Chapter 9

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.

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.

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.