Spot 



356 THE FEENCH BLOOD IN AMERICA 



speedily as possible conformed to the political usages of 

 the colony, and adopted the English language, and by 

 iiiteruiarriage were soon commingled with English society ; 

 and then follow the colonists of Manakin town, as they 

 more slowly assimilated with the English ; and number 

 those that by direct descent, or by intermarriage have 

 Huguenot blood in their veins, and the list will swell to 

 an immense multitude. The influence which these de- 

 scendants of the French refugees have had, and still exer- 

 cise, in the formation and preservation of the character 

 of the state and the nation, has unostentatiously and 

 widely extended." 



Happily settled, indeed, were the French refugees in 

 A Garden what they made one of the garden spots of the country. 



They were not far from the home of Pocahontas, the In- 

 dian princess, where, a little more than a century before, 

 Captain John Smith had found his brave rescuer, and put 

 a touch of enduring romance into the first days of the 

 white foreigner on American soil. The Indians were not 

 yet gone, and sometimes the French were made to feel a 

 spirit of vengeance that classed all whites as alike 

 enemies of the red men. To the English Cavaliers and 

 the French gentlemen Virginia owes its peculiar type 

 of cultivation, which made the plantations the scene of a 

 gallantry and courtliness and grace not yet extinct. 

 Where other nations often sent their poorest classes as 

 emigrants, France had driven away her best to enrich 

 the life of another and freer land. 



One of the most distinguished of the Huguenot families 

 of Virginia was that of the Bufords, a corruption of the 

 original name of Beaufort, meaning ''beautiful fort," or 

 castle. The name was variously spelled, as Beauford, 

 Bufford, and Buford, the form finally common. Some 

 members of this family, which was royal and allied to 

 Henry IV, were Huguenots, and emigrated to England 

 after the Revocation. From England some came to 

 America, and in both countries the descendants are found 



