"In the autumn of 1865, a young Scot, John Nichol, a graduate of the University of Glasgow and Oxford University, sailed down the Chesapeake Bay and up the James River from Baltimore to Petersburg and Richmond. Only about six months had passed since the Confederacy had capitulated and the scars of war were raw. Out of Nichol's trip came his poem "The James River" (reprinted below) an evocation of the James as military highway and, more particularly, an interesting sketch of the infamous Petersburg Crater..."