University of Virginia Library

LETTER XX.

Did you ever go a fishing? If you have not, I advise
you to buy a rod and line, and start brookward on
such an adventure; if you have been, you will know
how to appreciate my happiness yesterday, when I tell
you that I spent it in fishing! Early in the morning my
Afric maid, Eda, stole softly by my bedside, and waking
me gently, as if half afraid she should wake me, reminded
me that “we were all to go fishing to-day.” I was soon
dressed in my stout pongee habit, which I wear when I
go into the forests, and which just fits my figure. Eda
brought me a broad-brimmed leghorn, which I put on,
with the brim flapping over my eyes, and shading me
like an umbrella,—a sort of man's hat, which the
colonel's care for our “fair complexions” had provided
for both Bel and me. I also wore a pair of masculine
boots; real Wellingtons, Mr. —, but made of the
softest calf-skin, and setting to the foot like a glove.
The high heels added full an inch and a half to my stature,
whereat I was not a little vain. Upon descending
to the hall, I found Isabel all ready, in man's hat and
boots, and a jockey looking tunic of green cloth, elegantly
embroidered over the bust, to which it was charmingly
confined by a broad, glazed, black belt, “clipping the
slender waist,” and secured by a silver buckle. Her

small feet looked perfectly bewitching in her huzzar-like
boots, and she wore her sombrero with such a dashing,
don't-I-look-like-a-very-pretty-boy air, a little tipped
over her left ear, that, with her fine Spanish eyes and
expressive face, she looked bewitching enough to fall in
love with.

How is it, good Mr. —, that pretty girls always
become additionally attractive in masculine costume? A
woman never looks so young as in her riding costume,
and for the reason that it is partly copied from the dress
of the other sex. And have you never been struck with
the youthful look a boy's hat, worn upon the side of the
head of a woman of thirty years old imparts to her, giving
to her face the juvenility of a handsome led of sixteen?
Solve me this mystery, sir Editor, for editors
are, of course, supposed to be able to solve everything!

The colonel was in his brown linen hunting coat, with
six pockets therein and thereabouts. Having complimented
us upon our good looks and becoming costume,
he escorted us to the room, where a nice hot breakfast was
awaiting us. After a hearty meal, partaken of in high,
good spirits, we prepared to mount our ponies. Two
servants were already in attendance upon the gallery;
one of them with long rods, for each of us, full twenty
feet in length, with hair lines neatly affixed, and boxes
of bait—writhing ground worms! The other was laden
with a basket of provisions, nicely covered with a snow-white
napkin, in spite of which, peeped out the red-waxed
neck of a claret bottle, and also there was just visible
the wire-tied cork of a champagne bottle! But don't tell
the temperance people, Mr. —! You know, or if you
don't know, you know now, that nobody can go fishing

without such mystic appurtenances in the dinner-basket—
at least in these parts. All being a-saddle, and in high
pulse, we started on our expedition to war against the
innocent fishes. We proceeded in the following order.
First, astride a half-broken colt, as shaggy as a bear,
rode a young negro urchin in a torn straw hat, and with
naked feet. He was pioneer to open the several gates
that lay in our road across the plantation. Next rode
the colonel, smoking a cigar, and gaily talking with Isabel
and myself upon the probability of our being joined
by the “tiger captain” and young Harry Elliott at the
Seven Oaks, and questioning whether the former could
be prevailed upon to mount a horse! Behind us came
the gray-headed servant who carried the basket and bait,
mounted upon a horse as venerable as himself, and
whose ribbed sides he ceaselessly thumped with his two
heels, keeping time thereat with every step made by his
Rozinante. He was followed by black John, so called
to distinguish him from another John on the estate, who
is not quite so dead a black as the “black John.” He
rode a sober, long-eared mule, and carried the slender
fishing rods on his shoulder, which as he trotted, bent
with the motion like whale-bone. The mule had an odd
fashion of throwing out his left hind leg at every third
step, which created a rolling motion to his rider, that
was infinitely ludicrous.

What a merry ride we all had! The colonel sang,
and his manly voice made the old woods ring again.
Isabel laughed to listen to the laughing echo, and I
shouted! The Africans were delighted in our delight,
and laughed after their fashion, and the little ragamuffin
Peter, our gate opener, who always takes liberties, and

is notably saucy, whooped and turned somersets on his
pony's back from excess of animal spirits.

Three miles from the house we crossed the turnpike
road which leads to Nashville. A stage coach was going
by at the time, and the passengers looked at us with
hard curiosity, and seemed to be amused at the appearance
of our motley cavalcade, the rear of which I ought
to have said was brought up by three dogs, one of whom
was a majestic full-blooded Newfoundland. Not far behind
the stage, came a handsome traveling carriage, from
the window of which a gentleman hailed the colonel. As
we rode up he was presented to us as a General P—,
one of the most distinguished officers whose valor in
Mexico elevated the military glory of our Republic.
After some conversation we separated, he to drive on to
his princely estate, a few leagues southward, we to enter
the forests and wind our way to the stream. Half a
mile from the pike we came to the Seven Oaks, a noble
group of forest trees standing by themselves in an open
area, where several woodland roads meet. We had hardly
reached it when the colonel shouted—

“Here they come! Voilá the captain.”

Looking in the direction he indicated, we beheld Henry
Elliott riding by the side of an old doctor's sulky, in
which was harnessed, a tall, long-bodied steed, which as
it drew nearer, proved to be stone-blind. At first we
could not distinguish whom the ark-like vehicle contained,
but a loud shout to us like Neptune hailing a war-ship in
a high wind, left us in no doubt as to the personality of
the occupant. Harry, mounted on a superb hunter, and
dressed with picturesque effect, but without foppishness,
which he is too handsome and sensible to be guilty of, on

discovering us left his companion and galloped forward
to join us. How superbly he rode! yet with the ease
and natural attitude of a Comanche chief. He was
laughing as he came on, and well might he laugh.

The sulky was shrieking in anguish at every revolution
of its rattling wheels; the horse reared behind and
pitched before with a double-jointed, spasmodic locomotion,
that shook the captain from his seat within at every jerk.
The vehicle, the horse, the sulky, and the wheels had
each a several and independent motion of progression,
which four being combined, produced a compound movement
of the whole, unlike any thing on the earth, or under
the earth, or in the sea. We all shouted! The
captain reached us and then tried to stop his headway;
but the ancient horse had an iron jaw calloused by long
use, that no bit would twist or hurt, and it was plainly
apparent that, once under weigh, and propelled by the
complex motions of the entire machinery, he could not
stop if he would.

“'Vast heaving ahead! Luff! — Luff you beast!”
shouted the captain, with stentorian energy, as he was
passing us, pulling at the reins. “This land craft is the
crankiest clipper I ever g-g-got a-a-bo-ar-d-d of!” cried
he, the last words being jolted out of him by one of
the four motions. “'Vast there and heave to! What
an infer-fer-na-nal sea is running!—Co-co-co-co-col-on-n-el,
heave us a rope! Bear a hand here, some of you
darkies, or I shall soon be hull down and out o' sight to
leeward!”

The colonel rode ahead of the blind and still desperately-plunging-forward
animal, and had no sooner

touched his head lightly with his whip than he stood
stock still.

“Thank'ee, colonel, thank'ee,” said the old seaman,
as he scrambled over the wheel to the ground; “that
craft is the hardest thing I ever steered! Catch me
aboard of one of your land craft again, if I can help it!
You see this mad-cap nephew of mine wanted to tempt
me to ride a horse; but I have had enough of that.
Don't laugh, girls,—but it is true. So, cruising about
the stables, I run athwart this old lugger, stowed high
and dry, and covered with dust and cobwebs. Elliott
said it had belonged to a doctor who once lived at the
plantation, and it was now condemned as unseaworthy.
But so long as it didn't leak, and the spars were sound,
I didn't care. So I had her hauled out into the stream,
her old rigging overhauled, and this blind horse o' my
own choosing, out of a score o' faster and better ones to
tow it along. And here you see me, with my innards
shook out, because I forgot to put ballast aboard to keep
her trim; and then, for yawing wide before the wind, I
never saw the equal of that blind beast; and as for shortening
sail or coming-to off port, he doesn't know what
that means.”

We all enjoyed the captain's professional account of
his voyage, and, as the stream was yet a mile off, we set
forward, the captain once more aboard his land craft, but
with the precaution of having one of the negro men lead
the blind horse along, with his hand on his head-stall.
Relieved “by this towing,” as he termed it, from the
direct command of the vessel, the captain lighted a
cigar, lolled along and smoked as well as he could for

the rough sea produced by the resumption of the quadruplex
motion of the whole apparatus.

We at length reached the creek, though Isabel and
Harry were somehow loiterers, and always were, somehow,
on such occasions, and did not come up till we had
alighted. What a delightful spot it was where we stopped
to prepare for our sport! Mighty trees overshadowing
us, a limpid stream eighty feet wide at our feet, its clear
waters sparkling over snowy sands, and gurgling and
rushing around and between gray mossy rocks lying in
its bed.

Higher up was a waterfall, with a constant murmur,
and to the left of us the bank receded, leaving a dark,
deep pool, in the depths of which, the darting fish, in
their silvery armor, gleamed like meteors in a lower
sky. Just where we alighted was a verdant carpet of
soft thick grass, with three or four fine old rocks scattered
over it like granite lounges, which use we made
of three of them; the fourth having a shape somewhat
tabular, being converted by us into a table for our picnic
dinner. Altogether, the place was romantic, secluded,
and still, and would have delighted dear good Izaak Walton,
whose shade we invoked as we prepared our lines
for the sport! Sport! ah, poor Pisces! what was to
be sport to us, was death to you! But so goes life,
Mr. —; one half of God's creatures, both brute and
intelligent, pursue their pleasure at the expense of the
other half.

The tiger-captain attached himself assiduously to me
for the day, no doubt seeing that Isabel was well provided
for in young Elliott's devoted attentions, and taking pity
upon a lonely demoiselle. He taught me how to cut

bullets half through, and affix them to the line for sinkers;
he gave me a lesson in making and fitting a quilled cork;
initiated me into the mysteries of “bending on a hook,”
which good Mrs. Partington could do, as it is done by
knitting stitches upon the shaft, as one would upon a
needle; and he gave me a horrid lesson in the art of
scientifically putting a worm upon the hook. The squirmy
creatures, how they did curl about my fingers! yet I was
afraid to incur the captain's contempt by even shrieking
or throwing them from me. But isn't it a cruel murder,
sir, to cut in three sections a living worm, and then
thread longitudinally your barbed hook with one of the
soft, cold, twisting pieces? But a lady who goes a fishing
with a sea-captain who has tigers for pets, must have
no nerves. I found the captain an admirable instructor.
He showed me where to find the deep pools, and how to
cast my line thirty feet outwardly at a sweep, without
bungling or lodging it in the branches overhead. He
instructed me how to watch the little green and red
painted cork, and how to spring the line when it bobbed
under—in a word, he proved a valuable comrade for a
tyro in fishing like me, and an unexceptionable beau,
except when I once let a large trout drag my hook, line,
pole, and all out of my grasp, and dart away with it
down the stream like a rocket, when he “made a great
swear,” as I heard an Indian say of another great personage.
With this nautical exception, the tiger-captain
was a delightful companion on a fishing picnic.

After three or four hours of various successes, during
which some eighty-five fish were caught by the whole
party, negroes included, one of the servants announced,
“Pic-nic ready, Massas and Misseses!”

As the captain and I, after winding up our lines, hastened
to the spot, I passed the little negro Pete squatted
on a rock, fishing, holding a huge stick for a pole, with
twine for line, and, for bait-box, the captain said that he
made use of his enormous mouth, which he kept full of
live worms ready for use! Oh, shocking, Peter!

It took some time to find Isabel and Harry, who, at
length, made their appearance from up the stream, but
with only three fish between them. I suspect they passed
their time so pleasantly in each other's society, that they
thought little of the little fishes. The captain rallied
them on their ill luck, and made them both blush. We
had a capital feast under the trees, with the grass for
our seats, and a rock for our table. I placed a chance
copy of the Picayune before me for a table-cloth, and
thus, reading and eating, I enjoyed “a feast of reason,”
as well as a more substantial one. We had ham,
sandwiches, pickles, cold-chicken, cold broiled pigeons,
salad, pic-nic crackers, Scotch ale, champagne, and
claret. The two negro men waited on us with the precision
and etiquette of the dining-room. Our horses, and
ponies, and mules, picturesquely tethered around us,
cropped the grass, or stood, meditating, doubtless, upon
our conduct, our laughter, our toasts, our uproarious behaviour,
so in contrast with their sedate gravity, which
never departs from its propriety. Especially the captain's
blind horse looked melancholy and lonely, tied to
the wheel of the sulky, with a basket of corn hanging
at the end of his venerable nose. At every Borean
burst of quarter-deck laughter from the captain, he
would crop his overgrown ears, and roll his white, fishy-looking
eyes about as if in bodily apprehension.

We toasted, in lady-like sips of the iced wine, the
President, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and Jenny Lind,
and, in silence, drank to the memory of the warrior-sage
of the Hermitage, who sleeps not many hours' ride from
where we were. It would be difficult to impress persons
out of Tennessee with the veneration with which the
green memory of the Hero of New Orleans is held by all
Tennesseans. Through the rolling ages, his secluded
tomb will be the fane of pilgrimage for the sons of this
state. We intend shortly to pay a second visit to the
Hermitage, of which I will give you an account afterwards.

After our pic-nic dinner was over, the table-rock was
vacated to the servants, and the gentlemen laid at length
on the grassy bank, smoked, and entertained us with
stories.