The perfect cultivation, the abundance, the elegance, the ducal splendor, one might almost say, of the great estates that lay along the canal in the old days have passed away in a great measure. Here were gentlemen, not merely refined and educated, fitted to display a royal hospitality and to devote their leisure to the study of the art and practice of government, but they were great and greatly successful farmers as well. The land teemed with all manner of products, cereals, fruits, what not! negroes by the hundreds and the thousands, under wise direction, gentle but firm control, plied the hoe to good purpose. There was enough and to spare for all—to spare? aye! to bestow with glad and lavish hospitality. A mighty change has been wrought. What that change is in all of its effects mine eyes have happily been spared the seeing; but well I remember—I can never forget—how from time to time the boat would stop at one of these estates, and the planter, his wife, his daughters, and the guests that were going home with him, would be met by those who had remained behind, and how joyous the greetings were! It was a bright and happy scene, and it continually repeated itself as we went onward.
In fine summer weather, the passengers, male and female, stayed most of the time on deck, where there was a great deal to interest, and naught to mar the happiness, except the oft-repeated warning, “braidge!” “low braidge!” No well-regulated packet-hand was ever allowed to say plain “bridge;” that was an etymological crime in canal ethics. For the men, this on-deck existence was especially delightful; it is such a comfort to spit plump into the water without the trouble of feeling around with your head, in the midst of a political discussion, for the spittoon.
As for me, I often went below, to devour Dickens’s earlier novels, which were then appearing in rapid succession. But, drawn by the charm of the scenery, I would often drop my book and go back on deck again. There was an islet in the river—where, exactly, I cannot tell—which had a beauty of its own for me, because from the moment I first saw it, my purpose was to make it the scene of a romance, when I got to be a great big man, old enough to write for the papers. There is a point at which the passengers would get off, and taking a near cut across the hills, would stretch their legs with a mile or two of walking. It was unmanly, I held, to miss that. Apropos of scenery, I must not forget the haunted house near Manchester, which was pointed out soon after we left Richmond, and filled me with awe; for though I said I did not believe in ghosts, I did. The ruined mill, a mile or two further on, was always an object of melancholy interest to me; and of all the locks from Lynchburg down, the Three-Mile Locks pleased me most. It is a pretty place, as every one will own on seeing it. It was so clean and green, and white and thrifty-looking. To me it was simply beautiful. I wanted to live there; I ought to have lived there. I was built for a lock-keeper—have that exact moral and mental shape. Ah! to own your own negro, who would do all the drudgery of opening the gates. Occasionally you would go through the form of putting your shoulder to the huge wooden levers, if that is what they call them, by which the gates are opened; to own your own negro and live and die calmly at a lock! What more could the soul ask? I do think that the finest picture extant of peace and contentment—a little abnormal, perhaps, in the position of the animal—is that of a sick mule looking out of the window of a canal freight-boat. And that you could see every day from the porch of your cottage, if you lived at a lock, owned your own negro, and there was no great rush of business on the canal, (and there seldom was) on the “Jeems and Kanawhy,” as old Capt. Sam Wyatt always called it, leaving out the word “canal,” for that was understood. Yes, one ought to live as a pure and resigned lock-keeper, if one would be blest, really blest.
Now that I am on the back track, let me add that, however bold and picturesque the cliffs and bluffs near Lynchburg and beyond, there was nothing from one end the canal to the other to compare with the first sight of Richmond, when, rounding a corner not far from Hollywood, it burst full upon the vision, its capitol, its spires, its happy homes, flushed with the red glow of evening. And what it looked to be, it was. Its interior, far from belieing its exterior, surpassed it. The world over, there is no lovelier site for a city; and the world over there was no city that quite equalled it in the charm of its hospitality, its refinement, its intelligence, its cordial welcome to strangers. Few of its inhabitants were very rich, fewer still were very poor. But I must not dwell on this. Beautiful city! beautiful city! you may grow to be as populous as London, and sure no one wishes you greater prosperity than I, but grow as you may, you can never be happier than you were in the days whereof I speak. How your picture comes back to me, softened by time, glorified by all the tender, glowing tints of memory. Around you now is the added glory of history, a defence almost unrivalled in the annals of warfare; but for me there is something even brighter than historic fame, a hue derived only from the heaven of memory. In my childhood, when all things were beautified by the unclouded light of “the young soul wandering here in nature,” I saw you in your youth, full of hope, full of promise, full of all those gracious influences which made your State greatest among all her sisters, and which seemed concentrated in yourself. Be your maturity what it may, it can never be brighter than this.
To return to the boat. All the scenery in the world—rocks that Salvator would love to paint, and skies that Claude could never limn—all the facilities for spitting that earth affords, avail not to keep a Virginian away from a julep on a hot summer day. From time to time he would descend from the deck of the packet and refresh himself. The bar was small, but vigorous and healthy. I was then in the lemonade stage of boyhood, and it was not until many years afterwards that I rose through porterees and claret-punches to the sublimity of the sherry cobbler, and discovered that the packet bar supplied genuine Havana cigars at fourpence-ha’penny. Why, eggs were but sixpence a dozen on the canal bank, and the national debt wouldn’t have filled a tea-cup. Internal revenue was unknown; the coupons receivable for taxes inconceivable, and forcible readjustment a thing undreamt of in Virginian philosophy. Mr. Mallock’s pregnant question, “Is life worth living?” was answered very satisfactorily, methought, as I watched the Virginians at their juleps: “Gentlemen, your very good health;” “Colonel, my respects to you;” “My regards, Judge. When shall I see you again at my house? Can’t you stop now and stay a little while, if it is only a week or two?” “Sam,” (to the bar-keeper,) “duplicate these drinks.”
How they smacked their lips; how hot the talk on politics became; and how pernicious this example of drinking in public was to the boy who looked on! Oh! yes; and if you expect your son to go through life without bad examples set him by his elders in a thousand ways, you must take him to another sphere. Still, the fewer bad examples the better, and you, at least, need not set them.
Travelling always with my father, who was a merchant, it was natural that I should become acquainted with merchants. But I remember very few of them. Mr. Daniel H. London, who was a character, and Mr. Fleming James, who often visited his estate in Roanoke, and was more of a character than London, I recall quite vividly. I remember, too, Mr. Francis B. Deane, who was always talking about Mobjack Bay, and who was yet to build the Langhorne Foundry in Lynchburg. I thought if I could just see Mobjack Bay, I would be happy. According to Mr. Deane, and I agreed with him, there ought by this time to have been a great city on Mobjack Bay. I saw Mobjack Bay last summer, and was happy. Any man who goes to Gloucester will be happy. More marked than all of these characters was Major Yancey, of Buckingham, “the wheel-horse of Democracy,” he was called; Tim. Rives, of Prince George, whose face, some said, resembled the inside of a gunlock, being the war-horse. Major Y.’s stout figure, florid face, and animated, forcible manner, come back with some distinctness; and there are other forms, but they are merely outlines barely discernible. So pass away men who, in their day, were names and powers—shadows gone into shadow-land, leaving but a dim print upon a few brains, which in time will soon flit away.
Arrived in Lynchburg, the effect of the canal was soon seen in the array of freight boats, the activity and bustle at the packet landing. New names and new faces, from the canal region of New York, most likely, were seen and heard. I became acquainted with the family of Capt. Huntley, who commanded one of the boats, and was for some years quite intimate with his pretty daughters, Lizzie, Harriet and Emma. Capt. H. lived on Church street, next door to the Reformed, or as it was then called, the Radical Methodist Church, and nearly opposite to Mr. Peleg Seabury. He was for a time connected in some way with the Exchange hotel, but removed with his family to Cincinnati, since when I have never but once heard of them. Where are they all, I wonder? Then, there was a Mr. Watson, who lived with Boyd, Edmond & Davenport, married first a Miss ——, and afterwards, Mrs. Christian, went into the tobacco business in Brooklyn, then disappeared, leaving no trace, not the slightest. Then there was a rare fellow, Charles Buckley, who lived in the same store with Watson, had a fine voice, and without a particle of religion in the ordinary sense, loved dearly to sing at revivals. I went with him; we took back seats, and sang with great fervor. This was at night. Besides Captain Huntley, I remember among the captains of a later date, Captain Jack Yeatman; and at a date still later his brother, Captain C. E. Yeatman, both of whom are still living. There was still another captain whose name was Love—— something, a very handsome man; and these are all.
In 1849, having graduated in Philadelphia, I made one of my last through-trips on the canal, the happy owner of a diploma in a green tin case, and the utterly miserable possessor of a dyspepsia which threatened my life. I enjoyed the night on deck, sick as I was. The owl’s “long hoot,” the “plaintive cry of the whippoorwill;” the melody—for it is by association a melody, which the Greeks have but travestied with their brek-ke-ex, ko-ex—of the frogs, the mingled hum of insect life, the “stilly sound” of inanimate nature, the soft respiration of sleeping earth, and above all, the ineffable glory of the stars. Oh! heaven of heavens, into which the sick boy, lying alone on deck, then looked, has thy charm fled, too, with so many other charms? Have thirty years of suffering, of thought, of book-reading, brought only the unconsoling knowledge, that yonder twinkling sparks of far-off fire are not lamps that light the portals of the palace of the King and Father, but suns like our sun, surrounded by earths full of woe and doubt like our own; and that heaven, if heaven there be, is not in the sky; not in space, vast as it is; not in time, endless though it be—where then? “Near thee, in thy heart!” Who feels this, who will say this of himself? Away thou gray-haired, sunken-cheeked sceptic, away! Come back to me, come back to me, wan youth; there on that deck, with the treasure of thy faith, thy trust in men, thy worship of womankind, thy hope, that sickness could not chill, in the sweet possibilities of life. Come back to me!—’Tis a vain cry. The youth lies there on the packet’s deck, looking upward to the stars, and he will not return.
The trip in 1849 was a dreary one until there came aboard a dear lady friend of mine who had recently been married. I had not had a good honest talk with a girl for eighteen solid—I think I had better say long, (we always say long when speaking of the war)—“fo’ long years!”—I have heard it a thousand times—for eighteen long months, and you may imagine how I enjoyed the conversation with my friend. She wasn’t very pretty, and her husband was a Louisa man; but her talk, full of good heart and good sense, put new life into me. One other through trip, the very last, I made in 1851. On my return in 1853, I went by rail as far as Farmville, and thence by stage to Lynchburg; so that, for purposes of through travel, the canal lasted, one may say, only ten or a dozen years. And now the canal, after a fair and costly trial, is to give place to the rail, and I, in common with the great body of Virginians, am heartily glad of it. It has served its purpose well enough, perhaps, for its day and generation. The world has passed by it, as it has passed by slavery. Henceforth Virginia must prove her metal in the front of steam, electricity, and possibly mightier forces still. If she can’t hold her own in their presence, she must go under. I believe she will hold her own; these very forces will help her. The dream of the great canal to the Ohio, with its-nine mile tunnel, costing fifty or more millions, furnished by the general government, and revolutionizing the commerce of the United States, much as the discovery of America and opening of the Suez canal revolutionized the commerce of the world, must be abandoned along with other dreams.