by John Buchan
I replied that I was not in awe of them, and that I could hold my own with anybody in a fair trade.
“Fair trade!” he cried scornfully. “That’s just what you won’t get. That’s a thing unkenned in Virginia. Look you here, my lad. The Parliament in London treats us Virginians like so many puling bairns. We cannot sell our tobacco except to English merchants, and we cannot buy a horn spoon except it comes in an English ship. What’s the result of that? You, as a merchant, can tell me fine. The English fix what price they like for our goods, and it’s the lowest conceivable, and they make their own price for what they sell us, and that’s as high as a Jew’s. There’s a fine profit there for the gentlemen-venturers of Bristol, but it’s starvation and damnation for us poor Virginians.”
“What’s the result?” he cried again. “Why, that there’s nothing to be had in the land except what the merchants bring. There’s scarcely a smith or a wright or a cobbler between the James and the Potomac. If I want a bed to lie in, I have to wait till the coming of the tobacco convoy, and go down to the wharves and pay a hundred pounds of sweet-scented for a thing you would buy in the Candleriggs for twenty shillings. How, in God’s name, is a farmer to live if he has to pay usury for every plough and spade and yard of dimity!”
“Remember you’re speaking to a merchant,” I said. “You’ve told me the very thing to encourage me. If prices are high, it’s all the better for me.”
“It would be,” he said grimly, “if your name werena what it is, and you came from elsewhere than the Clyde. D’you think the proud English corporations are going to let you inside? Not them. The most you’ll get will be the scraps that fall from their table, my poor Lazarus, and for these you’ll have to go hat in hand to Dives.”
His face grew suddenly earnest, and he leaned on the table and looked me straight in the eyes.
“You’re a young lad and a new-comer, and the accursed scales of Virginia are not yet on your eyes. Forbye, I think you’ve spirit, though it’s maybe mixed with a deal of folly. You’ve your choice before you, Mr. Garvald. You can become a lickspittle like the rest of them, and no doubt you’ll gather a wheen bawbees, but it will be a poor shivering soul will meet its Maker in the hinder end. Or you can play the man and be a good Virginian. I’ll not say it’s an easy part. You’ll find plenty to cry you down, and there will be hard knocks going; but by your face I judge you’re not afraid of that. Let me tell you this land is on the edge of hell, and there’s sore need for stout men. They’ll declare in this town that there’s no Indians on this side the mountains that would dare to lift a tomahawk. Little they ken!”
In his eagerness he had gripped my arm, and his dark, lean face was thrust close to mine.
“I was with Bacon in ‘76, in the fray with the Susquehannocks. I speak the Indian tongues, and there’s few alive that ken the tribes like me. The folk here live snug in the Tidewater, which is maybe a hundred miles wide from the sea, but of the West they ken nothing. There might be an army thousands strong concealed a day’s journey from the manors, and never a word would be heard of it.”
“But they tell me the Indians are changed nowadays,” I put in. “They say they’ve settled down to peaceful ways like any Christian.”
“Put your head into a catamount’s mouth, if you please,” he said grimly, “but never trust an Indian. The only good kind is the dead kind. I tell you we’re living on the edge of hell. It may come this year or next year or five years hence, but come it will. I hear we are fighting the French, and that means that the tribes of the Canadas will be on the move. Little you know the speed of a war-party. They would cut my throat one morning, and be hammering at the doors of James Town before sundown. There should be a line of forts in the West from the Roanoke to the Potomac, and every man within fifty miles should keep a gun loaded and a horse saddled. But, think you the Council will move? It costs money, say the wiseacres, as if money were not cheaper than a slit wizzand!”
I was deeply solemnized, though I scarce understood the full drift of his words, and the queer thing was that I was not ill-pleased. I had come out to seek for trade, and it looked as if I were to find war. And all this when I was not four hours landed.
“What think you of that?” he asked, as I kept silent, “I’ve been warned. A man I know on the Rappahannock passed the word that the Long House was stirring. Tell that to the gentry in James Town. What side are you going for, young sir?”
“I’ll take my time,” I said, “and see for myself. Ask me again this day six months.”
He laughed loud. “A very proper answer for a Scot,” he cried. “See for yourself, travel the country, and use the wits God gave you to form your judgment.”
He paid the lawing, and said he would put me on the road back. “These alleys are not very healthy at this hour for a young gentleman in braw clothes.”
Once outside the tavern he led me by many curious by-paths till I found myself on the river-side just below the Court-house. It struck me that my new friend was not a popular personage in the town, for he would stop and reconnoitre at every turning, and he chose the darkest side of the road.
“Good-night to you,” he said at length. “And when you have finished your travels come west to the South Fork River and ask for Simon Frew, and I’ll complete your education.”
I went to bed in a glow of excitement. On the morrow I should begin a new life in a world of wonders, and I rejoiced to think that there was more than merchandise in the prospect.
CHAPTER 6. TELLS OF MY EDUCATION
I had not been a week in the place before I saw one thing very clear — that I should never get on with Mr. Lambie. His notion of business was to walk down the street in a fine coat, and to sleep with a kerchief over his face in some shady veranda. There was no vice in the creature, but there was mighty little sense. He lived in awe of the great and rich, and a nod from a big planter would make him happy for a week. He used to deafen me with tales of Colonel Randolph, and worshipful Mr. Carew, and Colonel Byrd’s new house at Westover, and the rare fashion in cravats that young Mr. Mason showed at the last Surrey horse-racing. Now when a Scot chooses to be a sycophant, he is more whole-hearted in the job than any one else on the globe, and I grew very weary of Mr. Lambie. He was no better than an old wife, and as timid as a hare forbye. When I spoke of fighting the English merchants, he held up his hands as if I had uttered blasphemy. So, being determined to find out for myself the truth about this wonderful new land, I left him the business in the town, bought two good horses, hired a servant, by name John Faulkner, who had worked out his time as a redemptioner, and set out on my travels.
This is a history of doings, not of thoughts, or I would have much to tell of what I saw during those months, when, lean as a bone, and brown as a hazelnut, I tracked the course of the great rivers. The roads were rough, where roads there were, but the land smiled under the sun, and the Virginians, high and low, kept open house for the chance traveller. One night I would eat pork and hominy with a rough fellow who was carving a farm out of the forest; and the next I would sit in a fine panelled hall and listen to gentlefolks’ speech, and dine off damask and silver. I could not tire of the green forests, or the marshes alive with wild fowl, or the noble orchards and gardens, or even the salty dunes of the Chesapeake shore. My one complaint was that the land was desperate flat to a hill-bred soul like mine. But one evening, away north in Stafford county, I cast my eyes to the west, and saw, blue and sharp against the sunset, a great line of mountains. It was all I sought. Somewhere in the west Virginia had her high lands, and one day, I promised myself, I would ride the road of the sun and find their secret.
In these months my thoughts were chiefly of trade, and I saw enough to prove the truth of what the man Frew had told me. This richest land on earth was held prisoner in the bonds of a foolish tyranny. The rich were less rich than their estates warranted, and the poor were ground down by bitter poverty. There was little corn in the land, tobacco being the sole means of payment, and this mea
nt no trade in the common meaning of the word. The place was slowly bleeding to death, and I had a mind to try and stanch its wounds. The firm of Andrew Sempill was looked on jealously, in spite of all the bowings and protestations of Mr. Lambie. If we were to increase our trade, it must be at the Englishman’s expense, and that could only be done by offering the people a better way of business.
When the harvest came and the tobacco fleet arrived, I could see how the thing worked out. Our two ships, the Blackcock of Ayr and the Duncan Davidson of Glasgow, had some trouble getting their cargoes. We could only deal with the smaller planters, who were not thirled to the big merchants, and it took us three weary weeks up and down the river-side wharves to get our holds filled. There was a madness in the place for things from England, and unless a man could label his wares “London-made,” he could not hope to catch a buyer’s fancy. Why, I have seen a fellow at a fair at Henricus selling common Virginian mocking-birds as the “best English mocking-birds”. My uncle had sent out a quantity of Ayrshire cheeses, mutton hams, pickled salmon, Dunfermline linens, Paisley dimity, Alloa worsted, sweet ale from Tranent, Kilmarnock cowls, and a lot of fine feather-beds from the Clydeside. There was nothing common or trashy in the whole consignment; but the planters preferred some gewgaws from Cheapside or some worthless London furs which they could have bettered any day by taking a gun and hunting their own woods. When my own business was over, I would look on at some of the other ladings. There on the wharf would be the planter with his wife and family, and every servant about the place. And there was the merchant skipper, showing off his goods, and quoting for each a weight of tobacco. The planter wanted to get rid of his crop, and knew that this was his only chance, while the merchant could very well sell his leavings elsewhere. So the dice were cogged from the start, and I have seen a plain kitchen chair sold for fifty pounds of sweet-scented, or something like the price at which a joiner in Glasgow would make a score and leave himself a handsome profit.
* * * * *
The upshot was that I paid a visit to the Governor, Mr. Francis Nicholson, whom my lord Howard had left as his deputy. Governor Nicholson had come from New York not many months before with a great repute for ill-temper and harsh dealing; but I liked the look of his hard-set face and soldierly bearing, and I never mind choler in a man if he have also honesty and good sense. So I waited upon him at his house close by Middle Plantation, on the road between James Town and York River.
I had a very dusty reception. His Excellency sat in his long parlour among a mass of books and papers and saddle-bags, and glared at me from beneath lowering brows. The man was sore harassed by the King’s Government on one side and the Virginian Council on the other, and he treated every stranger as a foe.
“What do you seek from me?” he shouted. “If it is some merchants’ squabble, you can save your breath, for I am sick of the Shylocks.”
I said, very politely, that I was a stranger not half a year arrived in the country, but that I had been using my eyes, and wished to submit my views to his consideration.
“Go to the Council,” he rasped; “go to that silken fool, His Majesty’s Attorney. My politics are not those of the leather-jaws that prate in this land.”
“That is why I came to you,” I said.
Then without more ado I gave him my notions on the defence of the colony, for from what I had learned I judged that would interest him most. He heard me with unexpected patience.
“Well, now, supposing you are right? I don’t deny it. Virginia is a treasure house with two of the sides open to wind and weather. I told the Council that, and they would not believe me. Here are we at war with France, and Frontenac is hammering at the gates of New York. If that falls, it will soon be the turn of Maryland and next of Virginia. England’s possessions in the West are indivisible, and what threatens one endangers all. But think you our Virginians can see it? When I presented my scheme for setting forts along the northern line, I could not screw a guinea out of the miscreants. The colony was poor, they cried, and could not afford it, and then the worshipful councillors rode home to swill Madeira and loll on their London beds. God’s truth! were I not a patriot, I would welcome M. Frontenac to teach them decency.”
Now I did not think much of the French danger being far more concerned with the peril in the West; but I held my peace on that subject. It was not my cue to cross his Excellency in his present humour.
“What makes the colony poor?” I asked. “The planters are rich enough, but the richest man will grow tired of bearing the whole burden of the government. I submit that His Majesty and the English laws are chiefly to blame. When the Hollanders were suffered to trade here, they paid five shillings on every anker of brandy they brought hither, and ten shillings on every hogshead of tobacco they carried hence. Now every penny that is raised must come out of the Virginians, and the Englishmen who bleed the land go scot free.”
“That’s true,” said he, “and it’s a damned disgrace. But how am I to better it?”
“Clap a tax on every ship that passes Point Comfort outward bound,” I said. “The merchants can well afford to pay it.”
“Listen to him!” he laughed. “And what kind of answer would I get from my lord Howard and His Majesty? Every greasy member would be on his feet in Parliament in defence of what he called English rights. Then there would come a dispatch from the Government telling the poor Deputy-Governor of Virginia to go to the devil!”
He looked at me curiously, screwing up his eyes.
“By the way, Mr. Garvald, what is your trade?”
“I am a merchant like the others,” I said; “only my ships run from Glasgow instead of Bristol.”
“A very pretty merchant,” he said quizzically. “I have heard that hawks should not pick out hawks’ eyes. What do you propose to gain, Mr. Garvald?”
“Better business,” I said. “To be honest with you, sir, I am suffering from the close monopoly of the Englishman, and I think the country is suffering worse. I have a notion that things can be remedied. If you cannot put on a levy, good and well; that is your business. But I mean to make an effort on my own account.”
Then I told him something of my scheme, and he heard me out with a puzzled face.
“Of all the brazen Scots—” he cried.
“Scot yourself,” I laughed, for his face and speech betrayed him.
“I’ll not deny that there’s glimmerings of sense in you, Mr. Garvald. But how do you, a lad with no backing, propose to beat a strong monopoly buttressed by the whole stupidity and idleness of Virginia? You’ll be stripped of your last farthing, and you’ll be lucky if it ends there. Don’t think I’m against you. I’m with you in your principles, but the job is too big for you.”
“We will see,” said I. “But I can take it that, provided I keep within the law, His Majesty’s Governor will not stand in my way?”
“I can promise you that. I’ll do more, for I’ll drink success to your enterprise.” He filled me a great silver tankard of spiced sack, and I emptied it to the toast of “Honest Men.”
* * * * *
All the time at the back of my head were other thoughts than merchandise. The picture which Frew had drawn of Virginia as a smiling garden on the edge of a burning pit was stamped on my memory. I had seen on my travels the Indians that dwelled in the Tidewater, remnants of the old great clans of Doeg and Powhatan and Pamunkey. They were civil enough fellows, following their own ways, and not molesting their scanty white neighbours, for the country was wide enough for all. But so far as I could learn, these clanlets of the Algonquin house were no more comparable to the fighting tribes of the West than a Highland caddie in an Edinburgh close is to a hill Macdonald with a claymore. But the common Virginian would admit no peril, though now and then some rough landward fellow would lay down his spade, spit moodily, and tell me a grim tale. I had ever the notion to visit Frew and finish my education.
It was not till the tobacco ships had gone and the autumn had grown late that I got the chance
. The trees were flaming scarlet and saffron as I rode west through the forests to his house on the South Fork River. There, by a wood fire in the October dusk, he fed me on wild turkey and barley bread, and listened silently to my tale.
He said nothing when I spoke of my schemes for getting the better of the Englishman and winning Virginia to my side. Profits interested him little, for he grew his patch of corn and pumpkins, and hunted the deer for his own slender needs. Once he broke in on my rigmarole with a piece of news that fluttered me.
“You mind the big man you were chasing that night you and me first forgathered? Well, I’ve seen him.”
“Where?” I cried, all else forgotten.
“Here, in this very place, six weeks syne. He stalked in about ten o’ the night, and lifted half my plenishing. When I got up in my bed to face him he felled me. See, there’s the mark of it,” and he showed a long scar on his forehead. “He went off with my best axe, a gill of brandy, and a good coat. He was looking for my gun, too, but that was in a hidy-hole. I got up next morning with a dizzy head, and followed him nigh ten miles. I had a shot at him, but I missed, and his legs were too long for me. Yon’s the dangerous lad.”
“Where did he go, think you?” I asked.
“To the hills. To the refuge of every ne’er-do-weel. Belike the Indians have got his scalp, and I’m not regretting it.”
I spent three days with Frew, and each day I had the notion that he was putting me to the test. The first day he took me over the river into a great tangle of meadow and woodland beyond which rose the hazy shapes of the western mountains. The man was twenty years my elder, but my youth was of no avail against his iron strength. Though I was hard and spare from my travels in the summer heat, ‘twas all I could do to keep up with him, and only my pride kept me from crying halt. Often when he stopped I could have wept with fatigue, and had no breath for a word, but his taciturnity saved me from shame.
