General Henry Lee,
of Virginia,
Obilt 25 Mar.
1818,
Ætat 63.”
It is the grave of Henry Lee—“Light-Horse Harry,” of the Revolution—greatest of the partisan leaders of those days, Governor of Virginia, inmate of Spottsylvania jail, and noblest of the “Virginia Lees.” Four years after the wife of his old commander had died here, he returned from the West Indies, poverty stricken, neglected and dying, sought this island, the former home of his chief, and was buried in the burying ground of the Greenes. One gratefully remembers that the injuries of which he is believed to have finally died, were received in a gallant defense of the freedom of the press, against the assault of a Baltimore mob upon a Liberal newspaper office.
Long, coarse grass grows rank over these historic graves; lizards play about the chinks of the dilapidated tombs; the outer wall is partly broken down; but the peaceful solitude of the graves is not disturbed, and the spot is controlled, if by an alien, at least by a loyal people.
While a few of us lingered beside the slab, above the remains of “Legion Harry,” the rest of the party had completed their explorations of the lonely little island; and the boat was whistling loudly for our return. The “last of the Lees” had done nothing to honor the neglected grave of the greatest of them; but Yankee hands still delayed the steamer to arrange lovingly a chaplet of flowers on the rude tombstone.
At Fernandina there was talk among the traders of a large quantity of resin, eighteen hundred barrels, some of them said, which had been bought by a well-known attaché of the State Department, and out of which, if their stories were true, he was likely to make a fortune. He had paid 42 cents a barrel for it, they said, and could sell it in New York for twenty-five dollars. I fancy this must be grossly exaggerated, although a Government official was my informant; but these irregular bargains, made by persons having special facilities, with the distressed holders of produce in the interior, have often disclosed marvelous profits, and the most unscrupulous use, by the buyers, of the advantages of their positions. To drive as hard bargains as the Yankees, is likely to be thought henceforth, in these regions, something more than a good figure of speech.