The boxes aboard, our lines were cast off and Gadabout moved on up the James.

[Illustration:  A trapper’s home by the Riverbank.]

Soon we were approaching one of the most historic points on the river.  We could tell that by a deserted old manor-house occupying a fine, neglected site on the left bank of the stream.

While the main structure still stood firm, and would for generations to come as it had for generations gone, yet the verandas about it had been partially burned and had collapsed, and the place looked dilapidated and forlorn.  In front, the spacious grounds, once terraced gardens, stretched wild and overgrown down to the river, where the straggling ruins of a pier completed the picture of desolation.

But, even neglected and abandoned, this sturdy colonial home, nearly two centuries old, still wore a noble air of family pride; still looked bravely out upon the river.  And why should it not?  What house but old Berkeley is the ancestral home of a signer of the Declaration of Independence and of two Presidents of the United States?

This plantation became the colonial seat of the elder branch of the Harrison family about the beginning of the eighteenth century.  It passed to strangers less than half a century ago.

From its founding, Berkeley was the home of distinguished men.  Here lived Benjamin Harrison, attorney general and treasurer of the colony; and his son, Major Benjamin Harrison, member of the House of Burgesses; and his son, Benjamin Harrison, member of the Continental Congress and signer of the Declaration of Independence; and his son, William Henry Harrison, famous general and the ninth President of our country; whose grandson, Benjamin Harrison, became our twenty-third President—­a striking showing of family distinction, and including the only instance, except that of the Adamses, of two members of the same family occupying the presidential chair.

[Illustration:  Berkeley. (The ancestral home of a signer of the Declaration of Independence and of two Presidents of the United States.)]

Very different from the Berkeley that we saw, was that fine old plantation of colonial times.  Imagine it, perhaps upon a summer’s day in that memorable year of 1776.  There are the great fields of tobacco and grain, the terraced gardens gay with flowers, the boats at the landing, and the manor-house standing proudly, “an elegant seat of hospitality.”

The master of Berkeley, that tall, dignified colonial, Colonel Benjamin Harrison, is not at home.  He is at Philadelphia attending the Continental Congress.  Perhaps even now he is affixing his signature, with its queer final flourish, to the Declaration of Independence.  In the meantime, in front of the old home, a pretty woman in quaint taffeta “Watteau” and hooped petticoat and dainty high-heeled slippers is playing with a little boy, among the sweet old shrubs and the English roses upon the terraces.