A short distance above Court House Creek, Gadabout stopped at a landing to get some oil.  She was rather hurried and flustered about the matter, as the steamer from Petersburg was coming around the point above and would soon be making this same landing, and a schooner that was loading was right in the way, and the first line that was thrown out broke, and the engine stopped at the wrong time, and—­all those people looking on!  Besides, this was supposed to be an interesting fishing point; but how was a little houseboat to get a look at it, lying there alongside a big schooner that she couldn’t see over?  Altogether, Gadabout fumed and fussed so much here, pitching about in the choppy water, jerking her ropes, and battering her big neighbour, that it was a relief to all concerned when she got her oil aboard, cast off her ropes, and, giving the schooner a last vindictive dig in the ribs, set off up the river.

Even after getting away from the schooner there was not much to be seen at the landing.  Yet, in season, the little place would be quite quaint and bustling; for it was one of the many fishing hamlets along the river.

The James has always been a favourite spawning-ground for sturgeon.  Those first colonists, writing enthusiastically of the newfound river, declared “As for Sturgeon, all the World cannot be compared to it.”  They told of a unique and spirited way the Indians had of catching these huge, lubberly fish.  In a narrow bend of the river where the sturgeon crowded, an adroit fisherman would clap a noose over the tail of a great fish (a fish perhaps much larger than himself) and go plunging about with his powerful captive.  And he was accounted “cockarouse,” brave fellow, who kept his hold, diving and swimming, and finally towed his catch ashore.

The colonists early turned their attention to sturgeon fishing.  The roe they prepared and shipped abroad for the Russians’ piquant table delicacy.  The grim irony of it—­half famished colonists shipping caviar!

To-day the coming of the sturgeon puts life into the little hamlets like the one we had just passed, and dots their sandy beaches with the bateaux and the drying nets of the fishermen.

[Illustration:  A fishing hamlet.]

We passed the down-bound steamer near Buckler’s Point and her heavy swell came rolling across toward us.  Almost instinctively we turned our craft crosswise to the river to face the coming waves; for to take them broadside meant a weary picking up of fragments from the cabin floors, and a premature commingling of the contents of the refrigerator.  Just beyond Buckler’s Point we came to the opening into Herring Creek and, passing readily over the bar, went on up the little stream.  As we sailed along we caught glimpses to port of the warm, red walls of a stately building that we knew to be Westover.

[Illustration:  A river landing.]