Virginia: the Old Dominion · Chapter 5List of Illustrations (4)
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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.
"Right near here. They say it stood about a hundred yards above the later one whose ruins are over there in the graveyard. And in that church Lord Delaware and his council—"
"Yes," Nautica broke in again. "That was the church that they were married in—John Rolfe and Pocahontas."
"To be sure," said the Commodore. "Let the wedding bells ring. It is time now for the ceremony."
And a strange ceremony it must have been that the little timber church saw that April day in the year 1614, when the young colonist of good English family linked his fate with that of the dark-skinned girl of the tepee. It was the first marriage of Englishman and Indian in the colony, and meant much to the struggling settlers in furthering peaceful relations with the savages. Speaking in the society-column vernacular of a later day, the occasion was marred by the absence of the bride's father. The wary old chieftain was not willing to place himself within the power of the English. But the bride's family was represented by two of her brothers and by her old uncle, Opachisco, who gave her away. Other red men were present. Doubtless the governor of the colony, Sir Thomas Dale, who much approved the marriage, added a touch of official dignity by attending the ceremony resplendent in uniform and accompanied by colonial officials.
It was a strange wedding, party. While the minister (Was it the Reverend Richard Buck or the good Alexander Whittaker?) read the marriage service of the Church of England, the eyes of haughty cavalier and of impassive savage met above the kneeling pair and sought to read each other. And a strange fate hung over the pale-face groom and the dusky bride—that in her land and by her people he should be slain; that in his land and among his people she should die and find a lonely grave beside an English river.
"That is just one marriage that you have been so interested in, isn't it?" The Commodore's tone was one to provoke inquiry.
"Just one?" repeated Nautica, "Why, to be sure, unless it takes two weddings to marry two people."
"Just one wedding," persisted the Commodore. "Now, I am interested in dozens and dozens of weddings that happened right here, and all in one day."
There were several things the matter with James Towne from the outset. Prominent among them was the absence of women and children. After a while a few colonists with families arrived; but, to introduce the home element more generally into the colony, "young women to make wives ninety" came from England in 1619. The scene upon their arrival must have been one of the most unique in the annals of matrimony. The streets of James Towne were undoubtedly crowded. The little capital had bachelors enough of her own, but now she held also those that came flocking in from the other settlements of the colony. The maids were not to be compelled to marry against their choice; and they were so outnumbered by their suitors that they could do a good deal of picking and choosing. With rusty finery and rusty wooing, the bachelor colonists strove for the fair hands that were all too few, and there was many a rejected swain that day.
We might have forgotten the other important events that had happened round about where we were sitting, in that first little town by the river, if a coloured man had not wandered our way. He had driven some sightseers over from Williamsburg, and while waiting for them to visit the graveyard, he seemed to find relief in confiding to us some of his burden of colonial lore and that his name was Cornelius. We had over again the story of Rolfe and Pocahontas, but it seemed not at all wearisome, for the new version was such a vast improvement upon the one that we got out of the books. However, his next statement eclipsed the Pocahontas story.
"De firs' time folks evah meek dey own laws for dey se'fs was right heah, suh, right in dat ole chu'ch."
While again facts could not quite keep up with Cornelius, yet it was true that our little four-acre town had seen the beginnings of American self-government. So early did the spirit of home rule assert itself, that it bore fruit in 1619, when a local lawmaking body was created, called the General Assembly and consisting in part of a House of Burgesses chosen by the people. On July 30 of that year, the General Assembly met in the village church—the first representative legislature in America. The place of meeting was not, as is often stated, the church in which Rolfe and Pocahontas were married, but its successor—the earliest of the churches whose ruined foundations are yet to be seen behind the old tower.
Perhaps our thoughts had wandered some from Cornelius, but he brought them back again.
"Dey set in de chu'ch an' meek de laws wid dey hats on," he asserted.
And as the House of Burgesses had indeed followed in this respect the custom of the English House of Commons, we were glad to see Cornelius for once in accord with other historians.
Then, Nautica spoke of how the very year that saw the beginning of free government in America saw the beginning of slavery too; and she asked Cornelius if he knew that the first coloured people were brought to America in 1619 and landed there at James Towne.
"Yas'm; ev'ybody tole me 'bout dat. Seem like we got heah 'bout as soon as de white folks."
It was a comfortable view to take of the matter, and we would not disturb it.
Cornelius told us other things.
"Dis, now, is de off season for touris'," he explained. "We has two mos' reg'lar seasons, de spring an' de fall, yas, suh. I drives right many ovah heah from Willi'msburg. I's pretty sho to git hol' of de bes' an' de riches'. An' I reckon I knows 'bout all dere is to be knowed 'bout dis firs' settlemen'. I's got it all so's I kin talk it off an' take in de extry change. I don' know is you evah notice, but folks is mighty diffrunt 'bout seem' dese ole things. Yas, suh, dey sut'n'y is. Some what I drives jes looks at de towah an' nuver gits out de ker'ige; an' den othahs jes peers into ev'ythin'. Foh myse'f, now, I nuver keers much 'bout dese ole sceneries; but den I reckon I would ef I was rich."
CHAPTER VIII PIONEER VILLAGE LIFE
That first little four-acre James Towne, located in the neighbourhood of the present Confederate fort, soon outgrew its palisades. In what may be called its typical days, the village stretched in a straggling way for perhaps three quarters of a mile up and down the river front, and with outlying parts reaching across the island to Back River. It usually consisted of a church, a few public buildings, about a score of dwellings, and perhaps a hundred people.
One of the principal streets (if James Towne's thoroughfares could be called streets) ran close along the water front. While it must once have had some shorter name, it has come down in the records as "the way along the Greate River." Here and there traces of this highway can still be found; and the mulberry trees now standing along the river bank are supposed to be descendants of those that bordered the old village highway. Next came Back Street upon which some prominent people seem to have lived. Apparently leading across the head of the island from the town toward the isthmus was the "old Greate Road." There still appear some signs of this also near the graveyard. Besides these highways there were several lanes and cart-paths.
The eastward extension of the village, called New Towne, was the principal part. It was the fashionable and official quarter. Here lived many "people of qualitye." Royal governors and ex-governors, knights and members of the Council had their homes along the river front, where they lived in all the state that they could transplant from "London Towne."
The buildings, in the early days of wood and later of brick, were plainly rectangular. The later ones were usually two stories high with steep-pitched roofs. Some of the dwellings, or dwellings and public buildings, were built together in rows to save in the cost of construction. Probably most of the homes had "hort yards" and gardens. The colonists were not content with having about them the native flowers and fruits and those that they brought from England; but they made persistent efforts for years to grow in their gardens oranges, lemons, pomegranates, and pineapples.
Usually there was not much going on in old James Towne, but periodically the place was enlivened by the sessions of the General Assembly and of the Court. At such times the planters and their following gathered in; and then doubtless there were stirring days in the village capital of "His Majesty's Colony of Virginia." Barges of the river planters were tied alongshore, and about the "tavernes" were horses, carts and a very few more pretentious vehicles. Many of the people on the streets were in showy dress; though only the governor, councillors, and heads of "Hundreds" were allowed to wear gold on their clothes.
James Towne, in her later days, seems to have had a "taverne" or two even when she had scarcely anything else; and doubtless these "alehouses" were the centres of life in those bustling court and assembly days. For not only was deep drinking a trait of the times, but many of the sessions both of the Assembly and of the Court were held in the "tavernes." Three or four State-houses were built; but with almost suspicious regularity they burned down, and homeless Assembly and Court betook themselves and the affairs of the colony to the inns. There, in the ruddy glow of the great fireplaces, the judges could sit comfortably and dispense justice tempered with spirits.
So life in James Towne went on until the village had completed almost a hundred years of existence. But this was accomplished only by the most strenuous efforts. When at last, in 1699, the long struggle was given up and the seat of government was removed to Williamsburg, nothing but utter dissolution was left for James Towne.
The fated little village had played its part. Through untold suffering and a woeful cost of human life, it had fought on until England obtained a firm hold in America—a hold that was to make the New World essentially Anglo-Saxon. Then this pioneer colony's mission was ended. It was not destined to have any place in the great nation that its struggle had made possible. One by one the lights in the poor little windows flickered and went out. The deserted hearthstones grew cold. Abandoned and forgotten, the pitiful hamlet crumbled away.
James Towne dead, the island gradually fell into fewer hands until it became, as it is to-day, the property of a single owner; simply a plantation like any other. And yet, how unlike! Even were every vestige of that pioneer settlement gone forever, memory would hold this island a place apart. But all is not gone. Despite decay and the greedy river, there yet remains to us a handful of ruins of vanished James Towne. Despite a nation's shameful neglect, time has spared to her some relics of the community that gave her birth—a few broken tombs and the crumbling, tower of the old village church. Every year come many of our people to look upon these ancient ruins and to pause in the midst of hurried lives to recall again their story.
CHAPTER IX 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.
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 shores 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 pronounced 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 principalities 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 passing 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.