Part 3 (2/2)
Was.h.i.+ngton's orders from Fort c.u.mberland, dated the seventeenth of September, 1775, prescribe the uniform to be worn by the Virginia Regiment in the opening struggle: ”Every officer of the Virginia Regiment to provide himself, as soon as he can conveniently, with suit of Regimentals of good blue Cloath; the Coat to be faced and cuffed with scarlet, and trimmed with Silver; a scarlet waistcoat, with silver Lace; blue Breeches, and a silver-laced hat, if to be had, for Camp or Garrison duty. Besides this, each officer to provide himself with a common soldier's Dress for Detachments and Duty in the Woods.”
In looking back to the beginning of the Revolutionary War, when that great wrench was made which separated America from the parent country, we have a feeling that men's minds were wholly occupied with the tremendous issues at stake; yet, as we study the old records, we find the same buying and selling, the planting and reaping, the same pondering and planning of dress and the trifles of daily life going on much in the old fas.h.i.+on. In Jefferson's private note-book, under date of July 4th, 1776, the day of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, I find, entered in his own hand, the item: ”For seven pairs of women's gloves, twenty s.h.i.+llings.”
Even so do great things and small jostle one another in this strange world of ours, and a woman's glove lies close to the doc.u.ment which changed the fate of nations.
News, Trade and Travel
[Ill.u.s.tration: News, Trade, and Travell]
In the early days, the highways of the Cavalier Colonies were the broad waters of bay and sound; their by-ways, the innumerable rivers and creeks; and their toll-gates, the ports of entry. Road-making was tedious and costly, and the settlers saw no reason for wasting time and energy in the undertaking, when nature had spread her pathways at their feet, and they needed only to step into a canoe, or a skiff manned by black oarsmen, to glide from one plantation to another; or to hoist sail in a pinnace for distant settlements. Many animals travel, but man is the only one who packs a trunk, and, except a few like the nautilus and the squirrel, the only one who sails a boat. There is a sentiment connected with a s.h.i.+p, which no other conveyance can ever have. The very names of those old colonial vessels are redolent of ”amber-greece,” ”pearle,” and treasure, of East India spices and seaweed
”From Bermuda's reefs, and edges Of sunken ledges In some far-off bright Azore.”
The history of the colonies might be written in the story of their s.h.i.+ps.
There were _The Good Speed_, _The Discovery_, and _The Susan Constant_, which preceded the world-famous _Half Moon_ and _Mayflower_ to the new world. There were _The Ark_ and _The Dove_ that brought over Lord Baltimore and his colonists; _The Sea-Venture_ which went to wreck on the Somer Isles; and _The Patience_, and _The Deliverance_ which brought her crew safe to Virginia. These were the pioneers, followed by a long line of staunch craft, large and small, from the _Golden Lyon_ to _The Peggy Stewart_, which discharged her cargo of taxed tea into Chesapeake Bay.
Many s.h.i.+ps in those days were named, as we name chrysanthemums, in honor of some prominent man or fair dame. These good folk must have followed the coming and going of their namesakes with curious interest. The sight of a sail on the horizon never lost its excitement, for every s.h.i.+p brought some wild tale of adventure. The story of s.h.i.+pwreck ”on the still vexed Bermoothes,” and the wonderful escape of Gates and Somers, with their crew, has been made famous forever by the tradition that it suggested to Shakespeare the plot of _The Tempest_; but every ”frygat” that touched at Jamestown or Annapolis brought accounts almost as thrilling, of storm and stress, of fighting tempests with a crew reduced by scurvy to three or four active seamen, of running for days from a Spanish caravel or a French pickaroune.
The _Margaret and John_ set sail for America early in the seventeenth century, carrying eighty pa.s.sengers, besides sailors, and armed with ”eight Iron peeces and a Falcon.” When she reached the ”Ile of Domenica,”
the captain entered a harbor, that the men might stretch their limbs on dry land, ”having been eleven weeks pestered in this vnwholesome s.h.i.+p.”
Here, to their misfortune, they found two large s.h.i.+ps flying Hollander colors, but proving to be Spaniards. These enemies sent a volley of shot which split the oars and made holes in the boats, yet failed to strike a man on the _Margaret and John_.
”Perceiving what they were,” writes one of the English crew, ”we fitted ourselves the best we could to prevent a mischief: seeing them warp themselves to windward, we thought it not good to be boarded on both sides at an anchor; we intended to set saile, but the Vice-Admiral battered so hard at our starboard side, that we fell to our businesse, and answered their vnkindnesse with such faire shot from a demiculvering, that shot her betweene wind and water, whereby she was glad to leave us and her Admirall together.” The Admiral then bespoke them, and demanded a surrender; to which the st.u.r.dy English replied that they had no quarrel with the King of Spain, and asked only to go their way unmolested, but as they would do no wrong, a.s.suredly they would take none. The Spaniards answered these bold words with another volley of shot, returned with energy by the English guns.
”The fight continued halfe an houre, as if we had been invironed with fire and smoke, untill they discovered the waste of our s.h.i.+p naked, where they bravely boorded us, loofe for loofe, hasting with pikes and swords to enter; but it pleased G.o.d so to direct our Captaine and encourage our men with valour, that our pikes being formerly placed under our halfe deck, and certaine shot lying close for that purpose under the port holes, encountered them so rudely, that their fury was not onely rebated, but their hastinesse intercepted, and their whole company beaten backe; many of our men were hurt, but I am sure they had two for one.” Thus, all day and all night, the unequal battle continued, till at length the doughty little British vessel fairly fought off her two enemies, and they fell sullenly back and ran near sh.o.r.e to mend their leaks, while the _Margaret and John_ stood on her course.
It is hard, in these days, when the high seas are as safe as city streets, to realize the condition of terror to which merchantmen were reduced, two hundred years ago, by the rumor of a black flag seen in the offing, or of some ”pyrat” lying in wait outside the harbor. In Governor Spotswood's time, Williamsburg was thrown into a state of great excitement by the report that the dreaded buccaneer John Theach, known by the name of Blackbeard, had been seen cruising along the coasts of Virginia and Carolina. The Governor rose to the occasion, however. He sent out Lieutenant Maynard with two s.h.i.+ps, to look for Blackbeard. Maynard found him and boarded his vessel in Pamlico Sound. The pirate was no coward. He ordered one of his men to stand beside the powder-magazine with a lighted match, ready, at a signal from him, to blow up friends and foes together.
The signal never came, for a lucky shot killed Blackbeard on the spot and his crew surrendered. They might as well have died with their leader, for thirteen of them were hanged at Williamsburg. Blackbeard's skull was rimmed with silver and made into a ghastly drinking-cup, and we hear no more of pirates in those waters.
The protection of vessels was not the only reason for policing the waterways. Smuggling was much more common than piracy, and the laws against it were the harder to enforce, because the entire community was secretly in sympathy with the offenders. In the earliest Maryland records is Lord Baltimore's commission, giving his lieutenant authority to ”appoint fit places for public ports for lading, s.h.i.+pping, unlading and discharging all goods and merchandizes to be imported or exported into or out of our said province, and to prohibit the s.h.i.+pping or discharging of any goods or merchandizes whatsoever in all other places.” Any one violating the s.h.i.+pping law was subject to heavy fines and imprisonment.
In Virginia the statutes compelled s.h.i.+ps to stop at Jamestown, or other designated ports, before breaking bulk at the private landings along the river. Who can picture the excitement in those lonely plantations when the frigate tied up at the wharf, and began to unload from its hold, its cargo of tools for the farm, furniture for the house, and, best of all, the square white letters with big round seals, containing news of the friends distant a three months' journey! Sometimes the new comer would prove no ocean voyager, but a nearer neighbor, some stout, round-sterned packet, from New Netherland or New England, laden with grain and rum, or hides and rum, to be exchanged for the tobacco of the Old Dominion.
To journey from one colony to another thus, the trader must first secure a license and take oath that he would not sell or give arms or ammunition to the Indians. On these terms Lord Baltimore, in 1637, granted to a merchant mariner, liberty ”to trade and commerce for corn, beaver or any other commodities with the Dutchmen on Hudson's river, or with any Indians or other people whatsoever being or inhabiting to the northward, without the capes commonly called Cape Henry and Cape Charles.”
Long after the waters of Chesapeake Bay were dotted with sails, and the creeks of Maryland and Virginia gay with skiffs, the land communication was still in an exceedingly primitive condition. The roads were little more than bridle-paths. The surveyors deemed their duty done if the logs and fallen trees were cleared away, and all Virginia could not boast of a single engineer. Bridges there were none; and the traveller, arriving at a river bank, must find a ford, or swim his horse across, counting himself fortunate if he kept his pouch of tobacco dry. Planters at a distance from the rivers hewed out rolling-roads, on which they brought down their tobacco in casks, attached to the horses that drew them by hoop-pole shafts. Roads, winding along the streams, were slowly laid out, and answered well enough in fair weather, but in storms they were impa.s.sable, and at night so bewildering that belated travellers were forced to come to a halt, make a fire, and bivouac till morning. In 1704, the roads in Maryland were so poor that we find the a.s.sembly pa.s.sing an act declaring that ”the roads leading to any county court-house shall have two notches on the trees on both sides of the roads, and another notch a distance above the other two; and any road that leads to any church shall be marked, into the entrance of the same, and at the leaving any other road, with a slip cut down the face of the tree near the ground.” Guide-posts were still unknown.
The travel was as primitive as the roads. Public coaches did not exist.
Horseback riding was the usual way of getting over the ground, though the rough roads made the jolting a torment. ”Travelling in this country,”
wrote a stranger, as late as the Revolution, ”is extremely dangerous, especially if it is the least windy, from the number of rotten pines continually blowing down.” It was no uncommon thing for a driver to be obliged to turn into the woods half a dozen times in a single mile to avoid the fallen logs. A certain Madame de Reidefel, who was driving in a post-chaise with her children, had a narrow escape from death. A rotten tree fell directly across her path, but fortunately struck between the chaise and the horses, so that the occupants of the carriage escaped, though the front wheels were crushed, and one of the horses lamed.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Ye ”Blaze.”]
Between pirates on sea and pine-trees on land, so many perils beset the traveller that starting on a journey became a momentous undertaking. ”It was no uncommon thing,” writes the historian, ”for one who went on business or pleasure from Charleston to Boston or New York, if he were a prudent and cautious man, to consult the almanac before setting out, to make his will, to give a dinner or a supper to his friends at the tavern, and there to bid them a formal goodbye.”
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