[Illustration: LOCATING WHAT IS LEFT OF THE SITE OF THE FIRST
SETTLEMENT.]

We trudged about within the old town limits and tried to picture the
chief events of those years; but we could not remember what they were;
so we sat down on the grassy fort, regardless of ticks and redbugs, to
read up some more. For a while there was no sound but the twitter of
the birds and the murmur of the river. Then the Commodore found
something in his book, and he began very solemnly to tell of how on
that very spot the colonists endured the horrors of the "Starving
Time." At this there was such a genuine exclamation of pleasure from
Nautica that the Commodore knew he was too late; she had not even
heard. She had found something in her book too, and was already
announcing that it was right there that John Rolfe and Pocahontas were
married.

But the Commodore insisted that his story came first, as Nautica's
romantic event was not until 1614, while his famine was in 1609-10.
Nautica sighed resignedly as she agreed that we should starve first and
get married afterward.

After all, we found that we could not speak lightly, sitting there in
the midst of the scene of the "Starving Time." By the winter of 1609-10
there were perhaps five hundred persons in this little settlement by
the river, including now, unfortunately, some women and children. When
there was no more corn, the people managed for a while to keep alive on
roots and herbs; then, half-crazed by starvation, they fell to
cannibalism. Gaunt, desperate, de-humanized, they crouched about the
kettle that held their own dead. A Bible fed the flames, cast in by a
poor wretch as he cried, "Alas! there is no God!"

The succeeding spring brought two ships, a belated portion of one of
the "Supplies." But sixty of the five hundred colonists were found
alive--sixty haggard men, women, and children, hunger-crazed, huddled
behind the broken palisades. Sadly suggestive must have seemed the
names of the two vessels that appeared upon that awful scene--Patience
and Deliverance. But the deliverance that they brought was of a poor
sort. They had not on board provisions enough to last a month.

It was decided that it was vain for the colony to try to hold out
longer. James Towne, upon which so much blood and treasure had been
spent and that had seemed at last to give England a hold in the New
World, must be abandoned. To the roll of drums, the remnant of the
colony boarded the vessels, sails wer