In the case of those early voyagers, savages lurked along the wooded shores and greater dangers lay in the unknown, treacherous currents and hidden bars of the stream itself.  We should have to imagine all our savages; and there, on the table in Gadabout’s little cockpit, close to the man (or, quite as likely, the woman) at the wheel, lay charts that told the hidden features of the river highway.

Quaint old-time Sarah and her sister ships could not have sailed up this waterway very far before finding navigation difficult.  Even small as they were, they must often have found scant water if the James of that time, like the James of to-day, had its top and bottom so close together every here and there.  A majestic river several miles wide, often fifty to seventy-five feet deep, yet barred by such tangles of shoals as one would not expect to find in a respectable creek.  And shoals too that the colour of the water hides from the keenest eyes.

To be sure, for us it was all plain sailing.  The charts told where the shoals were and how to avoid them.  Our chief danger lay in presuming too much upon our light draft and in venturing too far from the indicated channels.  But how about those deeper-draft, chartless sailing craft?  Well, they managed to get along anyway, and our houseboat must on after them.

One more straight reach of the river, one more great sweeping bend, and we should come upon the site of that old village of James Towne.  Still the tawny Powhatan, like many another proud savage, showed small sign of succumbing to civilization.  There seemed scarce any mark of human habitation.  The life of the people, where there were people, must have been back from the banks.  The river itself was empty.  Nowhere was there wreath of smoke or shimmer of sail.  Just the wild beauty of the shores, the noble expanse of the stream, the cloudless blue of the summer sky, and Gadabout.

Yet, we were not seeing quite the James that those first English eyes beheld.  For them the slopes and headlands were covered with far nobler forests and Nature wore her May-time gown.  Life and colour were everywhere.  In the clear atmosphere of the Virginia spring, the woodland was a wealth of living green radiantly starred with flowers.  What a Canaan those weary, storm-tossed colonists must have thought it all!

We can well imagine the little family groups gathered on the decks, eagerly planning for their new life.  We can see the brightening in the tired eyes of women and of children as the ships tack near to the flowery shore; as schools of fish break the river into patches of flashing silver; as strange, brilliant birds go flaming in the sunlight; as beauty is added to beauty in this wondrous new home-land.

No!  We blunder in our history.  There were no women and children on the Sarah Constant, nor on the Goodspeed, nor on the Discovery.  The story of these ships is not like that later one of the Mayflower.  The colour dies out of the picture; and there remains only the worn, motley band of men—­men who have taken possession of the country by the sign of the cross, fit omen of the fate awaiting them.