Читать книгу The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 33, July, 1860 - Various - Страница 6

Within a short distance of this spot, perhaps not a mile from Drum Point, there is a small creek which opens into the river and bears the name of Mattapony. In early times there was a notable fort here, and connected with it a stately mansion, built by Charles Calvert, Lord Baltimore, for his own occasional residence. The fort and mansion are often mentioned in the Provincial records as the place where the Council sometimes met to transact business; and accordingly many public acts are dated from Mattapony.

Calvert was doubtless attracted to this spot by the pleasant scenery of the headland which here looks out upon the noble water-view of the Chesapeake, and by its breezy position as an agreeable refuge from the heats of summer.

Our party, therefore, determined to set out upon a search for some relics of the mansion and fort; and as a guide in this enterprise, we engaged an old negro who seemed to have a fair claim in his own conceit to be regarded both as the Solomon and the Methuselah of the plantation. He was a wrinkled, wise-looking old fellow, with a watery eye and a grizzled head, and might, perhaps, have been about eighty; but, from his own account, he left us to infer that he was not much behind that great patriarch of Scripture whose years are described as one hundred and threescore and fifteen.

Finding that he was native to the estate, and had lived here all his life, we interrogated him with some confidence in his ability to contribute something useful to the issue of our pursuit. Amongst all the Solomons of this world, there is not one so consciously impressed with the unquestionable verity of his wisdom and the intensity of his knowledge as one of these veterans of an old family-estate upon which he has spent his life. He is always an aristocrat of the most uncompromising stamp, and has a contemptuous disdain and intolerance for every form of democracy. Poor white people have not the slightest chance of his good opinion. The pedigree and history of his master's family possess an epic dignity in his imagination; and the liberty he takes with facts concerning them amounts to a grand poetical hyperbole. He represents their wealth in past times to have amounted to something of a fabulous superfluity, and their magnificence so unbounded, that he stares at you in describing it, as if its excess astonished himself.

When we now questioned our venerable conductor, to learn what he could tell us of the old Proprietary Mansion, he said, in his way, he "membered it, as if it was built only yesterday: he was fotch up so near it, that he could see it now as if it was standing before him: if he couldn't pint out where it stood, it was time for him to give up: it was a mighty grand brick house,"– laying an emphasis on brick, as a special point in his notion of its grandeur; and then he added, with all the gravity of which his very solemn visage was a copious index, that "Old Master Baltimore, who built it, was a real fine gentleman. He knowed him so well! He never gave anything but gold to the servants for tending on him. Bless you! he wouldn't even think of silver! Many a time has he given me a guinea for waiting on him."

This account of Old Master Baltimore, and his magnificent contempt of silver, and the intimacy of our patriarch with him, rather startled us, and I began to fear that the story of the house might turn out to be as big a lie as the acquaintance with the Lord Proprietary,–for Master Baltimore had then been dead just one hundred and twenty-one years. But we went on with him, and were pleasantly disappointed when he brought us upon a hill that sloped down to the Mattapony, and there traced out for us, by the depression of the earth, the visible lines of an old foundation of a large building, the former existence of which was further demonstrated by some scattered remains of the old imported brick of the edifice which were imbedded in the soil.

This spot had a fine outlook upon the Bay, and every advantage of locality to recommend its choice for a domestic establishment. We could find nothing to indicate the old fort except the commanding character of the hill with reference to the river, which might warrant a conjecture as to its position. I believe that the house was included within the ramparts of the fortification, as I perceive in some of the old records that the fortification itself was called the Mattapony House, which was once beleaguered and taken by Captain John Coode and Colonel Jowles.

After we had examined all that was to be seen here, our next point of interest was a graveyard, which, we had been informed by some of the household at Mrs. Carroll's, had been preserved upon the estate from a very early period. Our old gossip professed to know all about this, from its very first establishment. It was in another direction from the mansion-house, about a mile distant, on the margin of an inlet from the Bay, called Harper's Creek; and thither we accordingly went. Before we reached the spot, the old negro stopped at a cabin that lay in our route and provided himself with a hoe, which, borne upon his shoulder, gave a somewhat mysterious significance to the office he had assumed. He did not explain the purpose of this equipment to us, and we forbore to question him. After descending to the level of the tide and passing through some thickets of wild shrubbery, we arrived upon a grassy plain immediately upon the border of the creek; and there, in a quiet, sequestered nook of rural landscape, the smooth and sluggish little inlet begirt with waterlilies and reflecting wood and sky and the green hill-side upon its surface, was the chosen resting-place of the departed generations of the family. A few simple tombstones–some of them darkened by the touch of Time–lay clustered within an old inclosure. The brief memorials engraved upon them told us how inveterately Death had pursued his ancient vocation and gathered in his relentless tribute from young and old in times past as he does to-day.

Here was a theme for a sermon from the patriarch, who now leaned upon his hoe and shook his head with a slow ruminative motion, as if he hoped by this action to disengage from it some profound moral reflections, and then began to enumerate how many of these good people he had helped to bury; but before he had well begun this discourse we had turned away and were about leaving the place, when he recalled us by saying, "I have got one tombstone yet to show you, as soon as I can clear it off with the hoe: it belongs to old Master Rousby, who was stobbed aboard ship, and is, besides that, the grandest tombstone here."

Here was another of those flashes of light by which my story seemed to be preordained to a prosperous end. We eagerly encouraged the old man to this task, and he went to work in removing the green sod from a large slab which had been entirely hidden under the soil, and in a brief space revealed to us a tombstone fully six feet long, upon which we were able to read, in plainly chiselled letters, an inscription surmounted by a carved heraldic shield with its proper quarterings and devices.

Our group at this moment would have made a fine artistic study. There was this quiet landscape around us garnished with the beauty of May; there were the rustic tombs,–the old negro, with a countenance surcharged with the expression of solemn satisfaction at his employment, bending his aged figure over the broad, carved stone, and scraping from it the grass which had not been disturbed perhaps for a quarter of a century; and there was our own party looking on with eager interest, as the inscription every moment became more legible. That interest may be imagined, on reading the inscription, which, when brought to the full light of day, revealed these words:–

"Here lyeth the body of Xph'r Rousbie Esquire, who was taken out of this world by a violent death received on board his Majesty's ship The Quaker Ketch, Capt. Tho's. Allen Commander, the last day of October 1684. And also of Mr. John Rousbie, his brother, who departed this naturall life on board the Ship Baltimore, being arrived in Patuxen the first day of February 1685."

This was a picturesque incident in its scenic character, but a still more engaging one as an occurrence in the path of discovery. Here was most unexpectedly brought to view a new link in the chain of our story. It was a pleasant surprise to have such a fact as this breaking upon us from an ambuscade, to help out a half-formed narrative which I had feared was hopeless of completion. The inscription is a necessary supplement to the marginal notes. As an insulated monument, it is meagre in its detail, and stands in need of explanation. It does not describe Christopher Rousby as the Collector of the Customs; it does not affirm that he was murdered; it makes no allusion to Talbot: but it gives the name of the ship and its commander, along with the date of the death. "The Landholder's Assistant" supplies all the facts that are wanting in this brief statement. These two memorials help each other and enlarge the common current of testimony, like two confluent streams coming from opposite sources. From the two together we learn, that Colonel Talbot, the Surveyor- General in 1684, killed Mr. Christopher Rousby on board of a ship of war; and we are apprised that Rousby was a gentleman of rank and authority in the Province, holding an important commission from the King. The place at which the tomb is found shows also that he was the owner of a considerable landed estate and a near neighbor of the Lord Proprietary.

The story, however, requires much more circumstance to give it the interest which we hope yet to find in it.