CHAPTER III.
A GRAVEYARD AND AN EPITAPH.
Within a short distance of this spot, perhaps not a mile from Drum
Point, there is a small creek which opens into the river and bears
the name of Mattapony. In early times there was a notable fort here,
and connected with it a stately mansion, built by Charles Calvert,
Lord Baltimore, for his own occasional residence. The fort and
mansion are often mentioned in the Provincial records as the place
where the Council sometimes met to transact business; and accordingly
many public acts are dated from Mattapony.
Calvert was doubtless attracted to this spot by the pleasant scenery
of the headland which here looks out upon the noble water-view of the
Chesapeake, and by its breezy position as an agreeable refuge from
the heats of summer.
Our party, therefore, determined to set out upon a search for some
relics of the mansion and fort; and as a guide in this enterprise, we
engaged an old negro who seemed to have a fair claim in his own
conceit to be regarded both as the Solomon and the Methuselah of the
plantation. He was a wrinkled, wise-looking old fellow, with a watery
eye and a grizzled head, and might, perhaps, have been about eighty;
but, from his own account, he left us to infer that he was not much
behind that great patriarch of Scripture whose years are described as
one hundred and threescore and fifteen.
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