158
The Green Bag.
The old inhabitants of his neighborhood nuts. It is not often in America, that es tates remain in one family for over a hundred have still in circulation many amusing anec dotes illustrative of his habits and character, years, yet so it is in this instance. The sword which have been handed down from his day of the fearless old soldier still hangs in the and generation; and if, sitting by his winter lofty hall, and the place, the property of his fireside, you speak to one of these ancients of descendants, is one of the most charming "lynch law," with a nod of his head and a mild and hospitable homes in southern Virginia. Situated in a beautiful valley, some twenty chuckle at his recollection of kindred tradi tions, he will invariably repeat to you the fol miles south of Lynchburg, it is bounded on lowing lines from the chorus of a once popular three sides by an irregular range of hills, song commemorating the deeds of lynch law's and on the fourth by lofty cliffs, beneath which flows the Staunton river, hurrying on founder and his gallant compatriots: to unite its waters with the Dan and once •• Hurrah for Colonel Lynch, more become the Roanokc. " Avoca " is Captain Bob and Galloway! They never turned a Tory loose the poetic name now borne by this hand Until he shouted "Liberty!" some and historic old manor. It was sug The " Captain Hob " referred to in these gested by Moore's melody, " The Meeting lines was Captain Robert Adams, that being of the Waters, " and is peculiarly appropri a sobriquet by which he was familiarly known. ate, " since, " as says a contemporary writ While no great amount of commendation er, " this rich and smiling valley, where the can be heaped on the rhyming of this verse, Otter and Staunton rivers meet, after wind as an exhibition of exuberant, effervescent, ing downward by crags and peaks from their sources in the Blue Ridge, is truly another patriotic fervor it is glorious! On the lawn of the old Lynch homestead, ' Vale of Avoca.'" It may not be amiss to add, in concluding two miles from the present flourishing vil lage of Lynch Station, on the line of the this sketch, which necessarily involves a dis course very personal to Colonel Lynch, that southern railway, still stands the old wal nut tree on which lynch law was first adminis nearly all of his descendants have arisen to tered. But no ghastly body ever dangled positions of greater or less prominence in from its branches, and it never beheld punish their several communities. Among them ment bestowed at the instigation of private maybe noted governors and generals, and one spite. It bears the mark of extreme age, of the youngest generation, born and reared and is a picturesque object in the landscape. in his old homestead, is now a captain in A part of it is now dead, but the rest is the United States volunteer army, at pres still vigorous and bears its annual crop of ent on duty in the Philippine Islands.