The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 33, July, 1860. Various

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СКАЧАТЬ illustrate incidents long obscured and incapable of explanation. They are like the lost links of a chain, which, being found, supply the means of giving cohesion and completeness to the heretofore useless fragments. The scholar's experience is full of these reunions of illustrative incidents gathered from regions far apart in space, and often in time. The historian's skill is challenged to its highest task in the effort to draw together those tissues of personal and local adventure which, at first without seeming or suspected dependence, prove, when brought into their proper relationship with each other, to be unerring exponents of events of highest concern.

      It is pleasant to fall upon the course of one of these currents of adventure,– to follow a solitary rivulet of tradition, such as by chance we now and then find modestly flowing along through the obscure coverts of time, and to be able to trace its progress to the confluence of other streams,–and finally to see it grow, by the aid of these tributaries, to the proportions of an ample river, which waters the domain of authentic history and bears upon its bosom a clear testimony to the life and character of a people.

      The following legend furnishes a striking and attractive exemplification of such a growth, in the unfolding of a romantic passage of Maryland history, of which no annalist has ever given more than an ambiguous and meagre hint. It refers to a deed of bloodshed, of which the only trace that was not obliterated from living rumor so long as a century ago was to be found in a vague and misty relic of an old memory of the provincial period of the State. The facts by which I have been enabled to bring it to the full light of an historical incident, it will be seen in the perusal of this narrative, have successively, and by most curious process of development, risen into view through a series of accidental discoveries, which have all combined, with singular coincidence and adaptation, to furnish an unquestionable chapter of Maryland history, altogether worthy of recital for its intrinsic interest, and still more worthy of preservation for the elements it supplies towards a correct estimate of the troubles which beset the career and formed the character and manners of the forefathers of the State.

      CHAPTER I.

      TALBOT'S CAVE

      It is now many years ago,–long before I had reached manhood,–that, through my intimacy with a friend, then venerable for his years and most attractive to me by his store of historical knowledge, I became acquainted with a tradition touching a strange incident that had reference to a mysterious person connected with a locality on the Susquehanna River near Havre de Grace. In that day the tradition was repeated by a few of the oldest inhabitants who dwelt in the region. I dare say it has now entirely run out of all remembrance amongst their descendants, and that I am, perhaps, the only individual in the State who has preserved any traces of the facts to which I allude.

      There was, until not long ago, a notable cavern at the foot of a rocky cliff about a mile below the town of Port Deposit. It was of small compass, yet sufficiently spacious to furnish some rude shelter against the weather to one who might seek refuge within its solitary chamber. It opened upon the river just where a small brook comes brattling down the bank, along the base of a hill of some magnitude that yet retains the stately name of Mount Ararat. The visitor of this cavern might approach it by a boat from the river, or by a rugged path along the margin of the brook and across the ledges of the rock. This rough shelter went by the name of Talbot's Cave down to a very recent period, and would still go by that name, if it were yet in existence. But it happened, not many years since, that Port Deposit was awakened to a sudden notion of the value of the granite of the cliff, and, as commerce is a most ruthless contemner of all romance, and never hesitates between a speculation of profit and a speculation of history, Talbot's Cave soon began to figure conspicuously in the Price Current, and in a very little while disappeared, like a witch from the stage, in blasts of sulphur fire and rumbling thunder, under the management of those effective scene-shifters, the quarrymen. A government contract, more potent than the necromancy of the famed wizard Michael Scott, lifted this massive rock from its base, and, flying with it full two hundred miles, buried it fathoms below the surface of the Atlantic, at the Rip Raps, near Hampton Roads; and thus it happens that I cannot vouch the ocular proof of the Cave to certify the legend I am about to relate.

      The tradition attached to this spot had nothing but a misty and spectral outline. It was indefinite in the date, uncertain as to persons, mysterious as to the event,–just such a tradition as to whet the edge of one's curiosity and to leave it hopeless of gratification. I may relate it in a few words.

      Once upon a time, somewhere between one and two hundred years ago, there was a man by the name of Talbot, a kinsman of Lord Baltimore, who had committed some crime, for which he fled and became an outlaw and was pursued by the authorities of the Province. To escape these, he took refuge in the wilderness on the Susquehanna, where he found this cave, and used it for concealment and defence for some time,–how long, the tradition does not say. This region was then inhabited by a fierce tribe of Indians, who are described on Captain John Smith's map as the "Sasquesahannocks," and who were friendly to the outlaw and supplied him with provisions. To these details was added another, which threw an additional interest over the story,–that Talbot had a pair of beautiful English hawks, such as were most prized in the sport of falconry, and that these were the companions of his exile, and were trained by him to pursue and strike the wild duck that abounded, then as now, on this part of the river; and he thus found amusement to beguile his solitude, as well as sustenance in a luxurious article of food, which is yet the pride of gastronomic science, and the envy of bons vivants throughout this continent.

      These hawks my aged friend had often himself seen, in his own boyish days, sweeping round the cliffs and over the broad expanse of the Susquehanna. They were easily distinguished, he said, by the residents of that district, by their peculiar size and plumage, being of a breed not known to our native ornithology, and both being males. For many years, it was affirmed,–long after the outlaw had vanished from the scene,–these gallant old rovers of the river still pursued their accustomed game, a solitary pair, without kindred or acquaintance in our woods. They had survived their master,–no one could tell how long,–but had not abandoned the haunts of his exile. They still for many a year saw the wilderness beneath their daily flight giving place to arable fields, and learned to exchange their wary guard against the Indian's arrow for a sharper watch of the Anglo-Saxon rifle. Up to the last of their appearance the country-people spoke of them as Talbot's hawks.

      This is a summary of the story, as it was told to me. No inquiry brought me any addition to these morsels of narrative. Who this Talbot was,–what was his crime,–how long he lived in this cave, and at what era,–were questions upon which the oracle of my tradition was dumb.

      Such a story would naturally take hold of the fancy of a lover of romance, and kindle his zeal for an enterprise to learn something more about it; and I may reasonably suppose that this short sketch has already stirred the bosoms of the novel-reading portion, at least, of my readers with a desire that I should tell them what, in my later researches, I have found to explain this legend of the Cave. Even the outline I have given is suggestive of inferences to furnish quite a plausible chapter of history.

      First, it is clear, from the narrative, that Talbot was a gentleman of rank in the old Province,–for he was kinsman to the Lord Proprietary; and there is one of the oldest counties of Maryland that bears the name of his family,– perhaps called so in honor of himself. Then he kept his hawks, which showed him to be a man of condition, and fond of the noble sport which figures so gracefully in the annals of Chivalry.

      Secondly, this hawking carries the period of the story back to the time of one of the early Lords Baltimore; for falconry was not common in the eighteenth century: and yet the date could not have been much earlier than that century, because the hawks had been seen by old persons of the last generation somewhere about the period of our Revolution; and this bird does not live much over a hundred years. So we fix a date not far from sixteen hundred and eighty for Talbot's sojourn on the river.

      Thirdly, the crime for which he was outlawed could scarcely have been a mean felony, perpetrated for gain, but more likely some СКАЧАТЬ