The time is at hand when the curtain must be rung down upon the scenes I
have tried to present. I was constrained to follow the fortunes of John
Smith and Pocahontas, for do what we will we cannot eliminate them from
an all-important place in the early history of Virginia. Others were just
as deserving, but the historians of their day failed to leave us material
regarding them. Like my great favourite, the modest, brave George Percy,
who lived long at Jamestown, they quietly slipped back into the shadows
from which they only emerged to suffer and toil awhile for the common
good.
I find it hard to leave my story. A glorious chapter in the history
of Jamestown awaits a stronger pen than mine. At Jamestown, "in 1619,
a year before the _Mayflower_ skirted the coast of Massachusetts,
the Virginians inaugurated representative government on the American
continent--'an example never lost but ever cherished as the dearest
birthright of freemen.' There, on June 21, 1621, the Virginians extorted
the concession that 'no orders of court shall bind the said Colony unless
they be ratified by the General Assemblies.' In 1624 they there asserted
the right of self-taxation and control of the public purse, protesting
that 'the Governor shall not lay any imposition upon the Colony, their
land or commodities otherwise than by the authority of the General
Assembly, and employed as the said Assembly shall appoint.' Though loyal
to the King, in 1635, at Jamestown, Governor Harvey was 'thrust out,'
for encroaching upon the rights of the people. Nay, after the downfall
of monarchy they confronted Cromwell himself (who sent his threatening
ships to Jamestown) and only yielded to his usurpation upon an honourable
capitulation, acknowledging their submission as 'a voluntary act not
forced or constrained by conquest,' and guaranteeing them 'such freedom
and privileges as belong to the free-born people of England.' After the
Restoration they broke out in open rebellion against the oppressions of
government and anticipated by a century the final and victorious struggle
for the liberties of America. On the untimely death of their leader--the
well-born, the gallant, the accomplished, the eloquent Bacon--their
revolt was quenched in blood; but even so, without any surrender of their
chartered rights."[83]
These events are the glory and honour of our country, but my plan was to
tell only of the birth of the nation, not its restless youth or strong
manhood. My task was an humbler one: to honour the men who failed,--but
not in courage or fortitude; who put their hands to the plough and never
looked back; who devoted their lives, with no hope of reward, to carrying
on the work assigned them; who fought the battle and fell on the field,
regardless of the discouragement, disloyalty, and detraction meted out
to them. They sowed; but others reaped the rich harvest. They laid the
foundation; others built the fair structure. God be thanked, they suffered
not in vain! When the kings of the earth send their navies into Virginia
waters, when multitudes throng the gates, when cannon speaks to cannon,
when orators bring their choicest words to grace the hour, a voice more
eloquent than all these will rise from the sands of the desolate little
island of Jamestown,--"We who lie here in unmarked graves died for _you_!"
* * * * *
Ninety-nine years after Jamestown was settled the seat of government
was removed to Williamsburg. There was then no further excuse for the
existence of a town on the little peninsula. Mrs. Ann Cotton, writing
soon after Bacon's Rebellion, gives sufficient reasons for this. "It is
low ground, full of marshes and swamps, which make the aire especially
in the sumer insalubritious and unhealthy. It is not at all replenished
with springs of fresh water, and that which they have in their wells
brackish, ill-scented, penurious and not grateful to the stomach ... and
(in the town) about a dozen families are getting their living by keeping
of ordinaries at extraordinary prices."[84]
So it appears that "the town, even though measured by what would appear to
be a standard of its time, was small, poor, and insignificant. This fact
invests the place with the deepest interest, when it is remembered that
from such a small beginning in the wilderness has sprung what bids fair
to become, if not so already, the greatest nation of the earth."[85]
The town, deserted by all its best citizens, rapidly fell into decay
and ruin. The brick houses tumbled down, the church left nothing but its
sturdy old tower to stand sentinel over the graves of those who had built
it and worshipped within it.
[Illustration: Jamestown Church Tower, Rear View, showing Old Foundations.
Copyright, 1906, by Jamestown Official Photo. Corp'n. ]
The peninsula, to-day an island, was divided into farms, and "martial
ranks of corn" stood in the plain on which John Smith exercised his men in
military evolutions. Around the church the young trees had it all their
own way, clasping the gravestones and bearing them aloft in their strong
young arms. There was nobody to hinder or protest.
In 1856 the peninsula had become an island, and access to it was by
a rowboat. A large portion of the island was already engulfed by the
waves. The bank was giving away within one hundred and fifty feet of the
old tower of the church. Travellers in the excursion boats to Old Point
Comfort began to observe the singular behaviour of a large cypress tree
in the river opposite the tower. The cypress seemed to be slowly moving
onward. An old traveller remembered that the tree in 1846 stood on land;
it was now two hundred and ninety feet in the water from the shore!
Evidently the shore itself was receding. Through the munificent gift
of Mr. and Mrs. Edward Barney, in 1895, twenty-two acres of the island,
including its historic area, came into the possession of the Association
for the Preservation of Virginian Antiquities--a band of daughters of
Virginia organized to rescue from decay and oblivion the sites of her
early history, carving anew, like the Antiquary at the graves of the
slaughtered Presbyterians, the story of those who "broke the way with
tears."
Our guests on our anniversary day will not find the picturesque old church
tower standing alone, looking toward the sea to which the anxious eyes
of the sleepers beneath had been cast in the early days of starvation.
Weakened by the storms of nearly three centuries, the old tower demanded
support. The church has been rebuilt upon the old plan and the old
foundations. A splendid sea-wall has been given by the government to the
women of the Virginia Association--to do what their feeble hands tried
but could not do. All is changed--except the old cypress far out in the
water, which keeps its own secret, and refuses to yield to time, or wave,
or change. Who knows? Perhaps his clasping roots may hold that other child
of the forest, the old brave chieftain Opechancanough.
Part of the humble little town has been exhumed. The walls and foundations
of the third and fourth churches, and of some few houses have been laid
bare. Very few relics have been discovered; the bones of a gigantic man,
the cenotaph of a knight, skeletons which crumbled at the touch of the
air, shot from some alien gun, a bit here and there of broken crockery.
But beneath the mould of two centuries was found evidence of another and
lasting foundation, the fundamental basis of all happiness, all moral
good, and all national prosperity--that of the simple, wholesome domestic
life of the fireside. A pipe, scissors, thimble, and candlestick lay
together in one of the uncovered chambers.