I found what I
could not say was wholly lost, but what, until Mr. Ridgely's
exploration drew attention to the records, might have been said to
have shrunk from all notice of the present generation, and to be fast
falling a prey to the tooth of time and the visit of the worm. A few
years more of neglect and the ill usage of careless custodians, and
it would have passed to that depository of things lost upon the
earth, which fable has placed in the moon. It was my good fortune, in
this upturning of relics of the past, to lay my hand upon a sadly
tattered and decayed MS. volume,--unbound, without beginning and
without end, coated with the dust which had been gathering upon it
ever since Chalmers and Bozman had done their work of deciphering its
quaint old text. It lay in the state of rubbish, in an old case,
where many documents of the same kind had been consigned to the same
oblivion, and with it had been sleeping for as many years, perhaps,
as the Beauty in the fairy tale,--happily destined, at last, to be
awakened, as she was, by one who by his perseverance had won a title
to herself.
This manuscript was now, in this day of revival, brought out from its
hiding-place, and, upon inspection, proved to be a Journal of the
Council for some few years including the very date of the death of
the Collector on the Patuxent.
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