CHAPTER II.

Mount Vernon.-Washington's life as a Planter.-The Woods of Virginia.— Aspect of the Country from Acquia Creek to Richmond.-Agricultural Divisions of Virginia.—Their general Characteristics.

[RICHMOND, VA.-Oct. 26 to Nov. 3.]

BEFORE proceeding from the American capital southward into Virginia, I could not deny myself the pleasure of a visit to the ancient homestead of Washington, whose historic figure and noble character are ever present to the mind at the quiet city in which the Republic has not unwisely established its seat of government. The pilgrimage to Mount Vernon is easily accomplished. A sail down the Potomac is almost as delightful as a sail on one of the Highland lochs of the Clyde. The scenery, indeed, is neither bold nor picturesque, but is well defined, and in many of its features beautiful. The shore on either side is traced by a line of yellowish sandy bluffs, not very high, but wavy in their outline, and clothed to the water edge with young forest wood, arrayed at this season in all the colours of the rainbow; with a background of rolling upland, on which there is the same crown of forest timber, sombre in the distance, and stretches of corn and pasture visible in the middle space, over which a brown and moorish aspect rests. I had noticed a similar air as of wilderness on more level tracts, all the way from New York to Philadelphia. The stalks of Indian corn in autumn are either gathered up in large sheaves, or left standing gaunt-like where they grew, shorn only of their richly-laden ears, with no white stubble, but only the red-brown till beneath. On pasture land the wild grasses have sprung far up in autumn, and overshadowed the more tender blade, which, after the scorching heat, has begun to grow green again under the rains and temperate sun of a second summer. With Maryland on one shore of the Potomac and Virginia on the other, both of which States have passed in a few years from slave culture to war and devastation, and not infrequent desertion of lands, the darkening effect of such natural causes can only be increased. But as the great white-coated steamboat, drawing only two or three feet of water, glides rapidly on, there is no want of objects made memor

able by the war, if nothing else, to arrest attention. Without even looking back on the city of Washington, with the dome of its Capitol always prominent, but always less enchanting as distance brings it into more critical view, there is the long bridge, slanting many miles over the shallows of the estuary from Washington towards Alexandria, across which the Federal troops defiled to meet the hosts of the Confederacy; overlooking it is Arlington House, the residence in ante-war times of General Lee, now the property of the Federal Governinent on an arrearof-taxes title, and converted into a military cemetery; on the other side is Navy Yard, and away down on the Virginia shore is Alexandria, with the steeple visible of Christchurch, to which, though ten miles from Mount Vernon, General Washington was accustomed to go with his household for Divine worship, and where a pew Bible of his is still preserved as a sacred relic. The remains of earthworks are seen on some of the higher ground on both banks, and Fort Foote, an extempore construction, armed with heavy guns, is still a power on the Maryland shore. On the same side is Fort Washington, an old defence of solid masonwork, which was destroyed in the war of 1812, and afterwards rebuilt. Such is the approach from the city of Washington to the country-seat of the Commander-in-Chief of the War of Independence.

Mount Vernon is situated on a somewhat higher bluff, and its woods are richer than most others on the Potomac. Its little cupola and grey roof, when first seen, are not striking. It is only on ascending to the colonnade of the mansion, formed of eight stately pillars, and looking round, that one perceives the beauty of the site, the good taste, the simple dignity, the fine order and arrangement of the whole place. The Potomac, as seen from the piazza, and in reality the rear of the building, is more like an inland lake than an estuary or a river. It is landlocked towards the capital by the ridge on which Fort Washington is erected, and by the sinuous shores towards the sea; there is a grassy plot down to the edge of the shelving bank of forest; and as one looks through the openings among the trees upon the smooth and glistening waters of the Potomac, and a coasting schooner or oyster wherry with her white sails passes by, the effect in the pure bright atmosphere of this part of the world is extremely lovely. The landward front of Mount Vernon is not less interesting in its way. On one side is the kitchen and on the other the domestic servants' apartments. A covered way of light open arches connects these houses with the main building. The lawn, though not extensive, is neatly laid out. First, a circular plot, then a long rectangle of grass, flanked on both sides by old trees and avenues. At the end of the lawn is a gateway which appears to have been the main entrance;

The

beyond is a grass park, with orchards sloping downward on either hand; behind all, woods and woods. One could hardly imagine a more exact reproduction of an old English country seat. Parallel to the lawn there is a vegetable garden on the same side as the kitchen, and on the other side a flower garden, with the remains of a row of negro houses, the windows of which seem to have had the full benefit of the fragrant flowers and plants of which Washington was evidently an ardent admirer and cultivator. There are still shown in this garden two sweet-scented shrubs" (Calycanthus Floridus), presented to him by his compatriot and successor in the Presidential chair -Jefferson. The leaves of this plant shed a delightful odour, and when in full flower its sweetness fills the whole air. offices are situated in a hollow part of the ground, to which a paved way descends from the front of the mansion. Considering that Mount Vernon is a frame building, it seems in a quite wonderful state of preservation. The frames are raised above the ground-level over cellars extending under the whole building, and entered by a flight of steps and wide door at each end of the colonnade. These doors, when left open, allow a current of fresh air to pass through all this under-story, in which Washington kept his wine and other household stores. It is hardly necessary to speak of the interior, which has been so often described. There are the quaint rooms and quaint staircases one expects to find in old country houses, and various relics which have hardly a place in these notes. There is a noble dining-room, that appears, with the apartments above it, to have been an addition to the original building, and from which a door opens on the colonnade, and on the cool and refreshing breeze and charming scene of the Potomac. One can fancy Lafayette retiring here from the table to smoke his pipe or cigar of pure Virginian, and, in presence of his sincere and noble-minded host, indulging in delightful dreams of the coming age of "liberty, equality, and fraternity." All the details of Mount Vernon, apart from political associations, convey a vivid impression of a planter's life and surroundings in America a hundred years ago. Washington is said to have possessed ten miles of river shore and six miles inland. There was accommodation at Mount Vernon for all the service required in the household, the gardens and orchards, the stables and dairy, and such work of cultivation and forestry as belonged to the establishment of a country gentleman. But Washington had his extensive territory to reclaim by degrees, and he would have his cleared ground and labour settlements among the woods, and the work of the axe and the plough would go on from year to year under his wise guidance, with occasional military operations against the Indians, in which his heroic spirit would find vent

through all the kindly tendencies of his nature. Still, with all this activity, the passion of money-making, so rampant in the present day, could scarcely have been felt by Washington. Mount Vernon is not in the tobacco region of Virginia. It was the Westmoreland, even by name, of this second England. It had soil, and sun, and variety of product, in comparison with which, indeed, the northern moorland of England was but a desert. There would be abundance of Indian corn, some wheat, every variety of fruit and fowl, traffickings in timber, and all the rude plenty of a wild but teeming land. But no money-bags, no accumulation of speculative stocks, or of solid capital in the Funds. The only plan of life which can be conceived as followed by Washington is that of working out, by great personal sacrifice and heroism, in Virginian wilds, the highest form of life then known in England. A great change seems to have passed over the world since those days. To be master of thousands, tens of thousands, and millions of dollars in "cash down is now the ruling passion. There are multitudes of rich men and their sons in New York, and other great American towns, who, if animated by only a little of the spirit of Washington, could plant many a Mount Vernon, and cause many a wilderness in the United States to blossom like the rose. But the spirit which founded America and American Independence is not remarkably prevalent in the world to-day. The fortunes made by trade and commerce in the old country are often turned with happy and beautifying effect on the waste places of England and Scotland; yet this seldom occurs in the United States, where the heroic work of subduing the untamed land is left for the most part to the poor tempest-tossed emigrants of Europe.

The Virginian shore of the Potomac down to Acquia Creek is of the same type as at Mount Vernon. The sand bluff is more or less naked to the eye, the foliage more or less varied and brilliant in its hues. A few miles past Mount Vernon there is a long range of building, not in very good repair, but which yet might be supposed to be the residence of a landholder struggling under difficulties of labour and want of capital. It is occupied as a fishing-station, at a rent of 1,000 dollars per annum. There are shad and herring fishings on the Potomac. The herring shoals begin to come in the spring, and there is probably a busy scene at that period of the year. But there is little mark of extensive fishery operations on the Potomac, and the herring probably have a good time of it in these and other American waters. I should scarcely have noticed this fishing station but for the bright and exquisitely blended colour of the trees amid which it is set. The composition of the Virginian woods affords scope for a much deeper study than I can give to it. The very brushwood develops elements of commercial

value. But besides the hickory, the cedars, and maples, one is struck by the various oaks, the ashes, the chestnuts, and beeches, so familiar in the "Old Country," and some of the species may not be indigenous. Six or seven generations of British planters have passed over this memorable land of Virginia.

The leaves were falling fast towards the end of October, but the bare branches, seen from a little distance, only added a new variety of colour to the beauty of the woods. The Richmond and Potomac Railroad soon passes literally from the bosom of the water to a table-land of considerable elevation, which drops down again into the valley of the Rappahannock, where Fredericksburg, the scene of a heavy Federal defeat in the war, comes in view. The old town does not seem to have suffered much from the furious cannonade which the hostile forces poured over the tops of its highest steeples from the opposite banks of the river, and there was a stir of people about the station, including not a few thriving-like country folk, that was cheering to see. The heights behind Fredericksburg, on which the Confederates were posted, are neither so steep nor so lofty as the accounts of the battle might have led one to imagine. The character of the country, indeed, all the way from the Potomac to near Richmond, is the same. There are no mountains or hills, and no rock, but a rolling alluvial country, broken only by ravines where the streams in the course of ages have washed a deep bed out of the unresisting soil. The deepest cuttings of the railroad track reveal only the same bottomless deposit of clayey sand, with but a light top-dressing of vegetable mould, as is seen on the exposed bank of the Potomac. The land is well cleared, the woods in many places having been cut down to mere belts, the boundaries betwixt one property and another, and not more than are necessary for shelter. The soil has also at one time been nearly all cultivated. The marks of the plough are everywhere seen. But thousands of acres are rapidly returning to a state of nature, and little forests of young pines are springing where Indian corn and even wheat may have recently grown. There is a curious fact mentioned in connection with the Virginian woods. When the oaks are cut down, they are followed by a crop of pines, and when the pines fall under the axe the oaks come again. When the soil has been exhausted by bad cultivation, and is left to take its own way, it is prolific of pines. Of this peculiarity I had ocular proof in many fields, over which the furrows were still traceable, covered with little pine-shoots, thick as if planted in a nursery. The soil in this district of Virginia is certainly not so rich as to dispense with the aid of skilful and liberal culture; but the tracts on which crops had been grown this year showed, in the standing stalks of corn, fair powers of vegetation; and the alluvial character of