to the
stream. She was obeying every turn of the steering-wheel perfectly (as
indeed she always did except when the mischievous wind put notions into
her head); and it was not her fault at all when her bow swung round
under the tree that leaned out over the water and almost knocked her
little chimney off. We dropped down the stream and passed out into the
river where everything was softened and beautified by the light fog.

Skirting the low northern shore, we looked across the river at the high
southern one where, through the mist, we could see the town of City
Point and the bold promontory that marked where the Appomattox was
flowing into the James. Upon the tip of the promontory was the home of
the Eppes family, "Appomattox." While the present house is not a
colonial one, the estate is one of the oldest in the country.

Now, just ahead of us was the Shirley pier on one side of the river and
the village of Bermuda Hundred on the other. We headed first for the
village, our intention being to get some supplies there.

We could not see much of Bermuda Hundred, perhaps because there was not
much to see. It consists principally of age, having been founded only
four years after the settlement of James Towne. Still, we let the
sailor go ashore for butter and eggs, trusting that both would be as
modern as possible. Our supplies aboard, Gadabout quickly carried us
across the river and landed us at Shirley.

[Illustration: THE KITCHEN BUILDING, FIFTY YARDS FROM THE MANOR-HOUSE.]

In that last visit to the old home, we went across the quadrangle and
into the kitchen building, with its cook-room on one side of the hall
and its bake-room on the other. Of course most of the colonial kitchen
appointments had long since disappeared; but we were glad to see, in
the stone-paved bake-room, the old-time brick ovens. With their
cavernous depths, they were quite an object lesson in early Virginia
hospitality.

And can any modern ranges bake quite as perfectly as did those colonial
brick ovens? After a fire of oven-wood had flamed for hours in one of
those brick chambers, and at last the iron door had been opened and the
ashes swept out, the heated interior was ready to receive the meats and
breads and pastry, and to bake them "to a turn."

When, in the restoration of Mount Vernon, the kitchen was reached,
recourse was had to Shirley's kitchen. Drawings were made of an unusual
colonial table, of a pair of andirons with hooks for spits