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
c