ony. The maids were
not to be compelled to marry against their choice; and they were so
outnumbered by their suitors that they could do a good deal of picking
and choosing. With rusty finery and rusty wooing, the bachelor
colonists strove for the fair hands that were all too few, and there
was many a rejected swain that day.

We might have forgotten the other important events that had happened
round about where we were sitting, in that first little town by the
river, if a coloured man had not wandered our way. He had driven some
sightseers over from Williamsburg, and while waiting for them to visit
the graveyard, he seemed to find relief in confiding to us some of his
burden of colonial lore and that his name was Cornelius. We had over
again the story of Rolfe and Pocahontas, but it seemed not at all
wearisome, for the new version was such a vast improvement upon the one
that we got out of the books. However, his next statement eclipsed the
Pocahontas story.

"De firs' time folks evah meek dey own laws for dey se'fs was right
heah, suh, right in dat ole chu'ch."

While again facts could not quite keep up with Cornelius, yet it was
true that our little four-acre town had seen the beginnings of American
self-government. So early did the spirit of home rule assert itself,
that it bore fruit in 1619, when a local lawmaking body was created,
called the General Assembly and consisting in part of a House of
Burgesses chosen by the people. On July 30 of that year, the General
Assembly met in the village church--the first representative
legislature in America. The place of meeting was not, as is often
stated, the church in which Rolfe and Pocahontas were married, but its
successor--the earliest of the churches whose ruined foundations are
yet to be seen behind the old tower.

Perhaps our thoughts had wandered some from Cornelius, but he brought
them back again.

"Dey set in de chu'ch an' meek de laws wid dey hats on," he asserted.

And as the House of Burgesses had indeed followed in this respect the
custom of the English House of Commons, we were glad to see Cornelius
for once in accord with other historians.

Then, Nautica spoke of how the very year that saw the beginning of free
government in America saw the beginning of slavery too; and she asked
Cornelius if he knew that the first coloured people were brought to
America in 1619 and landed there at James Towne.

"Yas'm; ev'ybody tole me 'bout dat. Seem like we got