Oldal 90 [90]
OC) a TETTÉT Stee ETTE Tesz et
Dae VAMES: REV ÉR |\PPARTARLON BELT
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pensed from his "gyarden" to the khaki boys of Camp Lee as they
came and went over the pike while training for overseas service.
Just before Petersburg is a stone marker put up by the
Daughters of the Confederacy. This marks the headquarters of
General Robert E. Lee from June to September, 1864, at Violet
Banks, the old estate of John Shore. ‘The plantation has gone
and a modern subdivision has taken its place, but a quaint facade
of the interesting old house still remains, the rear portion of sixteen
rooms having been shot away. It will well repay the tourist to
detour a bit and see the remains of the house and the beautiful
trees which enframe it. |
John Shore, it is said, had a passion for all ornamental plants.
He used shrubs and flowering trees in great variety for the em¬
bellishment of his grounds. Years after, the grounds and garden
supplied family and friends with specimens for ornamenting their
new driveways and gardens in many parts of Virginia—flowering
locusts, mimosa, horse-chestnut, hawthorns, crepe-myrtle, magnolias
(grandiflora, glauca, acuminata), acacia (yellow, pink and white),
and every variety of fruit tree then obtainable. [wo torch-like
hollys stand on either side of the house.
It is said that a suitor came a courting one of the Mistresses
Shore; from far away he came on horseback with a switch from
a tree in his hand as a whip. ‘This switch he stuck in the ground
and it grew and grew into a tremendous magnolia acuminata.
Under its spreading branches General Lee had his tent, and a little
child brought him each day baskets of fresh vegetables from her
mother's garden. She remembers yet his lifting her in his arms
to gather one of the pale yellow blossoms of this great tree.
Following a road, still flanked with marvelous old oaks, down
the hillside and around the river banks studded in spring with
millions of violets, we cross the Pocahontas bridge, which leads over
the Appomattox to Petersburg. We go through the town to Camp
Lee, now silent, shabby and dilapidated, but so recently the scene
of bugle calls and intense activity; thence to Hopewell, the city of
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