Upon reaching the river front of the island, we took our bearings from the map and walked slowly toward the water’s edge, being careful not to walk too far as the water’s edge is so much closer in now than it used to be.  Going to the uppermost of the several jetties, we sighted along it straight out over the water and kept on 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.

[Illustration:  Locating what is left of the site of the first settlement.]