mansion of red brick, with one wing only, the other having been burnt during the war; with pointed roof and tall chimneys, standing at the top of a beautifully sloping bank--Westover House, the most famous of the old mansions on the James. It was the home of the Byrds--grandfather, father and son--noted in Virginian colonial history, whose arms are emblazoned on the iron gates, and who sleep in the little graveyard alongside. The most renowned of these was the second, the "Honourable William Byrd of Westover, Esquire," who was the founder of both Richmond and Petersburg. William Byrd was a man of imposing personal appearance and the highest character, and his full-length portrait in flowing periwig and lace ruffles, after Van Dyck, is preserved at Lower Brandon, farther down the river. He inherited a large landed estate--over fifty thousand acres--and ample fortune, and was educated in England, where he was called to the bar at the Middle Temple, and made a Fellow of the Royal Society. The inscription on his Westover tomb tells that he was a friend of the learned Earl of Orrery. He held high offices in Virginia, and possessed the largest private library then in America. In connection with one Peter Jones, in 1733, he laid out both Richmond and Petersburg on lands he owned, at the head of navigation respectively on the James and the Appomattox. He left profuse journals, published since as the _Westover Manuscripts_, and they announce that Petersburg was gratefully named in honor of his companion-founder, Peter Jones, and that Richmond's name came from Byrd's vivid recollection of the outlook from Richmond Hill over the Thames in England, which he found strikingly reproduced in the soft hills and far-stretching meadows adjoining the rapids of the James, with the curving sweep of the river as it flowed away from view behind the glimmering woods. He died in 1744. Westover House was McClellan's headquarters in 1862. The estates have gone from Byrd's descendants, but the house has been completely restored, and is one of the loveliest spots on the James. Major Augustus Drewry, its recent owner, died in July, 1899, at an advanced age. Coggins Point projects opposite Westover, and noted plantations and mansions line the river banks, bearing, with the counties, well-known English names. Here is the ruined stone Fort Powhatan, a relic of the War of 1812, with the Unionist earthworks of 1864-65 on the bluff above it. Then we get among the lowland swamps, where the cypress trees elevate their conical knees and roots above the water. The James has become a wide estuary, and the broad Chickahominy flows in between low shores, draining the swamps east of Richmond and the James. This was the "lick at which turkeys were plenty," the Indians thus recognizing in the name of the river the favorite resort of the wild turkey. THE COLONY OF JAMESTOWN.