XXII.

THE TUBAL CAIN OF VIRGINIA.

ALEXANDER SPOTSWOOD, or Spottiswoode as his family were called in Scotland, rises like a landmark above the first years of the century.

When he came to Virginia he was only thirty-four and in the bloom of his manhood. But he had already fought hard, and his faculties as a soldier and ruler were fully developed. He was born in 1676, the year of the Virginia rebellion, at Tangier, in Morocco, then an English colony, where his father - a son, it is said, of Sir Alexander Spotswood, Secretary of Scotland was a surgeon. The boy was left alone in the world at the age of twelve, by the death of his father; entered the army; served under Marlborough, and was wounded in the breast at the battle of Blenheim. He kept the ball, a four-pound cannon shot, and used to exhibit it long afterwards to his friends; and in the background of a portrait of him, still preserved at "Chelsea," in King William, is a picture of Blenheim Castle, in memory of this incident. The portrait represents a large and martial man with a curiously wrinkled face and an air of decision, the chief trait of the soldier ruler.

The Virginians received Spotswood with open arms. He was a man after their own heart, and brought with him when he came (June 1710), the great writ of habeas corpus. The Virginia people had long claimed that this right was guaranteed to them by Magna Charta, since they were equally free Englishmen with the people of England. Now it was conceded, and the great writ

came,

Spotswood's letter of introduction. It was plain that he was not a new Berkeley looking to the King's good pleasure as his law, or a new Nicholson ready to imprison people or put halters around their necks; but a respecter of human freedom and defender of the right. So the Burgesses passed him a vote of thanks; appropriated £2,000 to build him a "Palace ;" and the new Governor wrote home to England: "This government is in perfect peace and tranquillity, under a due obedience to the royal authority, and a gentlemanly conformity to the Church of England.”

A year afterwards came a tiff between the obstinate Burgesses and his equally obstinate Excellency. They were all hard-headed people and fought for their respective views. There was danger of a French invasion, and Spotswood, the soldier, advocated military organization. The Burgesses, ever jealous of the sword and purse, would not appropriate money; and the Governor in high dudgeon dissolved them and appealed for supplies to England. But the Virginians saw plainly that Spotswood's views were unselfish. He labored to develop the resources of the colony, and especially directed his energies to the production of iron. The first furnaces in America were built by his orders, and his ardor in the work procured him the name of the "Tubal Cain of Virginia." Wine-making was another of his projects, and he colonized German "vignerons," for that purpose, on the Rapidan at the lost town Germanna, near the present Germanna Ford.

Still another favorite scheme was to Christianize the Indians; though the Virginians themselves seemed also to require religious instruction. Just before Spotswood's arrival the worshipful Justice Shallows of Prin

cess Anne county, had directed the proper tests to be applied to a certain Grace Sherwood, to ascertain whether she were not a witch. So the tests were duly applied by a jury of old women, and these hags having found the ambiguous verdict that she was "not like them," poor Grace Sherwood was "put into water" to drown, when she disappointed them by swimming. Thereat their worships, shaking their wise heads, ordered her to be secured in jail "by irons or otherwise;" and the poor witch went away, weeping no doubt, to endure her punishment. This grotesque scene occurred in 1705; and the spot where the only Virginia witch was put into water is still known as the "Witch Duck."

When

In the spring of 1716 we find Spotswood going on a visit to his Indian school-mission on the Meherrin River. The place was called Fort Christanna, and was an old palisade mounted with cannon, where were "seventyseven Indian children at school at a time at the Governor's sole expense, I think." They were taught to write, and read the Bible and Prayer-book. the soldier ruler visits them the Indian elders.gravely bow to him, laying presents of furs at his feet, and the young men and women make him their obeisances. The scene was picturesque. Sixty youths were present, with feathers in their hair and ears; their faces painted with blue and vermilion; and with blue and red blankets around their shoulders. The young women came next with "black hair reaching down to the waist, with a blanket tied around them and hanging down like a petticoat; most of them had nothing to cover them from the waist upward." They were very modest and faithful to their husbands, straight and well-limbed, of good shape and extraordinary good features. They look wild

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and are mighty shy of an Englishman, and will not let you touch them." Such is one of the last glimpses that we catch of these poor Indian people of tidewater Virginia; and it is good to have this picture of the "modest and faithful" descendants of the race of Pocahontas.

In this same year (1716), Governor Alexander Spotswood set out on an expedition which much delighted the Virginians. There was a very great longing to visit the country beyond the Blue Ridge. That beautiful unknown land held out arms of welcome, and the Governor, who had in his character much of the spirit of the hunter and adventurer, resolved to go and explore it. Having assembled a party of good companions he set out in the month of August, and the gay company began their march toward the Blue Ridge Mountains. The chronicler of the expedition describes the picturesque cavalcade followed by the pack-horses and servants, rangers, pioneers, and Indians;" how they stopped to hunt game; bivouacked "under the canopy;" laughed, jested, and regaled themselves with "Virginia wine, white and red, Irish usquebaugh, brandy, shrub, two kinds of rum, champagne, canary, cherry-punch, and cider." In due time they reached the Blue Ridge, probably near the present Swift Run Gap, and saw beyond, the wild valley of the Shenandoah. On the summit of the mountain they drank the health of the King, and named two neighboring peaks "Mt. George" and "Mt. Alexander," after his Majesty and the Governor; after which they descended into the valley and gave the Shenandoah the name of the " Euphrates." Here a bottle was buried

empty ones,

there were, no doubt, a number of containing a paper to testify that the

valley of the Euphrates was taken possession of in the

name of his Majesty George I. Then the adventurers reascended the mountain, crossed to the lowland, and returned to Williamsburg.

This picturesque incident of the time gave rise to the order of the "Knights of the Golden Horseshoe." The horses had been shod with iron, which was unusual, as a protection against the mountain roads; and Spotswood sent to London and had made for his companions small golden horseshoes set with garnets and other jewels, and inscribed "Sic juvat transcendere montes." As the King declined to pay for them, Spotswood did so out of his own pocket, and one of them is still preserved, perpetuating the Virginia order of the "Knights of the Golden Horseshoe."

Spotswood was a man of force. Wherever he moved all eyes followed him, and men "came to order," as soldiers fall into line, at the word of command. He meant well and would be ruler. If there was a public sore anywhere he would probe it without mercy. He fought wrong-doers wherever he found them, and his heavy hand fell even on the worshipful House of Burgesses. They declined to make an appropriation to aid the Carolinians against the savages, alleging the public poverty; when Spotswood burst into a rage against the obstructionists:

"When you speak of poverty and engagements," he exclaimed, "you argue as if you knew the state of your own country no better than you do that of others! If yourselves sincerely believe that it is reduced to the last degree of poverty, I wonder, the more, that you should reject propositions for lessening the charges of assemblies; and that while each day of your sitting is so costly to your country, you should spend time so fruit