are two lateral chambers eight feet square. The walls are of smooth cement, the floors paved

round stone table with a central shaft and spreading feet. Again, tradition comes to our

aid with tales of a hiding-place from the Indians, connected with a subterranean passage, long ago closed, that led to the river. Leaning over the mouth of the shaft, while two gallant young men descended a ladder with lamps which revealed the arched entrances of the mysterious recesses, we three practical women scouted Major Drewry's suggestions of meat and wine cellars, and when we had drawn from him the account of a tunnel, the mouth of which was unearthed by his laborers but a few weeks before, we remained in possession of the field. Nothing was clearer to our apprehension than that this tunnel-opening upon the river-five feet in height and as many wide, and paved with flagstones, formerly connected directly with our vaults, and was constructed in the near memory of the Indian Massacre of 1622, when in the list of the "killed" we read "At Westover about a mile from Berkeley Hundred, 33." Had not Cooper described in his Wept-of-Wish-ton-Wish, just such a well, in which a whole colony took refuge while the blockhouse was burned over their heads?

Berkeley, the "Berkeley Hundred” of the chronicle, is still in excellent preservation, the English brick of which it was built promising to

last two centuries longer. The owner of the plantation at the date of the Massacre was Mr. George Thorpe, one of the principal men of the colony who had befriended Opechancanough-the uncle of Pocahontas-in every possible manner, and treated all the Indians

of his danger by a servant, but, making no effort to escape, fell a victim to his misplaced confidence."

The place passed out of the Harrison family, a quarter-century ago, after eight generations of the name and blood had owned it and lived there. Gen. W. H. Harrison was born at Berkeley, and came to Virginia, after his election to the Presidency, expressly to write his inaugural "in his mother's room."

III

SHIRLEY

THE

'HE old homesteads of James River are linked together by ties of consanguinity and affection, interesting and sometimes amusing to the outside spectator, yet exceedingly pretty in the natural acceptation of relationships on the part of those involved in them.

The ramifications of blood and family connections exist elsewhere of course, but it is seldom that a locality-such as a village or township-in Northern and Western States, is settled entirely by cousins from generation to generation. Still rarer is the custom of recognizing the kinship to the fifth and sixth remove, which makes the Old Virginia neighborhood a standing illustration of the text"He hath made of one blood all nations" (read "conditions”) “of men.”