Virginia: the Old Dominion: As seen from its colonial waterway, the historic river James, whose every succeeding turn reveals country replete with monuments and scenes recalling the march of history and its figures from the days of Captain John Smith to the present time — John Shaqi
Virginia: the Old Dominion: As seen from its colonial waterway, the historic river James, whose every succeeding turn reveals country replete with monuments and scenes recalling the march of history and its figures from the days of Captain John Smith to the present timeHutchins, Frank W.
History
Virginia: the Old Dominion: As seen from its colonial waterway, the historic river James, whose every succeeding turn reveals country replete with monuments and scenes recalling the march of history and its figures from the days of Captain John Smith to the present time
Hutchins, Frank W.
Historic buildings -- Virginia; Houseboats; James River (Va.)
Where our houseboat lay, the early colonists used to find haven for
their vessels, "lashed to one another and moor'd a shore secure from
all Wind and Weather Whatsoever." As they found Back River at this
point so we found it, a stream without banks; instead, on either hand
stretched lonely marshes, jungles of reeds and rushes, now as then more
than man high.
But our thoughts, busy with scenes two or three centuries gone, kept
stumbling over two features of the landscape that were out of keeping
with those old times. Back of us, where an isthmus should be stretching
from island to mainland, was the open water gateway through which we
had come; and in front of us, where there should be nothing but river
and marsh, that modern bridge reached from shore to shore.
Our quickened fancy made short work of such anachronisms. We promptly
raised the submerged isthmus, tying the island to the mainland once
more. Then we attacked the bridge; and, as the pilings to which our
boat was fastened did not have any connection with that structure, we
felt no misgivings as the troublesome modernism faded away.
The bridge disposed of, we bethought us that the road with which it had
connected was also a latter-day feature. To be sure, our maps showed us
that in colonial times too a road had crossed the island, and along
much the same lines; but it had come out a little farther down Back
River, at the point already referred to as "Friggett Landing."
To put the roadway right, then, we had first to locate the site of the
old landing. And in this important matter what painstaking
archeologists we were! Not by guesswork, but by a long string, did we
locate "Friggett Landing." After reading all that our authorities had
to say on the subject (and understanding part of it), we sent our man
down stream in a rowboat, confident that he would find the landing at
the end of the measured string. When the string ran out, the rowboat
was opposite a point on the marshy edge of the island about one hundred
feet below the present-day road.
The correctness of our work was at once evident. All the indications
pointed to that; for the place showed not the slightest sign of ever
having been used as a landing-place--which is just what you would
expect after the lapse of two or three centuries.
After that, it was but the work of a moment to crook the end of the
modern road, where it approached the river through a bit of elevated
woodland (the only piece of solid land anywhere near us), and so make
it come out, like the road of old, at the "landing." Now, our man held
aloft a stick with the houseboat's burgee on it, and a photograph was
taken that we might not forget where our diverted road came out and
where to go to meet the "friggetts" that might be coming in almost any
time.
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