The
Nineteenth Century in Print: Periodicals
Chincoteague. [Scribners monthly, an illustrated magazine
for the people. / Volume 13, Issue 6, April 1877]
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page 737
SCRJBNERS MONTHLY.
VOL. XIII. APRIL, 1877. No.
6.
CHINCOTEAGUE.
THE ISLAND OF
PONIES.
OFF the north-eastern shore of Virginia,
and about
five miles from the main-land,
lies a small island known as
Chincoteague
an island possessed of peculiarities shared
by no other
portion of the eastern United
States; for here roams, in an entirely
un-
tamed state, a breed of horses, or rather
ponies, as wild as the
mustangs of Texas or
the Pampas.
How these ponies first came upon
the
island is not known except through vague
tradition, for when the first
~ettlers came
there, early in the eighteenth century, they
found the
animals already roaming wild
about its piney meadows. The
tradition
received from the Indians of the main-land
was that a vessel
loaded with horses, sailing
to one of the Elizabethan settlements
of
Virginia, was wrecked upon the southern
VOL. XIJJ.47.
point of the
island, where the horses escaped,
while the whites were rescued by the
then
friendly Indians and carried to the main-
land, whence they found
their way to some
of the early settlements. The horses, left
to themselves
upon their new territory, be-
came entirely wild, and, probably
through
hardships endured, degenerated into a pe-
culiar breed of
ponies.
In 1670 the island was first prospected;
it was subsequently
granted by King
James II. to a person by whom it was
sold in minor
sections to various others.
At present it is greatly subdivided,
though
one land-owner, Kendall Jester by name,
holds over six hundred
acres of marsh and
pine land, and there are other holdings
scarcely less
in extent. Among the earliest
settlers were the Thurstones, Taylors,
and
[copyfight, Scribner & co., 1877.]
CATCHING A PONY.
View
page 738
738 CHZNCOTEA G UE.
Muffins; the head of the
last-named family
was a well-known Quaker, who, upon the in-
troduction of
slavery to the island, removed
thence to the town of Camden, in the
upper
part of the province of Maryland, near
Delaware.
It was
long before Chincoteague was
fairly settled, and even as late as 1838
there
were but twenty-six houses there; now, how-
ever, many strangers,
tempted by the excep-
tionally good fishing and oyster-dredging of
the
place, are pouring in from the main-land
to settle there. To mere visitors
the ponies
are still a great, if not the main, attraction,
and during the
periods of penning
driving them into corralnumerous guests
arrive daily
from the coast.
When one puts foot aboard the puffing,
wheezing
little steamboat Alice, it is as
though the narrow channel, across which
he
is ferried in about an hour, separates him
from modern civilization,
its rattling, dusty
cars, its hurly-burly of business, its clatter
and
smoke of mills and factories, and lands
him upon an enchanted island, cut
loose
from modern progress and left drifting some
seventy-five years
backward in the ocean of
time. No smoke of manufactories pollutes
the air
of Chincoteague; no hissing steam-
escape is heard except that of the
Alice;
no troublesome thought of politics, no relig-
ious dissension, no
jealousy of other places,
disturbs the minds of the
Chincoteaguers,
engrossed with whisky, their ponies
and
themselves.
Chincoteague is land-locked. Assateague
Beacha
narrow strip of land, composed
of pine woods, salt marshes and sand
flats
lies between it and the ocean, sepa-
rated from it by a channel
about half a
mile in width. Midway upon this beach
stands Assateague
light-housea first-class
light, and one of the finest on the
coast.
Between this beach or island upon the one
side and the main-land on
the other, in a
calm, sleepy bay, lies lazy Chincoteague.
There is but
little agriculture; the inhabit-
ants depend upon the sale of ponies
and
upon fishing for the necessaries of life, and
mere necessaries suffice
them. A little pork
and bread, rank tobacco and whisky, in the
proportion
of Falstaffs sack, and the acme
of the Chincoteaguers happiness is
attained.
Thick pine woods cover the island, in
virgin growth, here
and there opening into a
glade of marshy flat, stretching off for a
mile
or more, called the meadows, where one
occasionally catches a glimpse
of a herd of
ponies, peacefully browsing at a distance.
Tramping
through the island, which is
barely a mile in width, one emerges
sud-
denly from the pine woods upon the western
shore, where broad
extended salt marshes,
rank in growth, lie weltering in the hot sun-
light
the whole length of the island. A fence
protects this marsh from the
encroa,chment~
of the ponies, which are turned out here in
the winter, and
find a plentiful supply of fod-
der in the dead sedge underneath the
snow.
There are two distinct classes of inhabit-
ants upon
Chincoteague: the pony-owners
lords of the landand the fishermen.
Your
pony-owner is a tough, bulbous, rough fel-
fellow, with a sponge-like
capacity for ab-
sorbing liquor; bad or good, whisky, gin, or
brandy, so
that it have the titillating alco-
holic twang, it is much the same to
him.
Coarse, heavy army shoes, a tattered felt
hat, or a broad-brimmed
straw that looks as
if it had never been new; rough homespun or
linen
trowsers, innocent of soap and water,
and patched with as many colors as
Josephs
coat; a blue or checked shirt, open at the
throat, and disclosing
a hairy chest,these
complete his costume. Your fisherman, now,
though his
costume is nearly similar, with the
exception of shoes (which he does not
wear),
is in appearance quite different.. A lank
body, shoulders round as
the bowl of a spoon,
far up which clamber his tightly strapped
trowsers; a
thin crane-like neck, poking out
at right angles from somewhere
immediately
between the shoulder-blades; and, finally, a
leathery,
expressionless, peaked face, and
wiry hair and beard complete his
present-
ment. Hospitable in the extreme are these
rough people. Any one
visiting them at
the time of their noonday meal will find
some ingenuity
necessary to parry their
pressing solicitations to share those nodules
of
fat pork fried and floating in a dead sea
of black molasses, fried potatoes,
and chunks
of breadthe last to he dipped in the mo-
lasses, and eaten with
the pork. If sickness
is pleaded in excuse, equal difficulty will be
found
in avoiding the administration of a
dose of villainous whisky.
In
visiting their houses, you pick your
way with some trouble through a flock
of
geese, over ,a pig, a dog, and probably a
nearly naked baby rollii~g
over the floor, and
find yourself at last safely ensconced in a
rickety
chair. The good-woman of the
house, who is smoking a very dirty pipe
with
a short stem, is profuse in the offices
of hospitality,spanking the rolling
baby
with one hand and handing a tin cup
of water with the other. She may
then, if
View
page 739
CHINCO/EA G (JE. 739
you are a good listener
and quiet enough,
recount in much detail the ins and outs
of her last
attack of fever-n-ager, or how
our Mariar married Jim Strand; in
the
meantime you can be making your own
observations of an interior well
calculated to
repay the trouble. A rusty stove, a broken
pitcher, a
griddle, a skillet, two tin cups, a
coffee-pot, and a dirty bucket, the
smaller
properties deposited in a rickety wash-tub in
one corner of the
room, which is mounted
upon a crippled chair with a broken back;
walls
highLy ornamented with cheap prints,
labeled respectively Ellen or
Maggie,
circus bills and advertisements of patent
soap; and, to crown all,
a dozen or more
bottles with little bits of red flannel in
them hung here
and there, enlivening the
monotony like Turners daub of red in his
gray
sea picture. Then, lastly, the bed!
We of the North have no conception
of
such bedsrising, a voluminous mountain of
feathers, five feet in
height, and bedecked
with a gorgeous patch-work quilt, the
valance slats
a~ the top of the narrow
spindle posts hung here and there
with
parti-colored worsted bobs. Let the family
be ever so poor, the bed
is the glory, the soul
of their cottage. It is the pride of the
good-
womans heart, and in it she will swelter
and suffocate in the
hottest day of summer.
Visiting, one day, a house where the woman
was sick
with bilious fever (quite a common
complaint in Chincoteague), we saw
nothing
of her upon first entering, but a smell of
tobacco-smoke stung our
nostrils like vapor
of oil of vitriol. Looking toward the bed,
we saw a
thin column of smoke ascending,
and, approaching, saw the patient
peacefully
reposing and smoking in the midst of a
feathery
Yosemite.
Quaint and unique are the characters one
meets. Kendal
Jester, more popularly known
as Uncle Ken, the beau-ideal of a
Chin-
coteague pony-penner: one need have no
fear of failing to make his
acquaintance. An
old fellow approaches, his face good-humored
and redolent
of innumerable potations of the
favorite beverage. His daily life is
com-
prised in three stages of existence: morning,
when he is sober; noon,
when if his thoughts
are steady, his tongue is thick; night, when
his
thoughts are wool-gathering, and his
stumbling tongue in vain tries to
overtake
them,like a man pursuing one of his own
ponies in the dark. He
approaches with,
My names Kenneljester (pronounced all
in one word), s no
harm in me.
We assure him we know that.
I drink a little
whisky now an then.
We know that too.
Doctor says gots drink
quart er whisky
daykeep away bilious. Drink quart an
pintnever have
bilious.
To do Uncle Ken justice, he implicitly
follows the advice
of his physician.
Should you imagine that when Uncle
Ken is drunk he no
longer has his wits
about him, you will be vastly mistaken. A
man who came
over from the main-land to
buy ponies from him thought that by mak-
A SON
OF THE SOIL.
ing him drunk he could skin him out of
a bargain, but his
horror was unbounded
when upon every drink that Uncle Ken took
he
increased his original price by ten dol-
lars.
Here, too, is old Dan
Tucker, boot-black
and white-washer, with his pock-marked face
and rich
guttural ki-he! of a laugh. The
artist wanted to make a sketch of this
worthy,
and ten cents were offered as an inducement
for him to
stand.
See yeh, mars! Guess Jse ugly nough
out puttin on me on
paper.
But we only want you as aahme-
mento,a remembrance of our
trip to Chin-
coteague.
Ke-he! Cant fool me, wawat yo
want me fo
? (A sudden burst of righteous
indignation.) Go long, sketch some o
de
gals, deys heap puttier n me. Black yo
boots fo ten cents. An I wants
money, too.
View
page 740
740 CHINCOTEA G UE.
Money takes a man
anywayscept to
Hebben
Nothing could induce him to be
sketched,
though we suhseouently caught him on the
fly, so to speal in
front of the hotel.
Here, too is old Uncle Benny, ex-slave and
now
boot-black, freighted with glorious rem-
iniscences of by-gone plantation
days, possum
and coon hunts, pumpkin pie and turkeys.
Thankye, Mars;
sarvent: says the
poor old cripple, as he takes our ten cents,
little
knowing that we had made a hasty
sketch of him as he bent over our
shoes
putting on the old-fashioned gloss he had
acquired as a boy on the
plantation.
Many more rise to memory: old Aunt
Sally Jones, with her
great scoop bonnet,
her blue yarn stockings and her manifold
complaints;
old Mrs. Grant, who charms
away cancers; and scores of others,
the
enumeration of whom would tire the pa-
tience of the
reader.
Once or twice in a year the ponies of the
island are driven
together in a pen or corral
for the purpose of branding the foals or
for
sale. Then is there excitement in Chinco-
teague. The natives are all
agog. Rose and
Hannah in the hotel kitchen are hard at
work broiling,
baking and stewing, preparing
a brisk campaign against the appetites
of
the guests that assemble at such periods.
Every now and then, above the
frizzling of
mutton-chops and frying of potatoes, arises
a sudden burst of
that rich minor hymn
music heard only at its best among the
southern
plantation negroesthe wild music
holding something half savage in its
ca-
dencesa music one might imagine their
barbaric ancestors sang at some
secret sac-
rificial feast.
3
E~3i4zzzFI !4AUjiZ~
p
~7z~ii{~
And so on ad infinitum, now rising full
and lusty, now
sinking into the sputtering
of the frying-pan.
It is a still morning
and the broad white
sand beach stretches far up the island.
Here and there
lies a pool of salt water
glassily reflecting the clear
sky.
Suddenly some one cries, Here they
come. Down the beach come
the ponies,
pattering over the moist sand and dashing
the placid salt
pools into a myriad spark-
ling drops. Close behind ride the drivers,
men
and boys, gesticulating wildly. For sad-
dles most of them have tanned
sheep-skins,
the woolly side out, strapped around the bod-
ies of their
ponies. Now a driver, bending
almost level with his ponys back, dashes
on
to head off some fractious animal. At length
they approach the pen into
which, after some
trouble, they are headed, a tumultuous crowd,
kicking,
biting and squealing; then a rush
and they are in! Now comes the tug of
war,
the lassoing and haltering; but that is left
till the afternoon. It
is well; for there goes
the dinner-bell and we are ready for
the
summons.
Merciful Providence! What a crowd of
hungry
excursionists are coming from the
main-land in the little steamer to attend
the
sales! From upper deck to lower the vessel
is crowded with passengers.
Can even Rose
and Hannahs labors suffice to stay the ap-
petites 6f all
these hungry wights? But to
look at the face of Mr. English, the
hotel-
keeper, re-assures one. He is as calm and
courageous as Napoleon at
Austerlitz, or
Nelson at Trafalgar. But we hasten into
the dining-room and
are seated by the time
the boat touches the wharf and then the
rush
begins. Meal tickets are given, and
Captain Caulk (pronounced Cork) stands
at
the door and collects them.
Sir, cries he to one old man, as
the
crowd pushes tumultuously against him,
for the love of Heaven do not
tread on
my cork foot!
Have you a cork foot, sir?
THE LADY OF THE
HOUSE.
View
page 741
CHZNCOTEA G UE. 74
Two of
em.
Tut, tut, tut! Veil, Im sorry! cries
the sympathetic old
gentleman from Snow
Hill.
At length dinner is completed, and
we
start once more for the pony pen. The
momentous time arrives for
casting the
lasso; not as they do in the West, but by
hanging it on the
end of a long pole, and
then dropping it skillfully over the ponys
head.
Uncle Ken takes the pole. Holding
the noose well aloft on the top of it, so
as
not to frighten the intended prey upon
which he has fixed hi~ eye, he
cautiously
approaches the herd, around which the
crowd has gathered. One
of the ponies
takes a sudden fright and a stampede fol-
lows, the
spectators scattering right and
left. For a moment the intended captive
is
wedged in the midst of the rest of the herd.
Uncle Ken sees his
advantage. He rushes
forward, the noose is dropped and settles
around the
ponys neck. Immediately six
lusty negroes, with glistening teeth,
perspir-
ing faces and glittering eyes, are at the
other end of the rope.
The animal makes
a gallant fight. This way and that he
hauls his
assailants, rearing and squealing.
Now he makes a sudden side dash
and
sends them rolling over and over, plowing
their heads through the
shifting sand till
their wool is fairly powdered; still, however,
the boys
hold on to the rope. At length
the choking halter commences to tell;
the
pony, with rolling eyes and quivering flanks,
wheezes audibly. Now is
the moment! In
rush the negroes, clutching the animal by
legs and tail. A
wrestle and a heave, a
struggle on the ponys part, a kick that sends
Ned
hopping with a barked shin like a crazy
turkey, and Sambo plowing through
the
sand and stinkweed in among the spectators,
and then over goes the
pony with four or
five lusty shouting negroes sprawling around
him. The
work is done: a running noose
is slipped around the ponys nose, his
fore-
lock is tied to this by a bit of string, and
soon his tantrums cease
as he realizes that
he is indeed a captive.
Many of the ponies are
taken over the
narrow channel that separates Chincoteague
from Assateague,
to run wild upon the latter
island, which is largely unclaimed land.
We
were so fortunate ns to witness the lively
scene of the swimming of a
number of ponies
across this channel or inlet. For a mile we
tramped
through salt meadows rank with
sedge, while everywhere from _beneath
our
feet scattered innumerable ridiculous little
fiddler-crabs about the
size of a silver quar-
ter of a dollar, one claw of enormous mag-
nitude
and conspicuousness and the other
preposterously small and insignificant,
like
the candidates for President and Vice-
President. At length we
arrived at the
edge of the channel, the ponies whickering
as their
nostrils fill with the salt air. One
man enters the boat and poles it
along,
the channel being very shallow, while an-
other with a rope in his
hand drags at a
pony. The pony is stubborn and will not
enter. Kicks and
blows rain freely upon
him, the negroes running up to give him a
kick and
then rushing frantically away in
mortal terror of the returning kick of
the
UNCLE KEN.
animal. Presently, with a splash the pony
is in,
and then all goes smoothly until his
feet touch the sheltering bank on the
other
side, when the plunging recommences, and
one poor wretch who has
hold of the halter,
and whose thoughts are wandering, awakes
to find
himself where he has not been for a
long timein cold water.
Among
the visitors to the island we made
some pleasant acquaintances, chief
among
whom was a learned naturalist from the
Baltimore Academy of Natural
Science. The
professor was puzzling the natives greatly by
his strange
proceedings, his butterfly nets
and insect-collecting, his seines,
dredges,
and deep-sea fishing. During a trip we took
together through
brake and thicket,the pro-
fessor wide-awake for specimens~we made,
View
page 742
742 CHINCO TEA G UE.
unknown to ourselves, some
very unpleasant
acquaintances. As we returned to the
shore and seated
ourselves leisurely upon a
stranded boat to smoke and chat, we sud-
denly
discovered that we were literally
covered with seed-ticks, minute insects
that
burrow beneath the skin, causing a madden-
ing irritation. After vain
endeavors to pick
them off; we started in haste for the hotel,
there to
scrub, in the secrecy of ones
chamber, in a tub of salt
water.
Everything at Chincoteague seems con-
ducted in unique and
unconventional fash-
ion. The only butcher-shop is no shop
at all, but
only a spot in th~ woods, where
from two cross-pieces between the
trees
cattle are strung up by a block and tackle
and slaughtered, after
which their skins
are stretched and dyed. It is a wild,
gloomy place,
surrounded by towering pines
of a centurys growth, straight as arrows.
The
piney needles have sung to the wind
many a dirge of slaughtered
cattle.
The chief restaurant of Chincoteague
is a piece of sail
elegantly draped over a
few upright posts, with a canvas streamer
above it
bearing conspicuously the sign,
Stewed Oysters.
Upon the western
side of the island is a
bluff that overlooks the Atlantic toward
the
south. It is a barren, sandy spot; here and
there a cactus crawls
along half hidden in
the shifting sand, or a clump of coarse grass
shivers
and whispers in the breeze. It is
called the Old Grave-yard, and in this
lonely,
desolate, silent spot a few rounded stones
and pieces of carved
wood without letter or
sign mark the last resting-places. There
is
something touching in the sentiment that
impelled those rough, uncultured
people to
lay the weary, fever-burnt bones of their com-
panions here in
this lonely spot, facing the
ocean they knew so well. Every year, as
from
the south the tumultuous waves of the
Atantic roll up the Thore, the bluff
washes
away, and the bones of the departed are
brought to a premature
resurrection. The
burial-ground now in use is farther up the
island and in
the interior; a ridge dotted
with head-stones runs up beneath the
shel-
ter of aged pines, with branches crooked
as the cedars of Lebanon
and draped with
pall-like festoons of gray Florida moss.
Upon Uncle
Kens estate of six hundred
and sixty-five acres, valued at about
four
thousand dollars and called Wild-Cat Marsh.
numerous flocks of
domesticated wild geese
are feeding. Every year numbers of those
birds are
shot in their passage south. The
natives sink a barrel into the ground
close
to the beach in which they hide, and when
the geese swimming far out
at sea approach
the beach to gravel they fall an easy
prey to the gunners.
Those that are only
winged are saved and subsequently domes-
ticated. One
frequently hears the peculiar
resonant hank of the xvild geese,
and,
looking in the direction from which it came,
sees the black head and
neck of a bird
stretching above the surrounding sedge.
These birds cross
freely with the ordinary
domesticated geese, producing a hybrid
which is
called a mule goose.
The fishing and gunning of Chincoteague
are
excellent. Innumerable snipe are shot
and sea-trout caught, some of the
latter
weighing as much as two pounds. The
bathing would be excellent were
it not for
numerous neighboring sharks, some of them
twenty or twenty-five
feet long. When one
sees a triangular fin cutting the glassy sur-
face of
the water near at hand, much of the
pleasure of bathing is taken
away.
Sharing the interest with the pony
penning is an occasional
camp-meeting
in the woods, occurring once in a year
or so. In among the
great pines of Chin-
coteague is a noble place for such a gath-
ering,
when at night their huge trunks
are illuminated by the light of the
pine
OLD DAN TUCKER.
View
page 743
CHINCO TEA G UE. 743
chunk bonfires, in the
gleam of which
the distant trees flash forth for a moment
and then vanish
into obscurity again,and
when the solemn meas-
ured chant of the
Metho-
dist hymns is heard and
the congregation sways
with the mighty
religious
passion that stirs them,
while over all hang lurid
wreathings
of resinous
smoke.
So far as one sees, geese,
dogs, children and
pigs
compose the chief popu-
lation of Chincoteague.
The last thing to
be heard
in the evening and at in-
tervals during the night is
the
cackling of geese, and
when one wakes in the
morning the geese
are
cackling still. Pigs are
almost as much a feature
of the place. The
natural born Chinco-
teague porker is a thin, scrawny animal like
his
owner, the fisherman. He has a medita-
tive air of curiosity and will watch a
stranger
askance, at the same time grunting in a
low tone to himself, as
though making his
own observations. Quite a different char-
acter is the
porcine nobleman from the
main-land. He is regarded with
affectionate
reverence by his owner and grows fat upon
fish and succulent
mollusks, taking his siesta
in undisturbed possession of the
softest
sand-bank.
It is difficult to say to what extent the
law
may be exercised in Chincoteague,
CROSSING TO ASSATEAGUE.
for certainly
there is not a place of confine-
ment upon the whole island. We
witnessed,
however, what we imagine must have been
a sample of the
enforcement of the law.
Two negro boys were fighting, rolling
over the
ground and biting at each other,
when up rushed the magistrate of the
island,
seized a heavy barrel stave and delivered
such blows right and
left upon the heads of
the belligerent blacks as would have stunned
any
ordinary white man.
Many traditions of the island are handed
down
from mouth to mouth by the natives,
but few of them being able to read or
write.
It is thus we receive a full account of the
great storm and
accompanying tidal wave
of the year 1821; telling how the black
wrack
gathered all one dreadful day to the south-
east; how all
night
the breathless air,
inky black, was full
of strange moan-
ing
sounds, and
pine needles quiv-
ered at the fore-
casting
hurricane
that lay in wait in
the southward off-
ing; how
sea-mews
and gulls hurtled
screaming through
the midnight air;
how
in the early
moming the ter-
rified inhabitants,
looking from
their
windows facing
the ocean, saw an
THE MAJESTY OF THE LAW.
View
page 744
744 CHINCOIEA G UE.
UNCLE
BENNY.
awful sight: the waters had receded toward
the southward,
and where the Atlantic
had rolled the night before, miles of sand-
bars
lay bare to the gloomy light, as the
bottom of the Red Sea to the
Israelites;
then how a dull roar came near and nearer,
and suddenly a
solid mass of wind and rain
and salt spray leaped upon the devoted
island
with a scream. Great pines bent for
a moment, and then, groaning and
shriek-
ing, were torn from their centuried growth
like wisps of straw and
hurled one against
another; houses were cut from their founda-
tions and
thrown headlong, and then a
deeper roar swelled the noise of the
tempest,
and a monstrous wall of inky waters rushed
with the speed of
lightning toward the island.
It struck Assateague, and in a moment
half
the land was a waste of seething foam and
tossing pine trunks; the
next instant it
struck Chincoteague, and in an unbroken
mass swept across
the low south marsh flats,
carrying away men and ponies like
insects;
rushing up the island, tearing its way through
the stricken pine
woods.
Many a time by the side of his bright
crackling fire, the
aged Chincoteaguer, remov-
ing his pipe from the toothless gums where
he
has heen sucking its bitter sweetness, will
tell, as the winter wind roars up
from the
ocean, how Hickman, with his little grand-
son clinging to his
neck, was swept by the
great wave to Kings Bush marsh, far up on
the
main-land six miles away, and caught in
the tough branches of its bushes; or
how
Andrews, with wife and family swept away
in his sight, was borne up
the island on the
waters, and the next morning was discov-
ered hanging in
a pine-tree, by his waistband
twenty feet from the
ground.
Chincotengue, united by no ties of inter-
est to the rest of
East Virginia, and depend-
ent for its necessaries, its flour,
tobacco,
whisky, and calicoes, upon Philadelphia and
New York, claims to
have been during the
war the only loyal portion of the eastern
coast of
Virginia. When the ratification of
secession was returned to the votes of
the
people, only one man in Chincoteague,
THE PONY PEN.
View
page 745
CHINCOIEA G UE. 745
Joseph Hill by name, cast
his vote for it
and then died. An immense Bell and Everett
flag-pole, one
hundred and twenty feet in
height, was erected,chiefly through
the
instrumentality of Mr. J. A. M. Whealton,
one of the most prominent of
the present
inhabitants of Chincoteague,and to the top
of the pole were
raised a great bell and a
United States flag. It was distinctly seen
from
the main-land, and a deputation soon
visited Mr. Whealton, demanding its
removal.
Gentlemen, said the gallant little Union-
ist, I erected
that flag and bell, and when
they go down, I go down with them; but
so
long as I have a dram of powder and an
ounce of lead, and am able to use
tbem,
there they stay. And there they staid.
But when the northern
ports were closed to
southern trade, Chincoteague suffered much.
No flour,
calico, or tobacco, and, what
was worse, no whisky, could be obtained
from
the North. As to the South, it was
more bitter against the so-called
renegades
than against the Yankees proper. A boat
was loaded with oysters
and sent to Phila-
delphia, only to be immediately captured.
Another was
started, and met with a similar
fate. Then Mr. Whealton went himself,
and,
after much difficulty, secured the desired
articles and conveyed them in
triumph to
Chincoteague. He then employed Dr. Snow
of Snow Hill to plead
the cause of the loyal-
ists in Washington, and so well did the
Doctor
fulfill his mission, tbat the gun-boat
Louisiana was sent to lie in
Chincoteague
Bay for the protection of the inhabitants.
For two or three
days the Secessionists,
some two or three hundred in number, stood
upon
the main-land, about half a mile from
the Louisiana, upon which they kept
up
a running fire, without, however, doing any
damage. Soon General
Lockwood was sta-
tidned upon the eastern shore, and then,
with the
protecting arm of the Federal Gov-
ernment around her, Chincoteague
enjoyed
her hominy-pots and whisky in unbroken
felicity.
J. A. M.
WHEALTON.
THE STORM OF 1821.
View
page 746
746 lYLE HILLS or LINGAJYOA~E.
THE
HILLS OF LINGANORE.
wNeath tall oerarching trees we rode,
And watched
the mists the mountains
climb;
Below the singing river flowed,
Above us
rang the herd-hells chime;
The distant mountains dimly blue
Leaned soft
against the bending skies,
While towering oer the homes we knew,
We saw
the spires of Frederick rise.
The flock went bleating to the fold;
The
songbird fluttered to her nest,
And purple waves of twilight rolled
Oer
all the crimson-flooded west
As fast we rode oer hill and deli,
The river
rambling on before;
While night and silence softly fell
Upon the hills of
Linganore.
Then, musing as we homeward went,
Oh! friend, I said, how
fair would
seem
A life in some low cottage spent
Beside yon softly
flowing stream!
My robins there should build and sing,
My roses bloom, my
ivies climb,
And every golden moment ring
Some note in joys bewildering
chime.
Ah! well, if these things might be so ;
But who shall ask,
and who can tell,
How smooth the stream of life may flow,
By mountain
crag, or dreamy dell?
Far back among the peaceful years
A maiden roamed
these pathways oer,
And trilled her songs for happy ears
Among the hills
of Linganore;
rHE evening wind blew sweet and cool
Oer hills and vales of
Maryland,
And swept the dimpling stream and pool
Aglow with sunset
splendors grand;
While leaves of crimson, gold and brown,
And silvery
tufts that float and soar,
Along our path came fluttering down
Among the
hills of Linganore.
