Plantation Sketches | Page 5

by a sort of yell. The overseer stood by with pencil and book and scored down each tally by a peculiar mark. The constant stream of men running back and forth, with bags empty or full, made a very busy scene.
After the corn had been shipped, the boat had steamed down the river, and the place, lately so full of busy life, had returned to its accustomed quiet seclusion, the redbirds came to peck up the corn left upon the ground. I remember how once, upon a cold, gray afternoon, I put on my wraps and ran down to the Sycamore Barn, on purpose to watch the shy, beautiful things. Snowflakes were beginning to fall and whisper about the great bamboo vines; twisted around the trees upon the river banks, the long gray moss hung motionless and a thick grayness seemed to shut out the whole world; all about me was gray,--earth, sky, trees, barn, everything, except the redbirds and the red berries of a great holly tree under whose shelter I stood, listening to the whispering snowflakes.
The Sycamore Barn derived its name from a great sycamore tree near which it stood. This tree was by far the largest that I ever saw; a wagon with a four-horse team might be on one side, and quite concealed from any one standing upon the other. When I knew it, it was a ruin, the great trunk a mere shell, though the two giant forks,--themselves immense in girth--still had life in them. In one side of the trunk was an opening, about as large as an ordinary door; through this we used to enter, and I have danced a quadrille of eight within with perfect ease.
This tree gave its name to the field in which it grew, which formed part of the tract known as the Silver Wedge. It was about the Silver Wedge that an acrimonious lawsuit was carried on during the lives of your great-great-grandparents, John and Frances Devereux. She was a Pollock, and the dispute arose through a Mr. Williams, the son or grandson of a certain Widow Pollock, who had, after the death of her first husband, Major Pollock, married a Mr. Williams. She may possibly have dowered in this Silver Wedge tract. At any rate, her Williams descendants set up a claim to it, although it was in possession of the real Pollock descendant, Frances Devereux. It was a large body of very rich land, and intersected the plantation in the form of a wedge, beginning near the Sycamore Barn, and running up far into the Second Lands, widening and embracing the dwelling-house and plantation buildings. I have heard your great-great-grandfather laugh and tell how Williams once came to the house, and, with a sweeping bow and great assumption of courtesy, made your great-great-grandmother welcome to remain in his house. After the suit had been settled, Williams had occasion to come again to the house, feeling, no doubt, rather crestfallen. Mrs. Devereux met him at the door and, making him a sweeping curtsy, quoted his exact words, making him welcome to her house.
One of my pleasant memories is connected with our fishing porch. This was a porch, or balcony, built upon piles driven into the river upon one side, and the other resting upon the banks. It was raised some eight or ten feet above the water and protected by a strong railing or balustrade and shaded by the overhanging branches of a large and beautiful hackberry tree. It made an ideal lounging-place, upon a soft spring afternoon, when all the river banks were a mass of tender green, and the soft cooing of doves filled the air. We usually took Minor with us to bait our hooks and assist generally, and often went home by starlight with a glorious string of fish.
The drawback to the plantations upon the lower Roanoke lay in their liability to being flooded by the freshets to which the Roanoke was exposed. These were especially to be dreaded in early spring, when the snow in the mountains was melting. I have known freshets in March to inundate the country for miles. At one time there was not a foot of dry land upon one of the Runiroi plantations. It was upon a mild night in that month that I sat upon the porch nearly all through the night, feeling too anxious to sleep, for your grandfather, the overseer, and every man on the plantation were at the river, working upon the embankments. The back waters from the swamp had already spread over everything. This gentle and slow submersion did no great damage, when there was no growing crop to be injured; the thing to be guarded against was the breaking of the river dam and the consequent rushing in of such a