Virginia: the Old Dominion Part 6

While dawdling about this submerged portion of old James Towne, we thought we would make a stop at the spot where those first settlers landed. After consulting the map, we manoeuvred the houseboat so as to enable us to do some rough sort of triangulation with the compa.s.s, and finally dropped anchor, satisfied that we were at the historic spot, even though it was too wet to get out and look for the footprints. And there, well out on the yellow waters of the James, Gadabout lay lazily in the sunshine where Sarah Constant was once tied to the bank; where those first settlers stepped ash.o.r.e; where America began.

After following the island a little farther down stream, we cast anchor in a hollow of the sh.o.r.e-line near the steamboat pier. It was not much of a hollow after all and really formed no harbour. When the west wind came howling down the James, picking up the water for miles and hurling it at Gadabout, our only consolation lay in knowing that it could not have done that if we had only got there two or three centuries earlier.

At that time, the point, or headland, upon which the colonists landed reached out and protected this shallow bay below. Doubtless, throughout James Towne days, the smaller vessels found fair harbour where Gadabout one night rolled many of her possessions into fragments, and her proud commander into something very weak and wan and unhappy.

In the last few years, there has been an awakening of interest in long-forgotten James Towne. To Mrs. Edward E. Barney for her generous gift of the southwest corner of the island to the a.s.sociation for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, and to that Society for its work in staying the course of decay and the hand of vandalism, our country is indebted.

The recent researches of Mr. Samuel H. Yonge too have added new interest. It had long been supposed that almost the entire site of the ancient village was lost in the river. Mr. Yonge has shown that in fact but a small part of it is gone. He has even located on the island the exact sites of so many of the more important village buildings that, it is said, old James Towne could be practically reproduced in wood and brick from his map, based upon the ancient records.

To verify his work, Mr. Yonge undertook (in 1903) to discover the buried ruins of a certain row of buildings that the records described as made up of a State-house, a "country house," and three dwellings.

The search was begun with a steel probe, which struck the hidden foundations within twenty-five feet of their position as indicated on his plat. Then the a.s.sociation began excavating; the foundations were uncovered, and are now among the things to see on the island.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ONE OF THE EARLIEST EXCAVATIONS.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: HUNTING FOR THE FIRST STATE HOUSE.]

As Mr. Yonge's map shows the larger part of the site of James Towne to be lying to the east of the church tower and outside of the A.P.V.A.

grounds, the Daughter of the Island was interested too in seeing what probe and pick and shovel could do.

It was at one of James Towne's old homes that we next met her. The meeting, judging from our map of the village, was probably at Captain Roger Smith's, though one could not be sure. There was no name on the door, nor indeed any door to put a name on, nor indeed any house to put a door on--just an ancient bas.e.m.e.nt that the Daughter of the Island had discovered and was having cleaned out. It badly needed it, nothing of the kind having been done perhaps for over two hundred years.

"Come and see my find," she cried.

The testing probe having struck something that indicated a buried foundation, there in the black pea field, this young antiquarian had put men at work and was being rewarded by finding the ruins of some ancient house. Portions of two rooms had been disclosed and the stairway leading down into one of them.

"Come down the stairs," said the proud lady in the cellar.

"Oh, what narrow steps!" Nautica exclaimed.

"They used to build out those brick treads with wood to make them wider," explained our hostess. "You can see where the wooden parts have been burned away."

The two rooms were paved with brick, and in one a chimney-place had come to light. Everywhere were bits of charred wood. Did no place in James Towne escape the scourge of fire? A kitten came springing over the mounds of excavated earth and began to prowl about the old fireplace. Except for a skittish pebble that she chased across the empty front, she found nothing of interest; no hint of savoury odours from the great spit over the blazing logs that may have caused a James Towne cat to sit and gaze and sniff some two centuries or more ago.

But we suddenly left the frivolous kitten upon being told of what had been found in the other room just before we came. It was a heavy earthen pot sunk below the floor. We crouched about it with great interest, chiefly because we did not know what it was for. Perhaps it was merely to collect the drainage. Anyway it was not what the Daughter of the Island had fondly thought when it was first uncovered.

"I was sure," she laughed, "that I had found a pot of money."

Standing down there in the ruins we wondered what was the story of the old house. What feet had trod those paved floors? What had those walls seen and known of being and loving, of hopes and fears, of joys and griefs, of life and death? Of all this the uncovered ruin told nothing.

While we were at the island, three or four excavations were made and we watched them all with interest. When the steel probe had located the ruin, the digging and the excitement began. Slowly the buried walls came to light. Within the walls was usually a ma.s.s of debris to be thrown out--bricks of various sizes, shapes, and colours; cakes of the ancient sh.e.l.l lime; pieces of charred wood, and relics of all sorts.

Some of the bricks were quite imperfectly made and had a greenish hue.

We supposed them to be the oldest ones and to have been baked or dried in the sun before the colonists had kilns. Some of them had indentations that were evidently finger imprints.

"I wants to fin' dey ole papahs," said big John, digging heartily. "Dis hyer is a histoyacal ole place; an' I rathah fin' a box of dey ole papahs than three hunderd dollahs."

Among the coloured people was an unquenchable hope of finding a pot full of money.

It was a most interesting experience to sit in the brick rubbish and watch for the queer little relics that were thrown out now and then. No great finds were made, but the small ones did very well. There appeared an endless number of pieces of broken pottery; and the design of a blue dog chasing a blue fox was evidently a popular one for such ware in James Towne.

But where was the blue dog's head? The question grew to be an absorbing one. Each handful of dirt began or ended with a wrong piece of the blue dog mixed with bits of bra.s.s and iron and pottery that brought vividly to mind the scenes and the folk of that vanished village. Handful after handful of dirt ran through our ringers like hourgla.s.s sands of ancient days, and the clicking relics were left in our hands in the quest of the blue dog's head.

And this was the way things went. A piece of a bowl bearing most of the blue dog's tail; a woman's spur, gilt and broken, worn when merry eyes peeped through silken riding masks; a bit of Indian pottery with basketry marks upon it; a blue fox and the fore legs of the blue dog; a shoe-buckle, silver too--must have been people of "qualitye" here; a piece of a cream white cup that may have been a "lily pot" such as the colonist kept his pipe tobacco in; pieces and pieces of the blue dog, but never a bit of a head; a tiny red pipe and a piece of a white one--so that must have been a "lily pot"; a door key, some rusty scissors, and a blue head--of the fox; gla.s.s beads, blue beads, such as John Smith told Powhatan were worn by great kings, thus obtaining a hundred bushels of corn for a handful of the beads; a pewter spoon, a bent thimble, and a whole blue dog--no, his miserable head was off.

We never became discouraged and are quite sure yet that we should have found the blue dog's head if we could have gone on searching. But by this time the summer was waning, and on up the river was much yet for Gadabout to see. It was a long visit that we had made at the island, yet one that had grown in interest as in days. Indeed only in the pa.s.sing of many days could such interest come--could old James Towne so seem to live again.

Lingeringly we had dreamed along its forgotten ways, by its ruined hearthstones, and among its nameless tombs; and so dreaming had seemed to draw close to the little old-time hamlet and to the scenes of hope and of fear, of joy and of despair, that had marked the planting of our race in America. Now, on the last evening of our stay at the island, we walked again the familiar paths; looked for the hundredth time down the great brown river that had borne our people to this place of beginning; stood once more beside the graveyard wall; then started toward the houseboat, turning for a last look at the broken church tower and to bid good night and good-bye to old James Towne.

CHAPTER X

A SHORT SAIL AND AN OLD ROMANCE

Next day, bustling about with making all things shipshape, we could scarcely realize that we were actually getting under way again. But when our mooring-lines were hauled in, Gadabout backed away from her old friend, the bridge, swung around in the narrow marsh-channel, and soon carried us from Back River out into the James.

And by this time how impressed we had become with the significance of that wide, brown flood--that Nestor of American rivers! When is the James to find its rightful place in American song and story? Our oldest colonial waterway--upon whose banks the foundations of our country were laid, along whose sh.o.r.es our earliest homes and home-sites can still be pointed out--and yet almost without a place in our literature. Other rivers, historically lesser rivers, have had their stories told again and again, their beauties lauded, and their praises sung. But this great pioneer waterway, fit theme for an ode, is to-day our unsung river.

Gadabout, with the wind in her favour and all the buoys leaning her way, made good progress. It was not long before we were looking back catching the last glimpses of the white sea-wall of Jamestown Island.

We now were on our way to pick up other bits of the river story, and especially those concerning the peculiar colonial home life on the James. When tobacco culture, with its ceaseless demand for virgin soil, led many of the colonists to abandon James Towne and to build up great individual estates, each estate had to have its water front; and old Powhatan became lined on both sides with vast plantations. Later, the lands along other rivers were similarly occupied. So p.r.o.nounced was the development of plantation life that it affected, even controlled, the character of the colony and determined the type of civilization in Virginia.

The great estates became so many independent, self-sufficient communities--almost kingdoms. Each had its own permanent population including, besides slaves and common labourers, many mechanics, carpenters, coopers, and artisans of various kinds. An unbroken water highway stretched from each plantation wharf to the wharves of London.

Directly from his own pier, each planter shipped his tobacco to England; and in return there was unloaded upon his own pier the commodities needed for his plantation community.

Thus was established the peculiar type of Virginia society, the aristocracy of planters, that dotted the Old Dominion with lordly manor-houses and filled them with gay, ample life--a life almost feudal in its pride and power. In this day of our nation's tardy awakening to an appreciation of its colonial homes, a particular interest attaches to these old Virginia mansions, once the centres of those proud little princ.i.p.alities in the wilderness.

And the particular interest of Gadabout's people, as Jamestown Island faded from sight, attached to a few of the earliest and most typical of those colonial homes that we knew yet stood on the banks of the "King's River." From kindly responses to our notes of inquiry, we also knew that long-suffering Virginia courtesy was not yet quite exhausted, and that it still swung wide the doors of those old manor-houses to even the pa.s.sing stranger. Our next harbour was to be Chippoak Creek, which empties into the river about twelve miles above Jamestown Island. There we should be near two or three colonial homes including the well-known Brandon.

It seemed good to be under way again. There was music in the chug of our engines and in the purl of the water about our homely bows. The touch of the wind in our faces was tonic, and we could almost persuade ourselves that there was fragrance in the occasional whiffs of gasoline.

We soon came to an opening in the sh.o.r.e to starboard where the James receives one of its chief tributaries, the Chickahominy, memorable for its a.s.sociation with the first American romance. Though the tale is perhaps a trifle hackneyed, yet the duty of every good American is to listen whenever it is told. So here it is.

Of course the hero was Captain John Smith. How that man does brighten up the record of those old times! Well, one day the Captain with a small party from James Towne was hunting in the marshes of the Chickahominy for food, or adventure, or the South Sea, or something, and some Indians were hunting there also; and the Indians captured the Captain. They took him before the great chief Powhatan; and as John lay there, with a large stone under his head and some clubs waving above him, the general impression was that he was going to die. But that was not John's way in those days; he was always in trouble but he never died. Suddenly, just as the clubs were about to descend, soft arms were about the Captain's head, and Pocahontas, the favourite daughter of the old chief, was pleading for the ever-lucky Smith. The dramatic requirements of the case were apparent to everybody. Powhatan spared the pale-face; and our country had its first romance.

To be sure, some people say that all this never happened. Indeed the growing skepticism about this precious bit of our history, this international romance that began in the marshes of the Chickahominy, is our chief reason for repeating it here. It is time for the story to be told by those who can vouch for it--those who have actually seen the river that flows by the marshes that the Captain was captured in.

On we went with tide, wind, and engines carrying us up the James.

Dancing Point reached sharply out as if to intercept us. But the owner of those strong dark hands that happened to be at the wheel knew the story of Dancing Point--of how many an ebony Tam O'Shanter had seen ghostly revelry there; and Gadabout was held well out in the river.

Again, how completely we had the James to ourselves! We thought of how, even back in those old colonial days, our little craft would have had more company. Here, with slender bows pushing down stream, the Indian canoes went on their way to trade with the settlers at James Towne; their cargoes varying with the seasons--fish from their weirs in the moon of blossoms, and, in the moon of cohonks, limp furred and feathered things and reed-woven baskets of golden maize. Returning, the red men would have the axes, hatchets, and strange articles that the pale-faces used, and the cherished "blew" beads that the Cape Merchant had given them in barter.

Here sailed the little shallops of the colonists as they explored and charted this unknown land. A few years later and, with rhythmic sway of black bodies and dip of many oars, came the barges of the river planters. Right royally came the lords of the wilderness--members of the Council perhaps, and in brave gold-laced attire--dropping down with the ebb tide to the tiny capital in the island marshes. And up the stream came ships from "London Towne," spreading soft white clouds of canvas where sail was never seen before; and carrying past the naked Indian in his tepee the sweet-scented powders and the rose brocade that the weed of his peace-pipe had bought for the Lady of the Manor.

Now, Gadabout began to sidle toward the port bank of the river as our next harbour, Chippoak Creek, was on that side. Here the sh.o.r.e grew steep; and at one point high up we caught glimpses of the little village of Claremont. At its pier lay a three-masted schooner and several barges and smaller boats. Along the water's edge were mills, their steam and smoke drifting lazily across the face of the bluffs.

On a little farther, we came to the mouth of Chippoak Creek with the bluffs of Claremont on one hand, the sweeping, wooded sh.o.r.es of Brandon on the other, and, in between, a beautiful expanse of water, wide enough for a river and possibly deep enough for a heavy dew. We scurried for chart and sounding-pole. Following the narrow, crooked channel indicated on the chart, we worked our way well into the mouth of the stream and cast anchor near a point of woods. From the chart we could tell that somewhere beyond that forest wall, over near the bank of the river, was the old manor-house that we had come chiefly to see--Brandon, one of America's most noted colonial homes.