to him who was compelled to test its welcome! The universal practice of keeping open-house made the inns poorer in quality, and the contempt of the community for one who would receive money for the entertainment of guests, kept men of repute out of the business.

A Maryland statute, in 1674, resolves "that noe Person in that Province shall have a Licence to keep Ordinary for the future but th{t} he shall give Bond to his Excellency with good Sureties that he shall keep foure good ffeather beds for the Entertainment of Customers." In any place where the county court is held, he is directed to keep "eight ffeather or fflock beds at the least, and ffurniture suitable." The charges of the ordinary-keeper are fixed by law. He is allowed to charge ten pounds of tobacco per meal "for dyet," ten pounds "for small beare," and four "for lodging _in a bed with sheets_."

While the traveller was loitering on the road, enjoying hospitality or enduring ordinaries, those he left at home were in ignorance of his whereabouts; and it was only after days or weeks of anxious waiting, that they could hope to hear of his safe arrival at his destination. Meanwhile rumor, which always thrives in proportion to ignorance, might make their lives miserable by reports of a riderless horse seen galloping into some village, of storms and gales, or of trees crashing across the lonely roads. In the absence of the post and the telegraph, this spreading of false news became so troublesome that an act was passed in Maryland declaring that, "Whereas many Idle and Bussie-headed people doe forge and divulge falce Rumors and Reports," it is enacted that they be either fined or "receive such corporall punishment, not extending to life or member, as to the Iustices of that court shall seeme meete."

It was long before the idea of a postal service under government control dawned upon the Colonies. Throughout almost the whole of the seventeenth century letters were sent by the hand of the chance traveller. Maryland directed that in the case of public state-papers the sheriff of one county should carry them to the sheriff of the next, and so on to their goal; but private letters had no such official care.

An old Virginia statute commanded that "all letters superscribed _for the publique service_, should be immediately conveyed from plantation to plantation to the place and person directed, under the penalty of one hogshead of tobacco for each default."

Another law, bearing date 1661, orders that "when there is any person in the family where the letters come, as can write, such person is required to endorse the day and houre he received them, that the neglect or contempt of any person stopping them may be the better knowne and punished accordingly."

A letter in those days merited the attention it received, for it represented a vast deal of labor and expense. Paper was a costly luxury, as we may infer from those old yellow pages crossed and re-crossed with writing, and the tiny cramped hand in which the old sermons are written. In 1680, I find Colonel William Fitzhugh ordering from London "two large Paper-Books, one to contain about fourteen or fifteen quires of paper, the other about ten quires, and one other small one."

The paper was left blank on one side, and so folded that it formed its own envelope. It was fastened with a seal whose taste and elegance was a matter of pride with the writer. The style was formal, as became the dignity of a person who knew how to write. In those times people did not write letters; they indited epistles. A communication sent across the ocean, in 1614, is addressed "To y{e} Truly Honorable & Right Worthy Knight, S{r} Thomas Smith," and is signed: "At Y{r} Command To Be Disposed of."

Love-letters shared the formality of the time, and were written with a stateliness and elaboration of compliment which suggest a minuet on paper. Family letters are often in the form of a journal, and cover a period of months. They cost both labor and money but they were worth their price. Cheap postage has made cheap writing. We no longer compose; we only scribble.

In 1693, Thomas Neale was appointed by royal patent, "postmaster-general of Virginia and _all other parts of North America_." The House of Burgesses passed an Act declaring that if post-offices were established in every county, Neale should receive threepence for every letter not exceeding one sheet, or to or from any place not exceeding four score English miles distance.

In 1706, letters were forwarded eight times a year from Philadelphia to the Potomac, and afterward as far as Williamsburg, with the proviso that the post-rider should not start for Philadelphia till he had received enough letters to pay the expenses of the trip.

The average day's journey for a postman covered a distance of some forty miles in Summer, and over good roads; but, when the heavy Autumn rains washed out great gullies in his path or the Winter storms beat him back, he was lucky if he accomplished half that distance. His letters were subject to so many accidents, that it is a wonder they ever reached the persons to whom they were addressed. It was not till the post-office passed into Franklin's energetic and methodical hands that it was made regular and trustworthy.

The estimate of the common post in early days is curiously illustrated by an episode which occurred in Virginia. The hero was one Mr. Daniel Park, "who," says the chronicle, "to all the other accomplishments that make a complete sparkish gentleman, has added one upon which he infinitely values himself; that is, a quick resentment of every, the least thing, that looks like an affront or injury."

One September morning, when the Governor of Maryland was breakfasting with Mr. Commissary Blair at Middle Plantation, Colonel Park marched in upon them, having a sword about him, much longer than what he commonly travelled with, and which he had caused to be ground sharp in the point that morning. Addressing himself to the Governor of Maryland, he burst out: "Captain Nicholson, did you receive a letter that I sent you from New York?"

"Yes," answered Nicholson, "I received it."

"And was it done like a gentleman," fumed the fiery colonel, "to send that letter by the hand of a common post, to be read by everybody in Virginia? I look upon it as an affront, and expect satisfaction!"

Fancy the number of affairs of honor that this "complete young sparkish gentleman" would have on hand if he lived in the present year of grace and resented every letter sent him by _the common post_!

There is something which strikes us as infinitely diverting in his suggestion that everybody in Virginia would be interested in his letter. But perhaps he was nearer the truth than we realize, for in his day all news came through such sources, and a letter was regarded as a good thing, which it would be gross selfishness not to share with one's neighbors. As for a letter from Europe it was an affair of the greatest magnitude, exciting the interest of the whole community.

Those giant folios which entertain us every morning with their gossip from all quarters of the globe had no existence then. Early in the last century, the Colonial Cavalier gleaned all his knowledge of the world and its affairs, from some three-month-old copy of the London papers and magazines, brought over by a British packet. Even this communication, it seems, was uncertain, for complaint is made that the masters of vessels keep the packages till an accidental conveyance offers, and for want of better opportunities frequently commit them to boatmen, who care very little for their goods, so they get their freight.

The colonists had struggled to establish a local journal, and a printing press had been started in Virginia in the seventeenth century, but it had been strangled in its infancy by Berkeley, who declared it the parent of treason and infidelity; and so it came about that the Southern Provinces had no public utterance for their news or their views, till the silence was broken by the voice of Maryland, speaking through her _Gazette_, in 1727, when in all America there were only six rival sheets. Franklin says that his brother's friends tried to dissuade him from publishing _The New England Courant_, on the ground that there was already one newspaper in America. His memory lapsed a little, as _The Courant_ had in fact three predecessors, but the incident shows how little notion there was at that time, of the public demand for news.

In 1736, was first issued _The Virginia Gazette_, a dingy little sheet about twelve by six inches in size, and costing to subscribers, fifteen shillings a year. The newspaper of the day had no editorial page. Its comments on public affairs were in the form of letters, after the fashion of _The Tatler_ and _The Spectator_. It had a poet's corner, where many a young versemaker tried the wings of his Pegasus, and it printed also poetical tributes under the notices of deaths and marriages. In this section, after the record of the wedding of Mr. William Derricoat and Miss Suckie Tomkies, appear these lines:

"Hers the mild lustre of the blooming morn
And his the radiance of the rising day--
Long may they live and mutually possess
A steady love and genuine happiness!"

When Edmund Randolph married Betsey Nicholas, the poet found himself unable to express his emotions in less than two stanzas:

"Exalted theme, too high for common lays!
Could my weak muse with beauty be inspired,
In numbers smooth I'd chant my Betsy's praise,
And tell how much her Randolph is admired.

"To light the hymeneal torch, since they're resolved,
Kind Heaven, I trust, will make them truly blest;
And when the Gordian knot shall be dissolved,
Translate them to eternal peace and rest."

It is safe to say that this figure, comparing matrimony with a Gordian knot, was original with the poet. Had the bridegroom been as fiery and "sparkish" as Colonel Park, he might have called out the writer, but he seems to have taken it in good part.

The prospectus of the Maryland _Gazette_ for 1745 announces that its price will be twelve shillings a year, or fourteen shillings sealed and delivered. It promises the freshest advices, foreign and domestic, but adds, with much simplicity and candor: "In a dearth of news, which in this remote part of the world may sometimes reasonably be expected, we shall study to supply the deficit by presenting our readers with the best material we can possibly collect, having always due regard to the promotion of virtue and learning, the suppression of vice and immorality, and the instruction as well as entertainment of our readers." What more could the most exacting subscriber demand?

Advertisements, then, as now, served the double purpose of filling space, and supporting the paper. They were charged for, at the rate of five shillings for the first week, and one shilling for each week following, provided they were of moderate length--a vague provision, one would say. These old advertisements are of great value to the student of the life of the past. They give a better picture of the condition of society, than a ream of "notes." Here we read of the shipping of a crew on a packet bound for England. Half-way down the column a lost hog is advertised, and here, Edward Morris, breeches-maker, announces a sale of buckskin breeches, and gloves with high tops, and assures his customers that "they may depend on kind usage at reasonable rates." Surely the resources of modern advertising have never devised anything more alluring than this promise of "kind usage at reasonable rates."

Since the art of reading was unknown to a considerable proportion of the community, it was natural that pictorial devices should be largely used. Not only were the shops along the highways distinguished by such signs as "the Blue Glove," and "the Golden Keys," with appropriate illustrations; but in the advertising columns of the papers, the print was re-enforced by pictures of ships and horses, and runaway slaves.

The purchase and sale of negroes formed a standing advertisement, beneath the caption of an auction-block.

In the Virginia _Gazette_ of August, 1767, we find the following under the curious headline:

"SALE OF A MUSICAL SLAVE."

"A valuable young handsome Negro fellow, about 18 or 20 years of age; has every qualification of a genteel and sensible servant, and has been in many different parts of the world. He shaves, dresses hair, and plays on the French horn. He lately came from London, and has with him two suits of new clothes, which the purchaser may have with him. Inquire at the printing office."

It is hard to understand why the owner should wish to part with a prodigy possessed of so many accomplishments. Perhaps his playing on the French horn is the explanation.

Runaway servants, both black and white, form the subject of many advertisements in those old newspapers. In the Maryland _Gazette_ (1769) appears a description in rhyme of the disappearance of an indented servant:

"Last Wednesday morn at break of day,
From Philadelphia ran away
An Irishman, named John McKeogn.
To fraud and imposition prone,
About five feet five inches high;
Can curse and swear, as well as lie.
How old he is I can't engage,
But forty-five is near his age.

"He oft in conversation chatters
Of Scripture and religious matters,
And fain would to the world impart
That virtue lodges in his heart.
But, take the rogue from stem to stern,
The hypocrite you'll soon discern

"And find, though his deportment's civil,
A saint without, within a devil.
Whoe'er secures said John McKeogn,
(Provided I should get my own),
Shall have from me in cash paid down
Five dollar bills, and half-a-crown."

Mary Nelson is the owner and poet, or, in the fashion of the day, I should say poetess, and perhaps _owneress_, as I find it recorded of Mary Goddard that she was postmistress of Baltimore and _Printress_ and _Editress_ of the _Baltimore Journal_.

The world moves. The auction-block, and the runaway slave, with his bundle on his back, have disappeared from among the pictures in the advertising column; the packet has given way to the ocean steamer; the horse to the bicycle; the stage coach to the railroad; the little provincial gazettes, with their coarse gray paper and blurred type, to the great dailies, as large as the Bible and as doubtful as the Apocrypha. I wonder if another century will have such astounding tales to tell of progress in news, trade and travel!

His Friends and Foes

The early adventurers had never seen anything of savage life till they touched the shores of Virginia. Everything connected with the strange beings there was full of interest. They set down faithfully whatever they saw, and a good deal more besides.

The Susquehannocks impressed them most of all the Indian tribes. Their enormous height and fine proportions made them look like giants, and their attire was as impressive as their persons. One who saw them, writes home in those first pioneer days: "Their attire is the skinnes of Beares and Woolves. Some have Cassacks made of Beares heads and skinnes that a mans head goes through the skinnes neck, and the eares of the Beare fastened to his shoulders, the nose and teeth hanging downe his breast, another Beares face split behind him, and at the end of the nose hung a Pawe. The half sleeves comming to the elbowes were the neckes of Beares and the armes through the mouth with pawes hanging at their noses. One had the head of a Wolfe hanging in a chaine for a Iewell."

One of their chiefs specially impressed the English. He was a giant among giants. The calf of his leg was three-quarters of a yard round, and "the rest of his limbs answerable to that proportion." His arrows were five quarters long, and he wore a wolf's skin at his back for a quiver. The picture of this Indian Hercules accompanied the maps which Captain Smith sent home to enlighten the Company in England.

The stories of the different adventurers were gathered together and printed as "The General History of Virginia." The volume was adorned (I cannot say illustrated) by a series of woodcuts, which make us laugh aloud by their inaccuracy. The Indians are simply gigantic Englishmen naked and beardless, with the hair standing in a stiff ridge on top of the head, like a cock's comb. The wigwams look like haystacks, and the canoes like bathtubs. What a collection of pictures we might have had, if a kodak had been among the possessions of Captain Smith and his company! We should see King Pamaunche with "the chaine of pearles round his necke thrice double, the third parte of them as bygg as pease," and catch a view of his "pallace" with its hundred-acre garden set with beans, pease, tobacco, gourdes, pompions, "and other thinges unknowne to us in our tongue." We should have the interiors of the smoky wigwams which Spelman and Archer visited, the forms of the squaws dimly outlined against the grimy mat, as they pounded corn, or dropped the bread into the kettle to boil.

Thanks to John Smith's graphic pen, we have a picture of Powhatan, that fierce old ancestor of so many first families of Virginia, almost as vivid as a photograph. Smith went to visit him, and found him proudly tying upon a bedstead a foot high, upon ten or twelve mats. "At head sat a woman, at his feet another. On each side, sitting upon a mat upon the ground, were ranged his chief men, on each side the fire, five or ten in rank, and behind them as many young women, each a great chaine of white beads over their shoulders, their heads painted in red, and with such a grave and majestical countenance as drove us into admiration to see such state in a naked savage."

We might suppose these last words applied to the women, instead of to Powhatan, did we not know how little state and majesty were allowed these copper-colored Griseldas. The Indian squaws were little more than slaves. When the braves moved, it was the squaws who carried the wigwams and set them up in the new camp. When the men sat at meals, they spread the mats, waited upon their masters, and finally contented their appetites with the remnants of the feast. In the field, too, they bore the brunt of the toil: "Let squaws and hedgehogs scratch the ground," said an old warrior; "man was made for war and the chase."

Yet, wretched and abused as these women were, they seemed content with their lot, and when their husbands died, they not only mourned for them, but seemed quite ready to enter the same servitude with a new master. "I once saw a young widow," said Jefferson, "whose husband, a warrior, had died about eight days before, hastening to finish her grief, and who, by tearing her hair, beating her breast, and drinking spirits, made the tears flow in great abundance in order that she might grieve much in a short space of time, and be married that evening to another young warrior."

Spelman, a Virginia adventurer who, in the course of one of his exploring trips, witnessed an Indian wedding, has left us an account of the ceremony. "Ye man," he says, "goes not unto any place to be married, but ye woman is brought to him where he dwelleth. At her coming, her father or cheefe frend ioynes the hands togither, and then ye father, or cheefe frend of the man, bringeth a longe string of beades and, measuringe his armes leangth thereof, doth breake it over ye handes of those that ar to be married while their handes be ioyned together and gives it unto ye woman's father or him that brings hir. And so, with much mirth and feastinge they go togither."

This "longe string of beades" of which Spelman spoke, was probably made of the _peak_ and _roanoke_, which made the riches of the Indian, and served him at once for money and ornament. Both were made from shell--one dark, the other white. The darker was the more valuable, and was distinguished as _wampum_ peak. The English traders accepted it as coinage, and reckoned its value at eighteen pence a yard, while the white peak sold for ninepence. In the proceedings of the Maryland Council we find Thomas Cornwaleys licensed to trade with the Indians for corn, roanoke, and peak.

When the red men wished to make bargains with the English, before interpreters had been trained to speak both languages, the counting was done by dropping beans, one by one, amid total silence. Woe to the offender who interrupted an Indian during this critical operation, or indeed at any time! An interruption was looked upon as an unpardonable affront. Once, in the time of Bacon's Rebellion, an Indian chief, accompanied by several of his tribe, came to negotiate a treaty of peace with the English. In the course of the Werrowance's address, one of his attendants ventured to put in a word. Instantly, the chief snatched a tomahawk from his girdle, split the poor fellow's skull, motioned to his companions to carry him out, and continued his speech as calmly as though nothing had happened.

The lack of ceremony in the white men's address, and the frequency with which they interrupted, struck the Indian as amazing and unpardonable. There is a tradition that one of the early preachers strove to teach an old Indian brave the doctrine of the Trinity. The Indian heard him calmly to the end, and then began in his turn to tell of the Great Spirit who spoke in the thunder, and whose smile was the sunshine. In the midst of his discourse, the clergyman broke in, "But all this is not true." The Indian, turning to the circle around, remarked: "What sort of man is this? He has been talking for an hour of his three Gods, and now he will not let me tell of my one."

The character of the Indian was a strange mixture of apparent contradictions. He would hunt and fish for a season, and then feast and make merry night and day while his supplies lasted. When they were exhausted, he would gird up his loins, and fast for a period long enough to end the life of a white man. He had an inordinate love of finery, upon which the English traded from the first. He would barter away a whole Winter's provisions of corn for a scarlet blanket or a bunch of gay-colored beads. Yet he was not without a natural shrewdness which enlightened him when he was being cheated. The story runs that some of the early missionaries taught the savages that their salvation depended on catching for them shad, which they sold to the settlers. In the course of time the Indians discovered the trick, and drove out the deceivers. Years afterward, another mission was established, and the first priest took as his text, "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters!" The Indians gathered round the preacher when the sermon was ended, and one of the tribe said: "White man, you speak in fine words of the waters of life; but before we decide on what we have heard, we would like to know _whether any shad swim in those waters_!"

It must be confessed that the Indians appear to better advantage than the English, in the early transactions. When Hamor went to visit King Powhatan, he was received with royal courtesy. The chief sent one of his attendants to bring what food he could find, though he explained that, as they were not expecting visitors, they had not kept anything ready. "Presently," Hamor recounts, "the bread was brought in two great wodden bowls, the quantity of a bushel sod bread, made up round, of the bygnesse of a tenise-ball, whereof we eat some few." After this repast, Hamor and his comrades were regaled with "a great glasse of sacke," and then were ushered into the wigwam appropriated to them for the night. English and Indian ideas of comfort did not correspond, however, for Hamor complains: "We had not bin halfe an hour in the house, before the fleas began so to torment us that we could not rest there, but went forth and under a broade oake, upon a mat, reposed ourselves that night."

Hamor took with him on this visit, as an offering to the Indian chief, five strings of blue and white beads, two pieces of copper, five wooden combs, ten fishhooks, and a pair of knives. In return for these costly presents, this pious English gentleman asked Powhatan, who had already given Pocahontas to the whites, to send them another daughter, really as a hostage, but nominally as a wife to Sir Thomas Dale, the worthy governor of Virginia, regardless of the slight objection that there was already a Lady Dale in England. Pocahontas had good reason for saying to Smith when she met him in London, "Your countrymen will lie much."

To the early settlers the savage seemed a strange being, not more than half human, who happened to be in possession of the land they coveted. They thought they did God service when they flung to the Indian a Bible and a handful of beads, in exchange for the land which had been his birthright for centuries. They cheated and cajoled him when he was angry, as they might have wheedled an angry tiger; yet, strange to say, they were quite off their guard when, at length, the tiger made his spring, and glutted the vengeance he had been nursing so long.

When the news of the Indian massacre reached England, it roused a frenzy of revenge equal in fury to that of the savages. The Virginia Company quite forgot that they had set forth in their charter that the conversion of the Indians was one of the main objects of the new adventure, or if they remembered it at all, it was only to apologize lamely for a complete change of base. "We condemn their bodies," they wrote to the colonists, "the saving of whose souls we have so zealously affected. Root them out from being any longer a people.... War perpetually without peace or truce: yet spare the young for servants" (the Englishman even in a rage has an eye to the main chance). "Starve them by destroying their corn, or reaping it for your own use! Pluck up their weirs! Obstruct their hunting! Employ foreign enemies against them at so much a head! Keep a band of your own men continually upon them, to be paid by the colony, which is to have half of their captives and plunder!"

These short, nervous sentences fell like hammer-strokes on the ears of the Englishmen in America, and they found an echo in their hearts. It is easy for us to characterize their revengeful spirit as inconsistent and unchristian. It is easy to tolerate a bear in a menagerie, or an Indian on a reservation. It is quite another thing to exercise toleration toward either in the life-and-death grip of a frontier struggle.

These men had seen their homes go up in flames. They had heard the blood-curdling war-whoop. They had counted the bloody scalps hanging at the Indian's belt, and marked on them the hair of those they loved. It was idle to preach toleration to them. Henceforward for many years it was war to the knife.

Yet, both as friend and foe, the Indian had given the colonists many lessons. He had taught them the culture of maize and tobacco, he had taught them to stalk the deer, to trap the bear, and to blaze the forest path. Many a lesson in woodcraft the settlers learned from him. Washington's shrewdness in borrowing native methods of warfare, would, had his advice been taken, have saved Braddock's army from utter rout in the Western forests. The very enmity of the Indian was a help to the Colonial Cavalier, whose ease-loving temperament might easily have sunk into sloth had it not felt the spur of danger and the necessity for being on the alert. The docility of the negro was a perpetual temptation to the white man to the abuse of arbitrary power, but the resistance of the Indian was a constant reminder that here was a force unsubdued and unsubduable.

Of the influence of the white men on the Indian, the less said the better. They eradicated none of his vices, and they lent him many of their own. They found him abstinent, and they made him a guzzler of firewater. They found him hospitable, and they made him suspicious and vindictive. They found him in freedom, the owner of a great country; they robbed him of the one, and crowded him out of the other.

An old sachem in the eighteenth century, meeting a surveyor, said to him: "The French claim all the land on one side of the Ohio, the English claim all the land on the other side. Now, where does the Indian's land lie?"

The savages exchanged their corn and tobacco for the rum-cask and the firearms of civilization, and a strange jumble of a new religion, whose ceremonies they grafted onto their own, with grotesque results. It is hard to say whether they fared worst as the white man's friends or foes. When the English made a treaty with the Chickahomanies, "a lustie and a daring people," these were the terms offered them by the whites:

"First: They should for ever bee called Englishmen and bee true
subjects to King James and his Deputies.

"Secondly: Neither to kill nor detaine any of our men, nor cattell,
but bring them home.

"Thirdly: To bee alwaies ready to furnish us with three hundred men,
against the Spaniards or any.

"Fourthly: They shall not enter our townes, but send word they are new
Englishmen.

"Fifthly: That every fighting man, at the beginning of harvest shall
bring to our store two bushels of corne for tribute, for which they
shall receive so many hatchets.

"Lastly: The eight chiefe men should see all this performed or receive
the punishment themselves; for their diligence they should have a red
coat, a copper chaine, and King James his picture, and be accounted
his noblemen."

This shameful bargain is recorded by the English with evident self-satisfaction, and apparently without a suspicion that they need blush for the transaction. Yet when the Indian met treachery with treachery, and fraud with guile, the civilized settlers were ablaze with indignation for no better reason than that the savages had learned of them, and bettered their instructions.

His Amusements

'Let your Recreations Be Manful/
not Sinful.']

Of all the amusements of the Colonial Cavalier, none was so popular as gambling. The law strove in vain to break it up. This statute in the Colonial Record, tells its own story: "Against gaming at dice and cardes, be it ordained by this present assembly that the winners and loosers shall forfaicte ten shillings a man, one ten shillings thereof to go to the discoverer, and the rest to pious uses." I fear very little was ever collected for pious uses. The difficulty lay in the fact that, as every one played, there was no one to act the spy.

This passion for gaming in the colonies was only a reflection of the craze in England. For more than a century after the return of Charles the Second, the rattle of the dice-box, and the shuffling of cards were the most familiar sounds in every London chocolate-house. Young sinners and old spent their fortunes, and misspent their lives, playing for money at Brooke's or Boodle's. When a man fell dead at the door of White's, he was dragged into the hall amid bets as to whether he were dead or alive, and the surgeon's aid was violently opposed, on the ground of unfairness to those betting on the side of death. The Duke of St. Albans, at eighty, too blind to see the cards, went regularly to a gambling-house with an attendant. Lady Castlemaine lost twenty-five thousand pounds in one night's play. General Braddock's sister, having gamed away her fortune at Bath, finished the comedy by hanging herself. When her affectionate brother heard the news, he remarked jocularly, "Poor Fanny, I always thought she would play till she was forced to tuck herself up."

I offer all this testimony to show that our Colonial Cavalier was only the child of his age, when he too shook the dice, and shuffled the cards. Being short of cash, his bets were generally made in tobacco, or, failing that, in flesh and blood. Many a slave found a new master in the morning, because his old master had been unlucky at play the night before.

In a community so absorbed in the excitement of hazard, the lottery of course took deep hold. The first plantation in America was aided by a grand "standing lottery," with along list of "welcomes, prises and rewards," amounting to more than ten thousand crowns. The declaration sets forth that "all prises, welcomes and rewards drawne wherever they dwell, shall of the treasurer have present pay, and whosoever under one name or poesie payeth three pound in ready money, shall receive six shillings and eight pence, or a silver spoone of that value at his choice."

"The money for the Adventurers is to be paid to Sir Thomas Smith, Knight, and Treasurer for _Virginia_, or such officers as he shall appoint in City or Country, under the common seale of the company for the receit thereof."

The example thus set, was followed whenever the colonies felt a pressure for money. In Virginia a lottery was established to meet the expenses of the French and Indian War--the drawing directed to be "in the Burgesses' Room of the Capital at Williamsburgh at ten in the morning. Prizes current money from £5 to £2000. The lucky numbers to be published in the _Gazette_."

In Maryland, in the eighteenth century, a "Scheme of Lottery is humbly proposed to the Public for Raising the sum of 510 pounds, current money, to be applied towards completeing the Market-House in Baltimore-Town in Baltimore Co., buying two Fire-Engines and a parcel of Leather-Buckets for the use of the said Town, enlarging the present Public Wharf and Building a new one."

If gambling was a favorite pastime and the lottery a popular excitement, the Cavalier was not a stranger to manlier sports. Of a brave and ardent temper, and a fine physique, he found at once his work and play in the hardy amusements of the chase. He had learned from the Indian to stalk the deer, walking stealthily behind his horse till a good chance offered to shoot close at hand, and lay the unsuspecting deer at his feet. Sometimes, in the bright October weather, the air would be blue with the smoke of the fires built to start the game. Now, in his heavy leather boots, he would start afoot after wild hare, or by the light of the moon, with a band of servants and dogs, he would hunt the 'possum and the coon. This habit of hunting was so universal that the Colonial Cavalier well merited the sarcasm of _The Spectator_, which described the English country gentleman as lying under the curse pronounced in the words of Goliath, "I will give thee to the fowls of the air and to the beasts of the field." Hunting as a sport may not be spiritualizing, but it certainly is not brutalizing, and as much cannot be said for all the sports of that day, in the Southern colonies of America.

The cock-fight and the gouging-match never lacked as eager a throng of spectators, as gathers to-day at a football game; yet both were brutal and disgusting. They roused the amazement of every foreigner, that such things should be tolerated in a civilized country. The gouging-match was simply a fight of the lowest order. Not only were fists freely used, but the test of success was the ability of the stronger bully to gouge out the eye of his adversary. The under man could only save his sight by humiliating himself to cry out, "Kings Cruse!" or "Enough!"

Anbury, who witnessed several of these matches, says: "I have seen a fellow, reckoned a great adept in gouging, who constantly kept the nails of both his thumb and second finger long and pointed; nay, to prevent their breaking or splitting, he hardened them every evening in a candle."

So familiar was this brutal practice that it supplied a Southern orator in after years with a rhetorical climax when, inciting his countrymen to make war on the mercantile interests of Great Britain, he exclaimed: "Commerce is the apple of England's eye. There let us gouge her!"

The cock-fight was scarcely less degrading than the gouging-match. When a fight was announced, the news spread like lightning, and from all over the country people came thronging, some bringing cocks to be entered in the match, but all with money or tobacco to bet on the result. The scene was one of wild excitement. Men and boys cheered on their favorites, and watched with delight, while the furious cocks thrust at each other with their long spurs of cruel steel.

It is pleasant to turn away from such scenes and sports as these, to read of the _Knights of the Golden Horseshoe_ riding up into the wild fastnesses of the Blue Ridge Mountains with Governor Spotswood. It was a right knightly expedition, and one of the most picturesque in American history. They wound through the forest, and forded the rivers, and climbed rocky mountains, and took possession of peak after peak in the name of "His Majesty George the Third." Their horses were shod with iron, which was not usual in those days, and on their return, Governor Spotswood presented each of the Cavaliers as a memento of the journey, with a tiny gold horse-shoe, set with jewels, and bearing the legend, "_Sic juvat transcendere montes_." The thrifty old king disapproved of this extravagance, and left the Governor to pay for the mementoes out of his own pocket.

Riding on horseback was the chief recreation, as well as the chief mode of getting about, at the South. As the planters grew richer, they delighted to own fine horses and outfits. Washington's letter-book contains an order sent to London for elaborate equipments: "1 man's riding saddle, hogskin seat, large plated stirrups, double-reined bridle and Pelham bit plated. A very neat and fashionable Newmarket saddle-cloth. A large and best portmanteau, saddle, bridle and pillion, cloak-bag, and surcingle. A riding-frock of a handsome drab-coloured broadcloth with plain double gilt buttons. A riding waistcoat of superfine scarlet cloth and gold lace, with buttons like those of the coat. A blue surtout coat. A neat switch whip, silver cap. Black velvet cap for servant."

Washington, as methodical in private affairs as in public, kept in his household books, a register of the names and ages of his horses and his dogs. Here we may read the entire family history of _Ajax_ and _Blueskin_, _Valiant_ and _Magnolia_, or of the foxhounds _Vulcan_, _Singer_, _Ringwood_, _Music_, and _True Love_.

There was a peculiar intimacy between the foxhounds and their master, for they were associated with some of the happiest hours of his life, and when they came in from a field-day, torn by the briars through which they had struggled or limping from thorns in the foot, they were tenderly cared for, bandaged, and looked after. No amusement so delighted Washington as riding across country with Lord Fairfax in one of the hunts which that gentleman and sportsman was so fond of organizing at Greenaway Court. On a brisk yet soft autumn morning, through the blue Virginia haze, the gentry for miles around came to the "meet." The huntsmen might be heard urging on the dogs with cries of "Yoicks! Yoicks! Have at him! Push him up!" till the fox, which had doubled on its tracks, round and round the thick covert, at length broke away, and the cry was raised of "Tally-ho! Gone away!" The huntsman blew his horn, the whipper-in cracked his whip, the hounds were in full cry, and the entire field of scarlet-coated riders broke in, in a mad gallop, through brush and briar. A strong fox will "live" before hounds on an average of an hour, but sometimes the hunt lasted all day, and covered thirty miles or more. The lessons of endurance, of woodcraft, and of hardy strength, which the Virginia gentlemen learned in these hunts, stood them in good stead in the life-and-death struggle on sterner fields.

A great lover of animals was Charles Lee, who was always surrounded by a troop of dogs, and who made himself somewhat unwelcome as a visitor, by insisting on bringing them into the house with him wherever he went. "I must have some object to embrace," he once wrote to a friend. "When I can be convinced that men are as worthy objects as dogs, I shall transfer my benevolence, and become as staunch a philanthropist as the canting Addison affected to be."

Apparently he never changed his mind, but died still devoted to his dogs and his horses. Men who loved horses, of course loved horse-racing as well. The Carolina Jockey Club was a famous institution. Its annual races drew crowds from the neighboring country, and the population gave itself up to several days' festivity, ending in a ball. In Virginia, the sport was no less popular. _The Gazette_ of October, 1737, announces that "On St. Andrew's Day, there are to be horse-races and several other Diversions for the entertainment of the Gentlemen and Ladies at the Old Field." The programme of this entertainment recalls the days of Merrie England. Besides the race of twenty horses for a prize of five pounds, the advertisement gives notice:

"That a hat of the value of 20s. be cudgelled for, and that after the first challenge be made, the Drums are to beat every quarter of an hour for 3 challenges round the Ring, and none to play with their left hand.

"That a violin be played for by 20 Fiddles, no person to have the liberty of playing unless he bring his fiddle with him. After the prize is won, they are all to play together, and each a different tune, and to be treated by the company.

"That 12 Boys of 12 years of age do run 112 yds, for a hat of the cost of 12 shillings.

"That a flag be flying on said Day, 30 feet high.

"That a handsome entertainment be provided for the subscribers and their wives; and such of them as are not so happy as to have wives, may treat any other lady.

"That drums, trumpets and hautboys be provided to play at said entertainment.

"That after dinner the Royal Health, His Honor the Governor's, etc., are to be drunk.

"That a Quire of Ballads be sung for, by a number of songsters, all of them to have liquor sufficient to clear their wind-pipes.

"That a pair of silver buckles be wrestled for, by a number of brisk young men.

"That a pair of handsome shoes be danced for.

"That a pair of handsome silk stockings, of one pistole value, be given to the handsomest young country maid that appears in the field--with many other whimsical and comical diversions too numerous to mention.

"And as this mirth is designed to be purely innocent and void of offense, all persons resorting there are desired to behave themselves with decency and sobriety."

There is a delightful heartiness and simplicity about all this racing, and chasing, and dancing, and jigging, and fiddling. Folks had not learned to take their pleasure sadly. They still found clowns funny, and shouted with laughter over the efforts to climb greased poles and catch slippery pigs, and, above all, they delighted in the barbecue. At these great open-air feasts animals were roasted whole over enormous fires. Huge bowls of punch circled round the long tables spread under the trees, and when the feast was done the negroes gathered up the fragments and made merry, late into the night.

All the English holidays were observed in the Cavalier Colonies in addition to some local festivals. Eddis writes from Annapolis in old colony days: "Besides our regular assemblies, every mark of attention is paid to the patron saint of each parent dominion; and St. George, St. Andrew, St. Patrick, and St. David are celebrated with every partial mark of national attachment. General invitations are given, and the appearance is always numerous and splendid. The Americans on this part of the continent have likewise a saint, whose history, like those of the above venerable characters, is lost in sable uncertainty. The first of May is, however, set apart to the memory of Saint _Tamina_ (Tammany); on which occasion the natives wear a piece of a buck's tail in their hats, or in some conspicuous situation. During the course of the evening, and generally in the midst of a dance, the company are interrupted by the sudden intrusion of a number of persons habited like Indians, who rush violently into the room, singing the war-song, giving the whoop, and dancing in the style of those people; after which ceremony, a collection is made, and they retire, well satisfied with their reception and entertainment."

In addition to such festivities as these, the King's birthnight was celebrated with illuminations and joy-fires, and Christmas in Maryland and Virginia recalled the gayety of the dear old home festival. The halls were filled with holly and mistletoe, which refuse to grow in the chill New England air, but may be gathered in the woods of Virginia as freely as in England; the yule log was kindled on the hospitable hearth, and the evening ended with a dance.

It was a dancing age. None were too old or too dignified to join in the pastime. We have it on the authority of General Greene that on one occasion Washington danced for three hours without once sitting down. Patrick Henry would close the doors of his office to betake himself to dancing or fiddling, and Jefferson dearly loved to rosin his bow for a merry jig. The story is told of him that once, when away from home, he received news of the burning of his father's house. "Did you save any of my books?" he asked of the slave who brought him the tidings. "No, Massa," answered the negro, "but we saved the fiddle!"

At the entertainments in the "Palace" at Williamsburg, the Governor himself opened the ball, with the most distinguished lady present, in the stately figures of the minuet. Afterward young and old joined in the livelier motions of the _Virginia Reel_. This dance, in spite of its name, did not spring from Virginia soil, but was adopted from an old English dance known as "The Hemp-Dressers," whose figures represent the process of weaving, as its couples shoot from side to side, then over and under, like a shuttle, and finally unite, as the threads tighten and draw the cloth together.

The Governor's palace did not absorb all the gayety of Williamsburg. Who has not heard of the Raleigh Tavern, with its leaden bust of Sir Walter, and its crowning glory of "The Apollo Room," named doubtless for that famous "Apollo Room" in the "Devil's Tavern," Fleet Street, where Shakespeare and Jonson held their bouts of wit and wine?

If we could have crept up to the Raleigh Tavern some night, early in the last half of the last century, and peeped through the small-paned windows of "the Apollo," we might have seen a party of gay collegians making merry with their sweethearts and friends. This tall youth, with sandy hair and gray eyes, is Tom Jefferson, who is offering his awkward homage at the shrine of Miss 'Becca Burwell. Near them is Jefferson's most intimate friend, Jack Page, dancing with his Nancy. Yonder, near the wide fireplace, between Sukey Potter and Betsy Moore, stands Ben Harrison, a mere boy still, though soon to enter the House of Burgesses, and over there in the corner, gravely surveying the dancers, is the uniformed figure of the young soldier, George Washington. Should we have read in these youthful faces a promise of the parts they were destined to play on the world's stage? Probably no more than we should have foreseen this gay ballroom turned into the hall of a political assembly, where the first birth-cry of American freedom is heard.

We can get whatever impression we choose of Williamsburg and its society by selecting our authority judiciously. Burnaby, who visited it in 1759, describes it as a pleasant little town, with wooden houses straggling along unpaved streets; while Hugh Jones writes, thirty years earlier, that many good families live here "who dress after the same modes and behave themselves exactly as the Gentry in London." "Most families of any note," he adds, "have a coach, chariot, Berlin or chaise."

The city, so he says, is well stocked with rich stores, and "at the Governor's House upon Birthnights and at Balls and Assemblies, I have seen as fine an appearance, as good diversion, and as splendid entertainments in Governor Spotswood's time as I have seen anywhere."