Richmond Press, Inc.                          Richmond, VA                          1938

The Eel Hole

As you went up the Richmond & Danville Railroad tracks above the junction and before you got to Canoe Run--that was a little stream that ran between Battery Hill and Spring Hill--you would come to the point at which you must turn off, if you wished to go to Stonewall. Now, Stonewall was a delightful little swimming hole, referred to in the preceding account.

Crossing a shallow stream by a difficult way over pointed rocks, you would come to a broad rock that led to the swimming hole; and beside that broad rock there was a swift stream. There was in the rock a crevasse, or fissure, which ran at right angles to the stream, it was usually filled with back-water, that rose and fell spasmodically with the undulations of the stream.

As we would reach this place, a boy would run forward, dip his scooped hand in the water and throw a half a gallon or so up on the rock; and, with it, a thousand little eels of the bigness of a slate pencil. For the eelfare would take refuge in this slack water, to rest in its laborious passage to the head waters of the James. It was fun to see them wriggle down the sloping rock and into the water again.

One evening in midsummer, about dusk, we were going there for a night swim; and Peedly Young ran forward, to be first, so he could have the fun of throwing the little elvers out on the rock. Instead of eels, he threw a water snake three feet long out on the rock. Mr. Snake--Natrix Sipedon Piscivorus, that means fish-eater, that is his scientific name--was there for the purpose of eating the little eels, as they came into the crevasse. He wriggled down the slope and into the water, just like the eels.

It was a puzzle to tell which was the "skeerdest," Peedly or the snake.