again through the
darkness of the night.

While lying at anchor in front of Upper Weyanoke, we made further
visits at the plantation home. Despite the ravages of war and of two
destructive fires, relics of old-time life are at this plantation too.
It was pitiful, but amusing as well, to hear how some of these escaped
the war-time vandalism. The soldiers who had stripped the home--even of
carpets--when they left the plantation to cross the James, would have
been chagrined could they have looked back over the river and have seen
old family treasures coming out from secret nooks and old family silver
from a hollow tree.

Mrs. Douthat told us how Nature favoured Grant in the crossing of the
James. Though comparatively the river is so narrow at the point of the
Weyanoke peninsula, yet to get to the stream at that point it was
necessary for the Federal forces to traverse an extensive swamp.
Apparently the swamp was impassable; but the officers found, running
through it, a most peculiar formation--a natural ridge of solid earth.
It was a ready-made military roadway upon which the troops could pass
through the swamp and reach the river. Mr. Douthat always declared that
"The Almighty had built it for them."

Across the James from Weyanoke lies Fleur de Hundred. One day, with a
daughter and a son of the Weyanoke household aboard, we sailed over to
visit the old plantation. We knew that we should find nothing in the
way of plantation life there, as the estate has long lain idle; and we
knew also that no mark was left on the broad acres to tell of the life
of colonial days. But the broad acres themselves were there, and they
would remember the old times no doubt; and perhaps, lying in the
sunshine and with nothing in the world to do, they might tell us
things.

We knew somewhat about Fleur de Hundred ourselves. In 1618 Sir George
Yeardley, governor of the colony (the same who owned Weyanoke),
patented these lands and gave them the name that has scarcely been
spelled twice alike since. Sir George sold the plantation to Captain
Abraham Piersey.

We sought to trace the successive owners on beyond Abraham; but they
married and died at such a rate that we got lost in the confusion
somewhere between the altar and the tomb, and gave the matter up. Two
well established customs among the early colonists seem to have been to
die early and to marry often. Perhaps they usually reversed the order;
but, at any rate, dying in middle age a