looking, in accordance with
the measurements on the map, until we had looked one hundred and
thirty-five yards; then, turned our eyes sharply to the right and
looked thirty-three and one third yards more. We then had the
satisfaction of feeling that the spot our eyes rested upon was, in
1607, on the shore of the island, and was the place where the original
settlers first landed. Nor was our satisfaction at all dampened by the
discovery that the spot was two spots--Nautica gazing spellbound at one
place, and the Commodore at another.

After all, it made very little difference, for the settlers did not
stay where they landed anyway.

They seem to have built their fort and their little settlement within
it about five hundred feet farther down stream and some distance back
from the shore. It was in the form of a triangle and had an area of
about an acre. Its entire site has been generally supposed to be washed
away, but the recent researches show that such is not the case. A
considerable part of it is left and is now safe behind a protecting
sea-wall. As, at the time of our visit, nothing marked this remnant of
the historic acre, we undertook to locate it. Fortunately, the
Confederate fort stands in such position as to help in running the
boundaries by the map. For a rough approximation, all we had to do was
to get Mr. Leal, the caretaker, to stand at the most westerly angle of
the fort, and his son on the sea-wall at the lower end of the fort, and
Henry on the sea-wall a hundred yards farther up stream; then, straight
lines connecting these three men enclosed all that is left of that
first little fortified settlement where Anglo-Saxon America began.
While the three men stood at the three corners, we took a photograph of
the historic bit of land; and long after they had gone we lingered
reflectively about it.

Here, in that spring of 1607, within the strong palisade, the settlers
built their first cabins. Here, Captain Newport left them, and sailed
back to England. Here, too, he found them again--a pitiful few of
them--when he returned the next winter with reinforcements for the
colony. By another winter, the palisaded village had extended somewhat,
mostly eastward. It then included, so far as we could make out, all the
land now within the Confederate fort and probably also the site of the
present ruined church and graveyard. Upon this little four-acre
settlement hung the destiny of a hemisphere for the next few years.