Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860

s 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

headland which here looks out upon the noble water-view of the Chesapeake,

s 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

owledge 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

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 copi

he 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

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 fortifi

ot, 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 landscap

ons, 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 s

nt 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

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

sty's ship The Quaker Ketch, Capt. Tho's. Allen Commander, the last day of October 1684. And also of Mr. John Rousbie, his b

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, lik

re circumstance to give it the inter