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Updated: May 21, 2025
But it took a gypsy craft like Gadabout to wriggle up the little back-country creek and to land among the chickens and the geese and bulls perhaps; but then all explorers must take chances. Kittewan Creek is a marsh stream; yet for some distance in from the mouth tall cypresses stand along the reedy banks.
Fortunately, the James narrowed at this point, thus increasing the sweep of the tide that was helping us along, and slowly Gadabout pushed on, slapping down hard on the big waves and holding steady. A short distance beyond Sturgeon Point was the indentation in the shore marking the mouth of Kittewan Creek.
But now the houseboaters upon Gadabout were becoming fearful lest Dame Nature had closed her doors on ahead of them and would not receive them up the Kittewan. It was good news when the sailor called from his rowboat that he had found a channel for going on around the island.
As the sunset lights were fading, we saw a new moon pale on the tinted sky; and we thought of how for almost two centuries crescent moons had trembled from silver to gold above this forlorn grave on the bank of the Kittewan. A short row in the dusk out upon the stream, and we stepped aboard Gadabout. She never seemed more cozy and homelike.
The next day we determined to run around to the river front of Weyanoke. We were yet charmed with the idea of being back-door neighbours of the old plantation; but not at quite such long range. When the tide served, Gadabout dropped down the twisting Kittewan.
She turned a bend and, there ahead, hummocks and stumps occupied about all there was left of Kittewan Creek. The head of navigation had been reached for even our presumptuous craft. An anchor was cast; whereupon Gadabout swung to one side, bumped against a tree, and then settled herself comfortably in the marshes to await our pleasure.
Kittewan Creek is no place in particular, but near it are two old plantations that historians and story-writers have talked a good deal about. These two estates, Weyanoke and Fleur de Hundred, having no longer pretentious colonial mansions, are often overlooked by the traveller on the James, who thereby loses a worthy chapter of the river story.
Weyanoke plantation is a peninsula lying in a sharp elbow of the river, so that it was a run of a few miles from the mouth of Kittewan Creek, on one side of the peninsula, around to the Weyanoke pier on the other side. Upon reaching the sharp bend in the river at the point of the peninsula, we could see one reason anyway why Grant should have chosen this as a place for crossing the James.
In the morning the sun and the mist filled our little harbour with a golden shimmer, and all the marsh reeds were quivering in the radiance. The blue herons were winging out to the river, and the doves were weaving spells round and round the dormer-windowed cottage on the hill. Gadabout's household was early astir ready for the run up Kittewan Creek.
As Gadabout lay moored in Kittewan Creek, the houses of Weyanoke were not very far from us, and one of them was in plain sight; but the question was how to get to them. Wide stretches of marsh bordered the stream and a wire fence ran along the reedy edge. We began to be impressed with the advantage of approaching such a plantation in the customary way, by the river front.
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