The point of land to which they gave the name of Archer’s Hope had many of the physical features they were seeking. The soil was marked by considerable fertility, and there was an abundance of the finest timber near at hand. The spot could also be put in a state of defence without the expenditure of much labor. An insurmountable obstacle, however, to its selection as the site of the proposed Colony lay in the fact, that the water near the banks of the stream in that vicinity was too shallow to allow a ship to be moored very close to the shore. At Jamestown Island, on the other hand, the depth of the river was so great that a large vessel could ride in safety just off the land, with its cables tied to the nearest trees. The wide expanse of the Powhatan at this point doubtless had some influence upon the minds of the adventurers if they could have sailed up to the future site of Henrico or Richmond, and made their earliest settlement there, they would have felt themselves entirely swallowed up by the wilderness. At Jamestown not only could the approach of a foreign enemy be quickly discovered, but the pathway to the European world seemed to be less obstructed. The length of time during which the community at this place remained the only town in Virginia would seem to indicate that the spot had some advantages apart from the ease with which it could be defended from an attack by water or by land. Henrico was built for the purpose of displacing the first settlement, at least in part, but Henrico soon fell into decay. Not until the capital was removed to Williams-
Smith, p. xxxiv. It is a fact worthy of attention that the Council in England, after enjoining the colonists to choose a place as far up the river as “a bark of fifty tuns will float,” directed that in no case “should they sufer any of the native people of the country to inhabit between them and the sea coast,” an order which could only be carried out by the absolute destruction or forcible removal of the aboriginies whose seats intervened. Ibid., p. xxiv.
