The James, between Richmond and the sea, is a tawny and sluggish stream, fringed with willow and cypress and shut in by low-lying mead and meadow, but it flows through a land rich in memories of a noble and stirring past, — a land where Englishmen first made successful lodgement on New World soil, where amid their rich acres dwelt and ruled those Cavalier planters who were princes in all save the name, and where in later years marched and fought the armies of three great wars. Shirley and Westover, Berkeley and Brandon, — what a quaint and pleasant sound all these names have! — break the storied way to the site of vanished Jamestown, and thence with historic Williamsburg lying between, it is but little more than a score of miles to Yorktown, scene of Cornwallis's surrender and birthplace of a nation.

It was on a clear, balmy morning of the early spring that we left Richmond and drifted slowly down the James on the pleasurable pilgrimage that was to end three days later at Yorktown. Soon the spires and roofs of the sloping seven-hilled city fading into the fleecy western sky were lost to view, and the steamer at the end of an hour came about abreast of Drewry's Bluff, or Fort Darling, its crest flanked with earthworks, now silent, grass-grown, and dismantled, but thirty-five years ago the challenge and menace of the Federal gunboats lying below.

Then Drewry's Bluff also drifted astern, and the boat pushing leisurely ahead passed another reminder of the Civil War, — Dutch Gap, a canal several hundred feet in length, cut by Butler when ascending the river with his gunboats in order to avoid a horseshoe of seven miles. Other interesting memories cling to the narrow peninsula thus converted into an island, for it was here that, in 1612, Sir Thomas Dale laid out a town, defended by palisades and watch-towers, which in honor of the then Prince of Wales he called the City of Henricus. However, no vestige remains of the city or of the “university” established there in the days when Henricus still gave promise of prosperity and greatness.

A little way below the site of hopeful Sir Thomas's lost village is Varina, — the Aiken's Landing of the Civil War, — where Pocahontas passed a part of her brief married life, and then a halt is made at Shirley, a typical manor-house of the middle colonial period, long the lordly home of the Carter family, whose members, intermarrying with the Byrds, the Wickhams, and the Randolphs, played their part, and a worthy one, in the life and history of their time. The olden James River planters built for the future as well as for the present, and Shirley, although erected before the eighteenth century was born, bears well its weight of years. At once massive and simple in design, with foundation-walls from three to four feet in thickness, it is a square, three-storied structure, built of alternating glazed and dull brick, and with sharp-sloping roof cut by dormer-windows. Broad stone steps lead up to the doorways, and spacious porticoes, one of them rising to the second story, flank the eastern and western sides of the house. Brick was also used in the construction of the several outbuildings, arranged in a hollow square, perhaps for purposes of defence in case of attack, and even the dovecote, a peak-roofed turret set upon the ground, is of the same durable material.

The founder of Shirley — he sleeps beneath a massive tomb in the family burialground not far from the mansion — was Edward Hill, “Collonel and Commander in Chiefe of the Countys of Charles City and Surrey, Judge of his Majestye's high Court of Admiralty, and Sometime Treasurer of Virginia.” His portrait, preserved at Shirley, shows us a handsome, masterful man clad in crimson velvet, lace, and a flowing peruke, and, if the limner painted true, the charm of physical beauty was also the portion of his granddaughter, who gave her heart and hand to a member of the Carter family, in whose possession Shirley and its broad acres have ever since remained. The mansion's interior corresponds with its exterior, and its wainscoted walls boast other portraits than those just mentioned. Carters, Byrds, and Randolphs give silent greeting to the visitor, nor should mention be omitted of a fine replica of Peale's full-length portrait of Washington standing out against the smoke and tumult of a battle scene. The owners of Shirley take pardonable pride in its history and careful preservation, and with its wide-spreading lawn, its curious boxhedged garden, and its pleasing Old World air, it promises to long remain a rare and eloquent survival of the colonial era.

Across the James from Shirley is City Point, the port of Petersburg, and destined to remain forever celebrated for its part in the Civil War. Here was enacted the closing act of the great drama, and there stands on the summit of the steep bluff, at the base of which the Appomattox joins the James, the low, rambling, bullet-riddled house used as head-quarters by General Grant at that time. Near City Point once stood the manor-house of Cawsons, the birthplace of brilliant and hapless John Randolph, whose home in later years we shall come upon at another stage of our pilgrimage. Cawsons was destroyed early in the century, but the Randolphs were at one time the owners of vast estates along the James and the Appomattox, and the whole region about City Point is indissolubly bound up with their name.

Westover House, another splendid reminder of colonial Virginia, comes into view soon after passing City Point. The patent of Westover was originally granted to the Pawlet family, and sold by Sir John Pawlet, in 1665, to Theodore Bland, whose tomb and armorial bearings may still be seen on the estate. From Bland's descendants it passed by purchase to the Byrds, and with the name of Colonel William Byrd, second of that line in America, it is now invariably associated. The first William Byrd was a shrewd young Cheshireman, who secured from the crown a grant of land covering nearly the whole sight of modern Richmond and of Manchester on the opposite bank of the James. There he built for himself a fortified dwelling, which he called Belvidere, and throve so well in his new home that when he died, in 1704, he left his son and namesake one of the richest men in the colonies.

To this second William Byrd, educated in England and there called to the bar of the Middle Temple, was reserved a brilliant and exceptional career, as courtier, author, traveller, and patron of the arts, fairly entitling him to high rank among the leaders of his time, and eloquently epitomized in the stately periods of the inscription upon the shaft above his grave in the rear of Westover House. “Eminently fitted,” this inscription tells us, “for the service and ornament of his country, he was made Receiver general of his Majesty's revenues here,” — an office his father had held before him, — “was thrice appointed publick agent to the Court and ministry of England, and being thirty-seven years a member at last became President of the Council of this Colony. To all this were added a great elegancy of taste and life, the well-bred gentleman and polite companion, the splendid Oeconomist and prudent father of a family, with the constant enemy of all exhorbitant power and hearty friend to the liberties of his country.”

Truly a remarkable man to merit an eulogium of this sort, but contemporary records prove that Colonel Byrd deserved it. He was thirty years of age when he became master of Westover, where his father had builded and dwelt during the closing years of his life, and, save for occasional absences in England, he resided there until his death in 1744, dispensing a royal hospitality and playing an active and sagacious part in public affairs, ever ready with pen, purse, and brain to serve his king and his province. He was one of the commissioners who, in 1728, fixed the boundary-line between North Carolina and Virginia, and five years later he laid out near his father's little fortress of Belvidere a town “to be called Richmond,” thus giving a site and name to Virginia's present capital.

The sprightly Marquis de Chastellux, visiting Westover in 1782, wrote of it as “surpassing all other estates on the river in the magnificence of its buildings, the beauty of its situation, and the pleasures of its society,” and the latter-day visitor finds no cause to quarrel with this description. The present mansion, restored in 1749 by the son and namesake of the second William Byrd, is a substantial three-story structure, situated, perhaps, a hundred yards from the river's bank; fronted by a broad, closely-kept lawn, and with a line of noble trees caressing the dormer-windows of its roof. At each end of the grounds are elaborate gates of hammered iron, with the arms of the Byrd family curiously inwrought, and there is yet a third gate, above which perch leaden eagles with outstretched wings, larger and more elaborate in decoration, and capable of giving entrance to the most ponderous chariot. Everything else is on the same lordly scale. Moreover, by its present proprietor, one of the most successful planters in the State, Westover has been restored to much of its pristine dignity. And what stirring days the old house has seen! Bacon and his men, bivouacking here on their daring forays against the Indians, ate, drank, slept upon their arms, and rode away; Benedict Arnold, on his way to capture Richmond, in 1781, landed and slept at Westover, and in the old nursery on the ground-floor Cornwallis quartered the horses of his troopers, while, during the Civil War, several generals of the Union army, notably McClellan, made their head-quarters at the mansion so popular with the soldiers of earlier revolutions.

As Westover recalls the Byrds, so Berkeley on the north side of the James, and Brandon and Upper Brandon on the south, stand as monuments to the American Harrisons. Upper Brandon is still occupied by a representative of the original family, but has never fully recovered from the shocks and ravages of the Civil War. Brandon, erected in 1725, and the birthplace of the first President Harrison, also suffered heavily in war-time, but is still one of the most delectable nooks in the Old Dominion. It has remained in the Harrison family since its foundation. Fronting a sweep of the James two miles wide, a broad avenue, with an old-fashioned border of box, leads from the house to Brandon wharf. On either side of this avenue is an extensive lawn, dotted with flowers, shrubs, and trees. In the middle of the irregular brick structure is the oldest part of Brandon House, built of English brick by the father of Colonel Benjamin Harrison, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and friend of Washington. This part is two stories and a half high. Antique dormer-windows are on the top of the slanting roof, and four round brick columns support the roof of the porches, which are of the same height as the two stories, and which ornament both the river and landward entrances to the house. Brandon House took its name from the Duchess of Brandon, friend and kinswoman of the first Harrison of Brandon. Additions have been made to the house from time to time. Two wings connected with the main building by long halls, one used as a billiard-room and the other as a tenpin-alley, now constitute the entire house, which contains fifteen large rooms, and is partly enveloped in a luxuriant growth of ivy.

On entering the house one finds himself in a large square hall hung with stag-horns, rusty old swords, ancient-looking guns, and other implements of hunting and warfare. This opens on one side to a drawing-room of magnificent proportions; on the other to an equally large dining-room, both filled with handsome old furniture, some of which antedates the Revolution, the sideboard in the dining-room being weighted down with silver of a unique and ancient pattern. Hung in these two rooms are Brandon's rarest treasures, — its family portraits. Some of these are of unusual interest, and several were painted from life by Sir Peter Lely. The collection includes the portraits gathered by Colonel William Byrd, whose son married a daughter of Benjamin Harrison, which when Westover was sold were conveyed to Brandon. Among these portraits is one of the Duke of Albemarle, painted by Sir Peter Lely; one of Colonel William Byrd, and another of the beautiful Evelyn Byrd, one of Virginia's old-time belles. She was beloved by the Earl of Peterborough, but her father opposed the marriage, and she died young. Tradition says that her heart was broken. Between her portrait and that of Lady Betty Claypole, daughter of Oliver Cromwell, hangs a fine portrait of Colonel Benjamin Harrison, taken when he was a delicate, slender-looking young man.

On the opposite wall is a portrait of Mrs. Benjamin Harrison, who was Miss Anne Randolph, painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence. In the dining-room are portraits of Lord Fairfax, Sir Robert Southwell, Sir Robert Walpole, the Duke of Orrery, and the Duchess of Brandon. The walls of both rooms are literally covered with pictures, including besides those mentioned interesting portraits of many of the Harrisons and Randolphs of past generations. The library is in one wing of the house, and contains a large collection of rare books. The Byrd Memoirs in manuscript, beautifully bound, give almost a complete history of early Virginia, and a turning of their quaintly-worded pages is one of the many pleasures that falls to the lot of the pilgrim so fortunate as to become the guest of the present gracious mistress of Brandon House.

Our river journey had fit ending at the site of ancient Jamestown, on what was once a peninsula, but is now an island in the James. At the present time all that remains of the first successful English colony in America are a neglected graveyard and the crumbling walls of a ruined church, but the charm Jamestown still holds for the visitor is unique and lasting. The little church now in ruins was built in 1609. Here often came to worship Captain John Smith, Admiral of New England and doughty slayer of Turks, and those hopeful yet unruly followers whom he taught to earn their bread by the sweat of their brows, and within its walls pious Robert Hunt, the first English-speaking missionary to preach the gospel of Christ in America, — let his name be ever honored! — joined the “good and blessed” Pocahontas in wedlock to the young and handsome planter, John Rolfe. Privations overcame Hunt, and he died three years after he landed with Smith at Jamestown, but the church of which he was the first pastor continued to be used as a house of worship until the civil war which ended in the execution of Charles I., during which, together with Jamestown, it fell into the hands of Bacon and his rebel followers, and was fired, though not totally destroyed.

Ruined Tower of Jamestown Church

All about the site of vanished Jamestown Nature for two centuries has been slowly yet steadily reclaiming her own. Not far from the ruined church we came upon a few old slabs which mark the resting-place of some of the Jamestown pioneers, most of whom died during the first twenty years of the colony's history. These stones, moss-grown and black with age, have been cracked and riven by the roots of the trees spreading under them, and with the inscriptions, save in one or two instances, no longer legible, serve only to add to the romance of the place.

A little way from this burial-ground is the only other remaining relic of Jamestown,  — the great house built by Sir William Berkeley, and now the home of the owner and postmistress, as she is also the sole white inhabitant of Jamestown Island. In this house Berkeley lived for thirty years as royal governor, and here, like the narrow-minded and self-satisfied bigot that he was, he sat down, and thanking God that there were no printing-presses in America, beseeched Him that none might be suffered to enter for centuries to come. Berkeley was driven from his home by Bacon and his men, and came near falling a victim to the progressive spirit against which he had fought and prayed, but in the end he reëstablished his government at Williamsburg, and Charles II., in staying all too tardily the bloody hands of the old man's blind revenge, cynically declared that the governor had hanged more men in the Virginia wilderness for abetting Bacon than he himself had put to death for the murder of his father, Charles I.

Other shades than those of Smith and Berkeley haunt this island of Jamestown. “There were brave men before Agamemnon,” and it is now known that eighty years before the arrival of the English it was the site of an attempted settlement by the Spaniards. Recent researches in the royal library at Simancas in Spain have disclosed that in the summer of 1526 one Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon, a Spanish captain who “aspired to the glory of discovering some new land and making it the seat of a prosperous colony,” sailed from San Domingo with three large ships and six hundred persons of both sexes, and, after touching on what is now the South Carolina shore, entered and proceeded up the James. Fifty miles from its mouth he landed, and on the future site of Jamestown founded a settlement which he christened San Miguel de Guan-dope. But ill-luck from the first attended the venture. De Ayllon died in October, 1626; his followers mutinied against their new commander, and the colony was speedily abandoned. Less than a quarter of the colonists in the end regained the island of San Domingo. The rest had died of fever, cold, and privation. The tender carrying De Ayllon's body foundered at sea, and the ocean rolls above the resting-place of the adventurer whose keel had tracked its waters in profitless quest of wealth, fame, and honors.

Leaving Jamestown Island, where our stay had been made doubly pleasant by the generous welcome of its owner, we crossed to the north shore, and took carriage for the drive over a cool forest road to Williamsburg, — long the colonial capital of Virginia. and the site of old William and Mary College. It is hardly too much to say of it that it is the most charmingly antique town in America, — certainly it is the most charming in the Old Dominion. Duke of Gloucester is the name of the main street of the village, which broadens at its centre into an open square called Court-House Green, where stands an ancient temple of justice, modelled by the graceful hand of Sir Christopher Wren, and surrounded by fine colonial residences, among them those of John Randolph and Beverly Tucker, and Chancellor Wythe's old house, where his wicked nephew poisoned him. Farther up Duke of Gloucester Street is another square — Palace Green  — faced by other historic mansions, including the old palace of the royal governors and the house used by Washington as his head-quarters just before the siege of York-town.

Nearly opposite to Palace Green is the powder-magazine of colonial days, in appearance very like the Martello towers at Quebec, save that it is octagonal instead of round. It is called the “Powder-Horn,” and was built by Sir Alexander Spotswood, the deputy or lieutenant of George Hamilton, Earl of Orkney, governor and commander-in-chief of the colony. There had been great rejoicing in the colony when Governor Spotswood arrived, because he brought with him the habeas corpus act. This act had been refused by the governors at times when their deputies had taken it on themselves to exercise it on their own authority. So it was a matter of rejoicing when a deputy came bringing it in his own name. However, it was not long before there was an open quarrel between Spotswood and the House of Burgesses, because they would not grant certain money that he asked for necessary defence. Two years later, having gained the confidence of the people by his wise measures, the Assembly granted him all he asked, and in 1714 the statute was passed ordering the erection of the magazine.

Sixty years later the “Powder-Horn” became the scene of the first overt act of the Revolution. In the winter of 1775, when the clouds of war were gathering thick and fast, a plan was formed by the royal authorities to disarm all the colonies. In pursuit of this plan, on the night of April 20, 1775, a number of marines, who had been concealed in the palace at Williamsburg, moved the powder from the magazine to the “Magdalen,” a man-of-war on the James River. The removal of the powder was discovered by the citizens early in the morning. Duke of Gloucester Street was crowded at once, and threats were made. A deputation was sent to the palace demanding the return of the powder. They found the place in a state of defence, many arms lying around. Lord Dunmore, the governor, gave some untruthful excuse, and pledged his honor that if the powder was needed in Williamsburg it should be returned in half an hour. The news of the removal of the powder spread like wildfire. Patrick Henry raised three hundred men, “Hanover Volunteers,” and marched towards Williamsburg, their numbers increasing as they went. Dunmore was obliged to go to meet them and to compromise the matter by paying for the powder.

The House of Burgesses assembled on June 1, 1775. Lord Dunmore made a polite address and presented Lord North's “Conciliatory Plan.” A committee was appointed to report upon it, and Thomas Jefferson was selected to write the report. Suddenly, from a most unexpected quarter, on June 5, came a sound that ended all discussion. On that night some young men went to the magazine to procure arms. Lord Dunmore had before this delivered up the keys of the magazine. They unlocked the door, and as they pushed it open it pulled a concealed cord that discharged a spring-gun. Three of the young men were wounded. The Assembly was aroused to intense excitement. Persons were officially appointed to examine the magazine. It was done cautiously, and under the floor several barrels of powder were found buried. Duke of Gloucester Street was again crowded by excited citizens, and again threats were made. Before the day dawned Lord Dunmore and family had fled to the man-of-war “Fowey” at Yorktown, never to return to Williamsburg, and the disputed powder, seized without delay by the colonists, was put to use in the war that followed, while Patrick Henry was speedily installed in Dunmore's place as the first governor of the State of Virginia.

Turning from the “Powder-Horn,” now owned and kept in repair by the women of Williamsburg, the next place of interest reached in our leisurely ramble down Duke of Gloucester Street was the ancient, ivy-hidden church of Bruton parish, — the oldest Protestant house of worship in use in America. It is built in shape of a cross, and was planned by Sir Christopher Wren. It stands in the midst of a beautiful grove of elms, surrounded by tombs and monuments of the dead, as if dreaming of the faded glories of the past. Williamsburg people tell you that Queen Anne went to see the bell for its tower cast and threw her silver ornaments in the molten bronze. Many curious things are seen in and near this old church. In a house across the Green are kept the communion services given by Queen Anne and George III., and in the church itself is placed the font which held the water into which the minister dipped his fingers when he baptized Pocahontas. In its floor are tablets over graves showing that lords, dukes, knights, and chancellors are resting there, among them a modern slab to the memory of the Confederates who were killed in the battle of Williamsburg. “They died for us” it is here declared. Theodore Winthrop, of Massachusetts, it will be remembered, fell in that battle, and his body rested for several years in Bruton church-yard, among the graves of colonial worthies whom Virginians still delight to honor.

At the end of Duke of Gloucester Street stands the restored and lately reopened William and Mary College. The second college in America, Harvard having been the first, it was chartered in 1961, Queen Mary persuading her husband to endow it with two thousand pounds per year in money, twenty thousand acres of land, and one penny per pound upon all the tobacco exported from Maryland and Virginia, together with all the fees and profits arising from the office of surveyor-general, which was to be controlled by the president and faculty. In 1698 the college building, planned by Wren, was finished and the new seat of learning named William and Mary, in honor of the generous king and queen. For many years thereafter it was the centre of intellectual life in the Old Dominion. Three Presidents were graduated within its walls and one chief-justice, and many other distinguished men can claim it as their alma mater.

The college buildings were burned in 1705. They were rebuilt at once, but were burned again and again, the last time in 1862. However, the fires that have afflicted the college buildings have spared the famous college statue, and it stands serenely in the middle of the college green. Norborne Berkeley, Baron de Botetourt, governor-general of Virginia, arrived at Hampton Roads, eight weeks out from Portsmouth, in October, 1768, and so pleased the people of the colony that they soon afterwards erected a marble statue to him in front of the college. It represents him in court dress with a short sword by his side, and, although it has suffered some degree of mutilation, it still is a fine specimen of the sculptor's art. William and Mary during the last half-century has had a checkered history. Some years ago it had dwindled to proportions that threatened its speedy death, but more recently has taken new lease of life, and now promises a long future of usefulness.

At the other end of Duke of Gloucester Street, one mile distant from the college, is the site of the old House of Burgesses. Nothing is left of it save the foundation of bricks and masses of broken plaster from its walls. It was here that Henry's eloquence competed with Otis's at Boston for the rank of first orator of the Revolution, and it was here occurred a most interesting episode in the life of Washington. For faithful performance of public duties the House of Burgesses voted him a splendid sword and belt, and they were presented by Edmund Randolph, then president of the House, in an eloquent and impressive speech, which so overcame young Washington that in his effort to reply he could not utter a word. Randolph came to his rescue. “Sit down, Mr. Washington,” said he, “your modesty is only equalled by your bravery, and that very far surpasses any words I have to express it.”

Close to the site of the old Capitol is the famous Red Lion Hotel, a long building with hip-roof and dormer-windows, now far gone in the process of decay. Near by is the site of the Raleigh Tavern, which Williamsburg people say was a grand place. Nothing can now be seen of this famous old tavern except the foundation of the massive pillars which supported its piazza, it having been pulled down years ago and a large brick store built upon the site. It was in the ballroom of this Raleigh Tavern that Patrick Henry made his great speech denouncing British wrongs placed upon her colonies, and in its delivery won for himself a place among the master orators of all time.

Those were Williamsburg's palmiest days, but when the capital was moved to Richmond in 1779 the towns glory was taken from it. Yet it has not suffered decay. Indeed, it has accomplished one of the most difficult things in the life of man or town, for it has fallen gracefully into mossy age. Beauty and quiet now brood over it, and we found a single afternoon of spring all too short a time to idle among its ancient houses or linger under the stately elms that give graceful shade to Court and Palace Greens, but time pressed, and under the mellow glow of a westering sun we left Williamsburg behind us and took to the winding road, which ere night came on led us to the broad estuary of the York River and to Yorktown, another sleepy old village that seems by some miracle to have escaped the influence of the nineteenth century.

Little York, now nearing the end of its second century of existence, was never a populous place even when it thrived the most, but it was the political and trading centre of one of the eight boroughs into which Virginia was originally divided, and during the sixty years immediately preceding the Revolution an influential factor in the direction of affairs. The town's first settler was Thomas Nelson, a canny Scotch trader, who established there a store which for two generations yielded to those called by his name a never-ending harvest of golden guineas. This store was destroyed during the war of 1812, but the custom-house where the Nelsons' goods were entered —  it was, it is said, the first of its kind erected in America — still stands near the water front, with moss-covered roof, thick walls, and massive oaken doors and shutters.

Less than a stone's throw away stands the dwelling, with its lofty chimneys and solid walls, builded by Scotch Tom when riches had come to him with age, after which he died and was buried, — his tomb remains one of the notable relics of the village, — but not until he had founded a family from which issued in the third generation General Thomas Nelson, one of the most brilliant of that body of great men who stand a splendid cluster of stars against the early dawn of the country's history. This Thomas Nelson, third of the name, though educated at Eton and Cambridge, when the Revolution came joined the side of the ultra patriots, was a conspicuous member of all the decisive conventions, and as a delegate to that of 1776 signed the great Declaration. Finally, in 1780, he succeeded Henry as governor of his State, with almost dictatorial power to manage both her military and civil policy. “His popularity was unbounded,” says the historian, and, he might have added, so were the general's patriotism and generosity, for when, Virginia's credit being low, money was wanted to pay the troops and run the government, Nelson borrowed millions on his personal security and went on; and again, when regiments mutinied and refused to march, he raised money and paid them, although in so doing he wrecked his own and his children's fortunes.

Recalling the career of this uncommon man, one rejoices that the triumphant close of the seven years' struggle in which he bore so fine a part was pitched at the place most closely associated with his name and fame. The story of what happened at Yorktown in the fall of 1781 grows more lustrous with the years. Only a few months before the patriot cause had seemed a doubtful if not a hopeless one. The army of the South had been defeated and driven back into Virginia, only by forced marches escaping complete destruction; Virginia, the backbone of the Revolution, had been swept by two invasions; and Cornwallis with his army was marching triumphantly through her borders, trying by every means he could devise to bring his only opponent, the youthful Lafayette, to an engagement. Had the French officer proved as reckless as the British commander believed him, the end would have come before De Grasse with his fleet anchored in the Chesapeake. He was no novice in the art of war, however, and at length Cornwallis, wearied of trying to catch him, retired to Yorktown, and intrenching himself, awaited reënforcements from the North.

It was at this critical moment that kindly Providence directed the French admiral to the Virginia coast, and Washington, finding himself possessed of a force such as he had never hoped for in his wildest dreams, and knowing that he could count on the new reënforcements for only a few weeks, resolved to put his fate to the touch and win if possible by a single bold cast of the die. Accordingly, he withdrew from New York and came down to Jersey as if to get near his ovens, a move which so misled the British commander that he did not suspect its ulterior object until he learned that the patriot army was well on its way to Virginia. In the last days of September the American commander arrived before Yorktown and began a siege memorable for the bravery and determination with which it was prosecuted.

The expected relief did not come to Cornwallis, and ere the end of the third week his troops marched out with cased colors, prisoners of war. A monument, unveiled with imposing ceremonies some years ago, now marks the spot where this event took place, and a short way from the town still stands the old weather-beaten mansion known as the Moore House, in the sitting-room of which were drawn up the articles of capitulation of the British army. This house, now tenantless and falling into decay, was historical even then, for it had been the country residence of Governor Spotswood, who, as the great Marlborough's aide-de-camp, had carried the news of Blenheim to England, and who later had come to the Old Dominion to rule it for a time with a soldier's courage and decision and the foresight of a statesman able to see beyond the fret of small minds over little things.

The Nelson House, used by Cornwallis as his head-quarters during the last days of the siege, after his first had been shelled to pieces, still bears the iron scars made by the American cannon, pointed at it by order of General Nelson, who when told that the British general was lodged there, offered five guineas to the gunners for every shot which should strike it. Otherwise it is well preserved; and what a glorious company of shades haunt its high wainscoted rooms! Washington and Mason and Jefferson received cordial welcome from its master, while Lafayette, returning in his old age, the honored and revered guest of the mighty nation he had helped to create, slept here and added another to the many associations which already surrounded the mansion.

Growth and activity went out from Yorktown along with the patriot troopers, and to-day, with its few old brick houses scattered among modern shanties, it is the sleepiest of sleepy villages, — a place where modest poverty dwells content and strife and hurry are alien things. Peaceful be its slumbers amid green and quiet fields, for it has well earned the rest that is the right of honored age.