embarrassed at being admitted to the presence and conversation of the greatest Monarch on earth. There is a compound of virtue and vice in every human character; no man was ever yet faultless; but whatever may be advanced against Virginians, their good qualities will ever outweigh their defects; and when the effervescence of youth has abated, when reason asserts her empire, there is no man on earth who discovers more exalted sentiments, more contempt for baseness, more love of justice, more sensibility of feeling, than a VIRGINIAN. At Newgate my pilgrimage was nearly at an end; for Mr. Ball's plantation was only distant eight miles, and it was he whom I was going to visit. But it was now necessary to bestride a horse; for in Virginia no man is respected who travels on foot; and as a man of sense will conform with the customs of every country, (and at Rome, as my Lord Chesterfield elegantly observes, kiss either the Pope's great toe or his b-k-e,), I put myself to the expence of a horse, and with the argument of a stick I prevailed on him to advance. CHAP. X. MEMOIR OF MY LIFE IN THE WOODS OF VIRGINIA There be some sports are painful; but their labour Would be as heavy to me, as odious; but The mistress, which I serve, quickens what's dead, And makes my labours pleasure.-Hear my soul speak! I am in my condition, a Prince, Miranda; I do think a King; and but for thee, I would no more endure this wooden slavery, Than I would suffer the flesh-fly blow my mouth. The very instant that I saw you, did My heart fly to your service; there resides, To make me slave to it; and, for your sake, SHAKESPEAR. Reception at Pohoke.-An Old Field-School.-A fair Disciple.-Evening Scene on a Plantation. Story of Dick the Negro, &c. &c. &c. THE rugged and dreary road from Newgate to New-Market, in Prince William County, is bordered by gloomy woods, where the natives of the State, and emigrants from New Jersey, cultivate on their plantations Indian corn, wheat, tobacco, and rye. After passing Bull Run, a stream that takes its appellation from the mountains of the same name, the Traveller comes to the intersection of two roads, and is in suspense which to take. If he travels the left it will bring him to the unaccommodating town of New-Market, where publicans * and sinners waste the day in drinking and riot; but the right will conduct him to the hospitable plantation of Mr. Ball, who never yet shut his door against the houseless stranger. Having come to Bull Run, I stopped at a kind of waggoner's tavern on its border, to inquire the way to the plantation. Old Flowers the landlord, reeled out of his loghut towards my horse, but was too much intoxicated to make a coherent reply; so giving my steed his head, I was all passive to his motions, till overtaking an old negro man, I demanded the road to Mr. Ball's. The old negro was clad in rags, if rags can be called cloathing; he was a squalid figure of sixty, and halted as he walked; he was grunting somewhat in the manner of an old hog at an approaching shower of rain; and he carried a hickory stick in his right hand, with which he was driving the cattle home from pasture. Is this the way, old man, to Mr. Ball's? Aye, Master, I'm going there myself; and should have got to the plantation a couple of hours before sun-down, but the red bull was Tax Gatherers. strayed after old mother Dye's heifers, and it cost me a plaguy search to find him in the woods. Good company on the road, says Goldsmith, is the shortest cut, and I entered into conversation with the negro. Then you live with Mr. Ball? Aye, Master, I live with the 'Squire, and do a hundred odd jobs for him. You're going to see him, I reckon; some friend it's like enough. The 'Squire is a worthy gentleman, and I don't tell a word of a lie when I say he would not part with me for the best young negro that was ever knocked down at vendue.* There was 'Squire Williams of Northumberland wanted to tempt him, by offering for me a young woman that was a house-servant, a seamster, and could work at the hoe. But old birds is not to be catched with chaff. No! No! says Master, I shant easily meet with the fellow of Dick again; he is a gardener, a flax-beater, and a good judge of horse-flesh. No! No! if I part with Dick, I part with my right-hand man. Has your Master a large family? Aye, a house full of children. Four and three makes seven. There's seven young ones altogether; four girls and three boys. Master Waring is a sharp one; he found a nest of bees in the woods, which I reckoned nobody * Auction. know'd anything about but myself; and will make nothing of climbing a hickory after an owl's nest, and pulling out young and old by the neck. Concern it, an owl always scares me. He'll turn his eyes round and round, and look all manner of ways at once! Have you good hunting in the woods? Aye, rat it, Sir, I reckoned you was coming to hunt with Master. But, God help us, hunting is all over; the New Jersey men have cleared the woods. When I was a lad, I used to track the wolves on the snow, and never tracked one that I did not catch.* Master, I don't tell you a word of a lie, if you'll believe me, when I say that in one winter I got fifteen dollars reward from the Justice at NewMarket, for the heads of wolves. And then there was such mighty herds of deer; the woods was fested with them. We would not take the trouble to hunt them: all we had to do, was to tie a bell to the neck of a tame doe, and turn her into the woods. A little after sun-down, we got ready our guns, and stood behind the out-house. Presently we could see the doe trot towards home, followed by half a dozen bucks prancing after her. Then we [* Cf. Dr. Coke's Journals, p. 42,-" So romantic a scene, I think I never beheld. The Wolves, I find, frequently come to our friend's fences at night, howling in an awful manner; and sometimes they seize upon a straying sheep. At a distance was the Blue-Ridge, an amazing chain of mountains."] |