st occurrences in the vicinity. Then the dwellings of
Hampton were burned and its people exiled. In rapid succession followed
the naval battles in the Roads, the siege and surrender of Yorktown, the
flight of the Confederates up the Peninsula to Richmond, and finally the
battles of Williamsburg, and West Point, and the capture of Norfolk.
These things had already transpired; it was now the month of May; and
the victorious army, following up its vantages, had pursued the
fugitives by land and water to "White House," at the head of navigation
on the Pamunkey river. Thither it was my lot to go, and witness the
turning-point of their fortunes, and their subsequent calamity and
repulse.

I found Old Point a weary place of resort, even in the busy era of civil
war. The bar at the Hygeia House was beset with thirsty and idle
people, who swore instinctively, and drank raw spirits passionately. The
quantity of shell, ball, ordnance, camp equipage, and war munitions of
every description piled around the fort, was marvellously great. It
seemed to me that Xerxes, the first Napoleon, or the greediest of
conquerors, ancient or modern, would have beheld with amazement the
gigantic preparations at command of the Federal Government. Energy and
enterprise displayed their implements of death on every hand. One was
startled at the prodigal outlay of means, and the reckless summoning of
men. I looked at the starred and striped ensign that flaunted above the
Fort, and thought of Madame Roland's appeal to the statue by the
guillotine.

The settlers were numbered by regiments here. Their places of business
were mainly structures or "shanties" of rough plank, and most of them
were the owners of sloops, or schooners, for the transportation of
freight from New York, Philadelphia, or Baltimore, to their depots at
Old Point. Some possessed a dozen wagons, that plied regularly between
these stores and camps. The traffic was not confined to men; for women
and children kept pace with the army, trading in every possible article
of necessity or luxury. For these--disciples of the dime and the
dollar--war had no terrors. They took their muck-rakes, like the man in
Bunyan, and gathered the almighty coppers, from the pestilential camp
and the reeking battle-field.

CHAPTER VII.

ON TO RICHMOND.

Yorktown lies twenty-one miles northwestward from Old Point, and thither
I turned my face at noon, resolving to delay my journey to "White
House," t