CHAPTER I. BIRTHPLACE. CAWSONS, situated on a commanding promontory, near the mouth of Appomatox river, was the family seat of Colonel Theodorick Bland, Senior, of Prince George. After winding amidst its woody islands. around the base of this hill, the river spreads out into a wide bay; and, together with the James, into which it empties, makes towards the north and east a magnificent water prospect, embracing in one view Shirley, the seat of the Carters, Bermuda Hundred, with its harbor and ships, City Point, and other places of less note. In the midst of this commanding scene, the old mansion-house reared its ample proportions, and, with its offices and extended wings, was not an unworthy representative of the baronial days in which it was builtwhen Virginia cavaliers, under the title of gentlemen, with their broad domain of virgin soil, and long retinue of servants, lived in a style of elegance and profusion, not inferior to the barons of England, and dispensed a hospitality which more than half a century of subdivision, exhaustion, and decay, has not entirely effaced from the memory of their impoverished descendants. cence. At Cawsons, scarcely a vestige now remains of former magnifiThe old mansion was burnt down many years ago. Here and there a solitary out-dwelling, which escaped the conflagration, like the old servants of a decayed family, seem to speak in melancholy pride of those days, when it was their glory to stand in the shadow of loftier walls, and reflect back their loud revelry, when "The misletoe hung in the castle hall, The holly branch shone on the old oak wall; VOL. I. 1 |