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.

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.