Judge, then, been homage to his rank. whether I have not just reason to apprehend, that on the annunciation of my real name, the curtain of ceremony would fall, and nature would cease to play her pranks before me. Richmond is built, as you will remember, on the north side of James river, and at the head of tide water. There is a manuscript in this state which relates a curious anecdote concerning the origin of this town. The land hereabout was owned by Col. William Byrd.. This gentleman, with the former proprietor of the land at the head of tide water on Appomatox river, was appointed, it seems, to run the line between Virginia and North-Carolina. The operation was a most tremendous one; for, in the execution of it, they had to penetrate and pass quite through the great Dismal Swamp. It would be almost impossible to give you a just conception of the horrours of this enterprise. Imagine to yourself an immense morass, more than forty miles in length and twenty in breadth, its soil a black, deep mire, covered with a stupendous forest of juniper and cypress trees, whose luxuriant branches, interwoven throughout, intercept the beams of the sun. and teach day to counterfeit the night. This forest, which until that time, perhaps, the human foot had never violated, had become the secure retreat of ten thousand beasts of prey. The adventurers, therefore, beside the almost endless labour of felling trees in a proper direction to form a footway throughout, moved amid perpetual terrours, and each night had to sleep en militaire, upon their arms, surrounded with the deafening, soul chilling yell of those hunger-smitten lords of the desert. It was, one night, as they lay in the midst of scenes like these, that Hope, that never-failing friend of man, paid them a con soling visit and sketched in brilliant prospect, the plans of Richmond and Petersburg.* Richmond occupies a very picturesque and most beautiful situation. I have never met with such an assemblage of striking and interesting objects. The town, dispersed over hills of various shapes; the river descending from west to east and obstructed by a multitude of small islands, clumps of trees, and myriads of rocks; among which it tumbles, foams and roars; constituting what are called the falls; the same river, at the lower end of the town, bending at right angles to the south and winding reluctantly off for many miles in that direction! its polished surface caught here and there by the eye, but more generally covered from the view by trees; * So at least, speaks the manuscript account which Col. Byrd has left of this expedition, and which is now in the hands of some of his descendants; perhaps of the family at Westover. among which the white sails of approaching and departing vessels exhibit a curious and interesting appearance: then again, on the opposite side, the little town of Manchester, built on a hill, which, sloping gently to the river, opens the whole town to the view, interspersed, as it is, with vigorous and flourishing poplars, and surrounded to a great distance by green plains and stately woodsall these objects, falling at once under the eye, constitute, by far, the most finely varied and most animated landscape that I have ever seen. A mountain, like the Blue Ridge, in the western horizon, and the rich tint with which the hand of a Pennsylvanian farmer would paint the adjacent fields, would make this a more enchanting spot than even Damascus is described to be. I will endeavour to procure for you a perspective view of Richmond, with the embellishments of fancy which I have just mention |