But our thoughts, busy with scenes two or three centuries gone, kept
stumbling over two features of the landscape that were out of keeping
with those old times. Back of us, where an isthmus should be stretching
from island to mainland, was the open water gateway through which we
had come; and in front of us, where there should be nothing but river
and marsh, that modern bridge reached from shore to shore.

Our quickened fancy made short work of such anachronisms. We promptly
raised the submerged isthmus, tying the island to the mainland once
more. Then we attacked the bridge; and, as the pilings to which our
boat was fastened did not have any connection with that structure, we
felt no misgivings as the troublesome modernism faded away.

The bridge disposed of, we bethought us that the road with which it had
connected was also a latter-day feature. To be sure, our maps showed us
that in colonial times too a road had crossed the island, and along
much the same lines; but it had come out a little farther down Back
River, at the point already referred to as "Friggett Landing."

To put the roadway right, then, we had first to locate the site of the
old landing. And in this important matter what painstaking
archeologists we were! Not by guesswork, but by a long string, did we
locate "Friggett Landing." After reading all that our authorities had
to say on the subject (and understanding part of it), we sent our man
down stream in a rowboat, confident that he would find the landing at
the end of the measured string. When the string ran out, the rowboat
was opposite a point on the marshy edge of the island about one hundred
feet below the present-day road.