The young lieutenant of artillery, and the old general above described, was no other than William Tecumseh Sherman, commander of the armies of the Union. His companion was the officer who afterwards became famous as General Halleck. Neither of them ever met again their host of that evening.

In later years, he also became a distinguished general, but on the Confederate side. He never knew that Sherman and Halleck, the great Union generals, were the young officers he entertained at Rio the night I was born; for he died many years before the general revealed his identity as above related.

Forty years after this meeting, when I was in Congress, I received a letter from a dear old retired chaplain of the navy living in Boston, Rev. Mr. Lambert, asking my assistance in some public matter, and concluding with the remark that this demand of a stranger sprung from the fact that the writer had held me in his arms and baptized me at the American legation in Rio, April 14, 1847.

In the spring of 1847, my father asked the President for a recall; and, his petition being granted, the United States frigate Columbia was placed at his disposal for the return to America.

I was a tried seaman when, for the first time, I set foot upon the soil of my country, and took up my resi dence where my people had lived for over two hundred years. I was not born on the soil of the United States, but nevertheless in the United States; for the place where I was born was the home of a United States minister, and under the protection of the United States flag, and was in law as much the soil of the United States as any within its boundaries. Descended from a number of people who helped to form the Union, born under the

glorious stars and stripes, rocked in the cradle of an American man-of-war, and taught to love the Union next to my Maker, little did I dream of the things, utterly inconsistent with such ideas, which were to happen to me and mine within the first eighteen years of my existence.

CHAPTER II

THE KINGDOM OF ACCAWMACKE

OUR voyage terminated in the kingdom of Accawmacke, the abiding-place of my ancestors for two and a half centuries. Although within eight hours of New York and six hours from Philadelphia by rail, the region and its people are as unlike those of these crowded centres of humanity as if they were a thousand miles away.

John Smith tells us, in his memorable narrative of his earliest American explorations, that when Captain Nelson sailed in June, 1607, for England, in the good ship Phoenix, he, John, in his own barge, accompanied him to the Virginia capes; and there, after delivering his writings for the company, he parted with him near the southernmost cape, which he named Cape Henry. Sailing northward, Captain Smith first visited the seaward island, which he named Smith's Island, after himself. It is still called Smith's Island, and is owned by the Lee family. Then he returned to the northernmost cape, at the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay, and named it Cape Charles, in honor of the unfortunate prince afterwards known as Charles I. Upon the point of this cape Smith encountered an Indian chief, whom he describes as "the most comely, proper, civil salvage" he had yet met. The name of this chief was Kictopeke. He was called "The Laughing King of Accomack," and Accomack means, in the Indian tongue, "The Land Beyond the Water." He bore in his hand a long spear or harpoon, with a sharp

ened fish-bone or shell upon its point; and he it was who taught John Smith and his companions to spear the sheepshead and other fish in the shallow waters hard by. John Smith and The Laughing King have been buried for well-nigh three centuries, but the people about Cape Charles still spear sheepshead on the shoals in the same

old way.

Smith and his companions cruised along the western shore of this Peninsula of Accawmacke, which is the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay, until they reached what is now called Pocomoke River, the present boundary between Virginia and Maryland. The distance is probably eighty miles. The reason assigned for the long cruise was that they were searching for fresh water. To those who know the abundant springs of the Peninsula, this statement is surprising. Overtaken in the neighborhood of Pocomoke by one of those summer thunder-storms which are so prevalent in that region, they were driven across the bay to the western shore, and thence they cruised down the Chesapeake until they turned into what is now called Hampton Roads. Passing the low sandspit where the ramparts of Fortress Monroe now frown and the gay summer resorts are built, they stopped at the Indian village Kickotan, located upon the present site of Hampton. Obtaining there a good supply of food from the Indians, they returned to the Jamestown settlement, about forty miles up the river, then called Powhatan, now known as the James. In this as in all things, the Englishman appropriated what belonged to the Indian, and King James supplanted King Powhatan.

It was on this return voyage that Smith, while practicing the art acquired from the King of Accawmacke, impaled a fish upon his sword, in the shallow waters about the mouth of the Rappahannock River. Unaware of the

dangerous character of his captive, he received in his wrist a very painful wound from the spike-like fin upon the tail of the fish. This wound caused such soreness and such swelling that he thought he was like to die, and his whole party went ashore and laid Smith under a tree, where he made his will. "But," says he, " by night time the swelling and soreness had so abated that I had the pleasure of eating that fish for supper." The next morning the journey was resumed, and the place, in remembrance of the incident, was named Stingaree Point. To this day, that point at the mouth of the Rappahannock is called Stingaree Point; and that fish is still called Stingaree by the people along the Chesapeake Bay.

After this famous cruise, John Smith, who was as active and restless as a box of monkeys, made his map of Virginia, which is still extant, and a pretty good map it is, showing his capes and his islands, and his points and his rivers, and what not, in which map the Kingdom of Accawmacke bears a most conspicuous part.

On that historic document, old John at certain points printed little pictures of deer, to show where they most abounded; and at other points he designated where the wild turkeys were most plentiful. The author of this humble narrative has, in his day, hunted every variety of game which abounds at the present time in Old Virginia ; and just where the deer and turkeys were most abundant in 1608, according to John Smith's map, there are they most abundant now. In the counties of Surry and Sussex, upon the south side of the James, run, doubtless, the descendants of those very deer whose pictures adorn the map of John Smith, published three centuries ago; and within the past twelve months the writer has followed the great-great-great-grandchildren of the identical turkeys, no doubt, from whose flocks were captured, in 1616,