One cannot withhold admiration from President Johnston and other officers of the canal, who made such a manful struggle to save it. But who can war against the elements? Nature herself, imitating man, seems to have taken special delight in kicking the canal after it was down. So it must go. Well, let it go. It knew Virginia in her palmiest days and it crushed the stage coach; isn’t that glory enough? I think it is. But I can’t help feeling sorry for the bull frogs; there must be a good many of them between here and Lexington. What will become of them, I wonder? They will follow their predecessors, the batteaux; and their pale, green ghosts, seated on the prows of shadowy barges, will be heard piping the roundelays of long-departed joys.
Farewell canal, frogs, musk-rats, mules, packet-horns and all, a long farewell. Welcome the rail along the winding valleys of the James. Wake up, Fluvanna! Arise, old Buckingham! Exalt thyself, O Goochland! And thou, O Powhatan, be not afraid nor shame-faced any longer, but raise thy Ebenezer freely, for the day of thy redemption is at hand. Willis J. Dance shall rejoice; yea, Wm. Pope Dabney shall be exceeding glad. And all hail our long lost brother! come to these empty, aching, arms, dear Lynch’s Ferry!
I have always thought that the unnatural separation between Lynchburg and Richmond was the source of all our troubles. In some way, not entirely clear to me, it brought on the late war, and it will bring on another, if a reunion between the two cities does not soon take place. Baltimore, that pretty and attractive, but meddlesome vixen, is at the bottom of it all. Richmond will not fear Baltimore after the rails are laid. Her prosperity will date anew from the time of her iron wedding with Lynchburg. We shall see her merchants on our streets again, and see them often. That will be a better day.
Alas! there are many we shall not see. John G. Meem, Sam’l McCorkle, John Robin McDaniel, John Hollins, Chas. Phelps, Jno. R. D. Payne, Jehu Williams, Ambrose Rucker, Wilson P. Bryant, (who died the other day,) and many, many others will not come to Richmond any more. They are gone. And if they came, they would not meet the men they used to meet; very few of them at least. Jacquelin P. Taylor, John N. Gordon, Thos. R. Price, Lewis D. Crenshaw, James Dunlop—why add to the list? They too are gone.
But the sons of the old-time merchants of Lynchburg will meet here the sons of the old-time merchants of Richmond, and the meeting of the two, the mingling of the waters—Blackwater creek with Bacon Quarter branch—deuce take it! I have gone off on the water line again—the admixture, I should say, of the sills of Campbell with the spikes of Henrico, the readjustment, so to speak, of the ties (R. R. ties) that bind us, will more than atone for the obsolete canal, and draw us all the closer by reason of our long separation and estrangement. Richmond and Lynchburg united will go onward and upward in a common career of glory and prosperity. And is there, can there be, a Virginian, deserving the name, who would envy that glory, or for a moment retard that prosperity? Not one, I am sure.
Allow me, now that my reminiscences are ended, allow me, as an old stager and packet-horn reverer, one last Parthian shot. It is this: If the James river does not behave better hereafter than it has done of late, the railroad will have to be suspended in mid-heaven by means of a series of stationary balloons; travelling then may be a little wabbly, but at all events, it won’t be wet.
G. W. BAGBY.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.