Virginia: the Old Dominion Part 4

The Commodore introduced himself and his sad story of fire and famine.

He explained that it would be two or three days before supplies could be got from Norfolk, and darkly hinted at a new chapter of suffering that might be added to the woeful history of the island unless something were done at once. The gloomy picture did not seem to impress the young woman very painfully, for her reply was a laughing one; but a sack of flour went into the basket and a big loaf of bread besides.

Upon its coming out in the conversation that we wished to remain at our anchorage for some time and should like to know of any limitations placed upon visitors, the freedom of the island was most kindly extended to us. The Commodore proudly returned with his supplies to the houseboat.

"Saved by the Daughter of the Island!" exclaimed Lady Fairweather. And by that name we came to speak of our benefactress.

After we had broken bread, borrowed bread and good too, another and more successful attempt was made to go on the island. Our object was to visit the old graveyard. Crossing again to the grove on the James River side, we entered in among the shadows that enwrap the ruined church and the crumbling tombs of the village dead. The graveyard, or what remains of it, is coextensive with the grove. When most of the deserted church crumbled and fell a hundred years ago, some of the bricks were used to build a wall around the old burying-ground. Parts of it are standing yet in picturesque, moss-covered ruins.

This time we found workmen engaged on the foundations for the memorial building. So we were prevented from seeing satisfactorily some of the tombs, as they were boxed over to protect them while this work was in progress. However, the caretaker did all that he could for us.

Pitifully few are the stones remaining to mark the graves of that vanguard of English colonization. For most who lie here, the last record has crumbled away. Proud knight, proud lady, gentlemen, gentlewomen, and unknown humble folk, in common brotherhood at last, "dust to dust" and unmarked level ground above them.

One of the most notable of the remaining tombs is that of Lady Frances Berkeley, who rests beneath the shadow of the great hackberry tree that is said to have been brought over, a slender sapling, from England. But a few parts of words remain on the broken stone, and the date is gone.

Though after the death of her husband, Sir William Berkeley, this lady became Mrs. Philip Ludwell, yet she clung to the greater name and insisted that her long sleep should be under its carven pomp.

[Ill.u.s.tration. A CORNER IN THE OLD GRAVEYARD.]

Peeping into a shed that temporarily covered the old chancel floor, we caught a glimpse of the mysterious tomb of the island. It is an ironstone tablet, once doubtless inlaid with bra.s.s, as the channellings for the metal are yet clearly defined. They show a draped figure and some smaller designs that have been taken as indications of knighthood, and have led to the conjecture that this is the tomb of Sir George Yeardley, governor of the Colony of Virginia, who died here in 1627. It is said to be the only tomb of the kind in America. Evidently, the stone has become somewhat displaced; for instead of being orientated as it must once have been, it now lies almost north and south.

We were not able to see the grave of William Sherwood, that humble but hopeful wrong-doer who lies under the chiselled words, "A Great sinner Waiting for a joyfull Resurrection."

The old graveyard, like the h.o.a.ry tower, awes the mind and touches the heart. And this partly because of its pitiful littleness. A handful of cracked and broken stones to tell of all that terrible harvest that Death reaped in the ruined village! But perhaps they tell it all as hosts of tombs could not do. One reads between the stones, then far out beyond them where mouldering bones are feeding the smiling fields; and there is borne in upon him the thought that our country had life through so much of death that this whole island is a graveyard.

After leaving the old tombs, we crossed a roadway and entered a ruined fort. In those few steps we made a long plunge down the years of history, and pa.s.sed far away from old James Towne. None of the colonists ever saw those walls of earth. They are the remains of a Confederate fort. But, modern as they are, they have done what they could to put themselves in harmony with the ancientness all about. The slopes are gra.s.s-grown and even tree-grown. Within the walls is the caretaker's cottage in the midst of such a wealth of trees, flowering shrubs, and vines as makes a greenwood retreat. The gra.s.s-grown embrasures and the drooping branches over them form frames for river views that seem set there in place of the rusty cannon pieces.

It was toward evening when we started back across the island, houseboatward. We sauntered slowly at first, turning for a backward glance at the old church tower and pausing again to look out over the water at the island's outer sentinel, the "Lone Cypress." We paused yet another time down where the marsh reeds lined the way. Grasping handfuls of the coa.r.s.e gra.s.s, the Commodore started to ill.u.s.trate how the colonists bound thatch, doubtless from that very marsh, to make roofs for their flimsy cabins. But the marsh furnished something besides gra.s.ses; and before the Commodore's explanation had gone far, his auditors had gone farther. He valiantly slew the snake, the whole six inches of it, and hastening forward found those more progressive houseboaters safely ensconced in the sh.o.r.e-boat.

As the little skiff moved out upon the river, a carriage rattled across the bridge. Sightseers who had driven over from Williamsburg were returning. However satisfied they may have felt with their short visit, we could only pity them. Yet such a visit, of a few hours at most, is all that is possible here except for one who brings his home with him, for there is no public house on the island. Stepping aboard Gadabout, we congratulated ourselves that she enabled us to live indefinitely right in the suburbs of old James Towne.

However, as days went on, Lady Fairweather became somewhat daunted by the dire predictions of chills and fever as a result of our long lying in the marshes; and one day she deserted the ship and sailed away on a bigger one. We thought she was to be gone only a little while, but she proved a real deserter and Gadabout saw no more of her to the end of the cruise.

But chills and fever never came to Gadabout's household, though the dog-day sun beat upon the waste of reeds and rushes about us and though striped-legged mosquitoes were our nearest and most attentive neighbours. Fortunately, the mosquitoes did not feel that hospitality required them to call upon the strangers or to show them any attention except in the evening. Even then they were more or less distant, rarely coming into the houseboat, but lingering in a neighbourly way about doors and windows, and whispering a.s.surances of their regard through some crossed wires that we happened to have there.

One of the chief causes of illness among the colonists, impure water, we did not have to contend with. In the early days of James Towne, the river was the only water supply; later, shallow wells were dug; both the river and the wells furnished impure, brackish water. To-day, two artesian wells are flowing on the island. As we got our supply from them, we often thought of how those first settlers suffered and died for want of pure water, when all the while this inexhaustible supply lay imprisoned beneath their cornfields. But even the water from the artesian wells we took the precaution to boil. So, pitting screens against mosquitoes and the teakettle against water germs, we lived on, chill-less and fever-less in the marshes of Back River.

CHAPTER VII

SEEING WHERE THINGS HAPPENED

We were fortunate in visiting Jamestown Island after considerable had been accomplished in the way of lessening the number of its historic sites. For a long while, almost every important event in its story had occurred at so many different places that it was scarcely possible for the pilgrim to do justice to them all.

But, some time before our visit to the island, an era of scientific investigation set in; researches were made among old musty records; and even the soil was turned up in order to determine the place where this or that event really did happen. The reduction in the number of places of interest was astonishing. In every instance, it was found that the historic event in question had happened at but a single place; and consequently all its other time-honoured sites suddenly became unhistoric soil.

An instance or two will serve to ill.u.s.trate.

Upon our visit to James Towne, we found that the site of the colonists'

first fort (long variously fixed at several points along the river front) was now limited to a single spot near the caretaker's cottage; so that all the brave fighting that had been going on at those other sites, had been for nothing.

In like manner, it had long been well established that Pocahontas and John Rolfe were married in the church whose tower is yet standing; also in the brick and wood church that just preceded this one; also in a rough timber church that just preceded that one. Each of these edifices was the true, genuine scene of the romantic event.

But, under the new arrangement, we found only one church where Rolfe and Pocahontas were married--just the old timber one. Indeed, in this instance, the work of elimination seemed almost unduly rigorous. The other churches were set aside upon circ.u.mstantial evidence merely; there being nothing against them except that they were found to have been built some years after the ceremony.

On the whole, however, the work of fixing sites authoritatively was doubtless just. In any event, there was no opportunity for us to protest; for by the time we got to the island, they had everything down on a map in a book. We bought a copy of the book, and resolved to stage by it the events of the James Towne story. We resolved also to be most methodical from now on; and to "do" things as nearly as possible in the same order as the colonists had done them.

So one morning we gathered up our authorities and started out to see where the settlers first landed and where they first lived. According to the map, that historic, first landing-place would be anything but a landing-place to-day; for figure "25" (that was it) stood well out in the river. The loss by erosion had been great along that part of the sh.o.r.e since those first settlers arrived. But even though the landing-place could not be seen, one could look out on the waters anyway and see where it used to be.

At first we feared that there might be some trouble in telling where the "25" on the map would be on the water. But it was a very simple thing to do, largely owing to the thoughtfulness of the settlers in landing almost opposite a jetty that runs out from the sh.o.r.e a little above the Confederate fort.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VIEW FROM THE CONFEDERATE FORT.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: LOOKING TOWARD THE FIRST LANDING-PLACE.]

Upon reaching the river front of the island, we took our bearings from the map and walked slowly toward the water's edge, being careful not to walk too far as the water's edge is so much closer in now than it used to be. Going to the uppermost of the several jetties, we sighted along it straight out over the water and kept on looking, in accordance with the measurements on the map, until we had looked one hundred and thirty-five yards; then, turned our eyes sharply to the right and looked thirty-three and one third yards more. We then had the satisfaction of feeling that the spot our eyes rested upon was, in 1607, on the sh.o.r.e of the island, and was the place where the original settlers first landed. Nor was our satisfaction at all dampened by the discovery that the spot was two spots--Nautica gazing spellbound at one place, and the Commodore at another.

After all, it made very little difference, for the settlers did not stay where they landed anyway.

They seem to have built their fort and their little settlement within it about five hundred feet farther down stream and some distance back from the sh.o.r.e. It was in the form of a triangle and had an area of about an acre. Its entire site has been generally supposed to be washed away, but the recent researches show that such is not the case. A considerable part of it is left and is now safe behind a protecting sea-wall. As, at the time of our visit, nothing marked this remnant of the historic acre, we undertook to locate it. Fortunately, the Confederate fort stands in such position as to help in running the boundaries by the map. For a rough approximation, all we had to do was to get Mr. Leal, the caretaker, to stand at the most westerly angle of the fort, and his son on the sea-wall at the lower end of the fort, and Henry on the sea-wall a hundred yards farther up stream; then, straight lines connecting these three men enclosed all that is left of that first little fortified settlement where Anglo-Saxon America began.

While the three men stood at the three corners, we took a photograph of the historic bit of land; and long after they had gone we lingered reflectively about it.

Here, in that spring of 1607, within the strong palisade, the settlers built their first cabins. Here, Captain Newport left them, and sailed back to England. Here, too, he found them again--a pitiful few of them--when he returned the next winter with reinforcements for the colony. By another winter, the palisaded village had extended somewhat, mostly eastward. It then included, so far as we could make out, all the land now within the Confederate fort and probably also the site of the present ruined church and graveyard. Upon this little four-acre settlement hung the destiny of a hemisphere for the next few years.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LOCATING WHAT IS LEFT OF THE SITE OF THE FIRST SETTLEMENT.]

We trudged about within the old town limits and tried to picture the chief events of those years; but we could not remember what they were; so we sat down on the gra.s.sy fort, regardless of ticks and redbugs, to read up some more. For a while there was no sound but the twitter of the birds and the murmur of the river. Then the Commodore found something in his book, and he began very solemnly to tell of how on that very spot the colonists endured the horrors of the "Starving Time." At this there was such a genuine exclamation of pleasure from Nautica that the Commodore knew he was too late; she had not even heard. She had found something in her book too, and was already announcing that it was right there that John Rolfe and Pocahontas were married.

But the Commodore insisted that his story came first, as Nautica's romantic event was not until 1614, while his famine was in 1609-10.

Nautica sighed resignedly as she agreed that we should starve first and get married afterward.

After all, we found that we could not speak lightly, sitting there in the midst of the scene of the "Starving Time." By the winter of 1609-10 there were perhaps five hundred persons in this little settlement by the river, including now, unfortunately, some women and children. When there was no more corn, the people managed for a while to keep alive on roots and herbs; then, half-crazed by starvation, they fell to cannibalism. Gaunt, desperate, de-humanized, they crouched about the kettle that held their own dead. A Bible fed the flames, cast in by a poor wretch as he cried, "Alas! there is no G.o.d!"

The succeeding spring brought two ships, a belated portion of one of the "Supplies." But sixty of the five hundred colonists were found alive--sixty haggard men, women, and children, hunger-crazed, huddled behind the broken palisades. Sadly suggestive must have seemed the names of the two vessels that appeared upon that awful scene--Patience and Deliverance. But the deliverance that they brought was of a poor sort. They had not on board provisions enough to last a month.

It was decided that it was vain for the colony to try to hold out longer. James Towne, upon which so much blood and treasure had been spent and that had seemed at last to give England a hold in the New World, must be abandoned. To the roll of drums, the remnant of the colony boarded the vessels, sails were set, and the little ships dropped down the river bound for far-away England.

The last sail pa.s.sed around the bend in the stream, and only a desolate blotch in the wilderness was left to tell of England's attempt to colonize America; only a great gash in the forest, there in the quiet and the sunlight, at the edge of the river. Within it were the shapeless ruins of those queer things the pale-faces had made--broken palisades, yawning houses, the tottering thing they called a church; and, all about, the hideous, ghastly traces of living and of dying. The sun went down; and, in the gloom of the summer night, from the forest and the marsh wild things came creeping to the edge of the clearing, sat peering there, then ventured nearer--curious, suspicious, greedy.

Soft, noiseless, and ghost-like was the flight of the great owl through the desolation, and his uncanny cry and the wail of the whippoorwill filled the night as with mockery and mourning.

Quick, startling, and almost miraculous was the next change in the scene: a change from the emptiness of desolation to the bustling fulness of life and colour--the harbour dotted with ships, the little village crowded with people, James Towne alive again. For even in the dark hour of abandonment, it was not destined that the settlement should perish. Even as the colonists sailed down the James, a fleet bearing reinforcements and stores of supplies was entering the mouth of the river. The settlers were turned back; and following them came the fleet, bringing to deserted James Towne not only new colonists, but pomp, ceremony, and the stately, capable new governor, Lord Delaware.

"He was the one who went to church with so much show and flourish, wasn't he?" asked Nautica.

"Yes," answered the Commodore confidently, as he happened to have his book open at the right page. "Lord Delaware attended the little church in the wilderness in all state, accompanied by his council and guarded by fifty halberd bearers wearing crimson cloaks. He sat in a green velvet chair and--"

"Where do you think that church was?" interrupted Nautica.