GOOD-BYE TO OLD JAMES TOWNE
Two or three times we ran the houseboat around in front of the island.
On one occasion we took the notion to stop at places of interest along
the way. Upon coming out from Back River, we spent some time poking
about in the water for the old-time isthmus. We were not successful at
first and almost feared that, after raising it for our own selfish
purposes some days before, we had let it go down again in the wrong
place.
This troubled us the more because we had hoped to settle a vexed
question as to how wide an isthmus had once connected the island with
the mainland. Nautica insisted that the width had been ten paces
because a woman, Mrs. An. Cotton, who once lived near James Towne, had
said so. But the Commodore pointed out that we had never seen Mrs.
Cotton, and that we did not know whether she was a tall woman or a
little dumpy woman; and so could not have the slightest idea of how far
ten paces would carry her. On his part, he pinned his faith to the
statement of Strachey, a man who had lived in James Towne and who had
said that the isthmus was no broader than "a man will quaite a
tileshard." But this Nautica refused to accept as satisfactory because
we did not know what a "tileshard" was nor how far a man would "quaite"
one. So we were naturally anxious to see which of us was right.
[Illustration: GADABOUT LOOKING FOR THE LOST ISTHMUS.]
[Illustration: A VISIT TO THE "LONE CYPRESS."]
After a while we found traces of the isthmus. And the matter turned out
just as most disputes will, if both parties patiently wait until the
facts are all in--that is, both sides were right. The soundings showed
the isthmus to shelve off so gradually at the sides that we found we
could put the stakes, marking its edges, almost any distance apart. So,
the width across the isthmus could very well be ten of Mrs. Cotton's
paces, no matter what sort of a woman she was; and it could just as
well be the distance that "a man will quaite a tileshard," be a
tileshard what it may.
Now, coasting along the end of the island, we had designs on the "Lone
Cypress" for a sort of novel sensation. We approached the hoary old
sentinel carefully, for it would be a sin to even bark its shaggy
sides; and, dropping a rope over a projecting broken "knee," we enjoyed
a striking object lesson on the effects of erosion. In several feet of
water, and nearly three hundred feet from land, our houseboat was tied
to a tree; tied to a tree that a hundred years before stood on the
shore--a tree that likely, in the early days of the colony (for who
knows the age of the "Lone Cypress"?), stood hundreds of yards back on
the island. But it may never be farther from shore than we found it;
for there, glistening in the sunshine, stood the sea-wall holding the
hungry river at bay.
Carefully slipping our rope from the tree, we let the tide carry us out
a little way before starting an engine. Then, bidding goodbye to the
old cypress, we moved on along the shore. We were aware from our map of
ancient holdings that we were ruthlessly cutting across lots over the
colonial acres of one Captain Edward Ross; but, seeing neither dogs nor
trespass signs, we sailed right on. The Captain would not have to
resort to irrigation on his lands to-day.
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 compass, 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 ashore; where America began.
After following the island a little farther down stream, we cast anchor
in a hollow of the shore-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 Association 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 Association began excavating; the foundations were
uncovered, and are now among the things to see on the island.
[Illustration: ONE OF THE EARLIEST EXCAVATIONS.]
[Illustration: 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 basement 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 mass of debris to be
thrown out--bricks of various sizes, shapes, and colours; cakes of the
ancient shell 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 brass 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 hourglass 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; glass 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
passing 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.