In an earlier part of this book, the history of the fort between 1586 and 1896 has been traced. During 1935-46, National Park Service historians made intensive historical studies of all available documentary and map data relating to the fort. They concluded that the fort surveyed for the Roanoke Colony Historical Association, in 1896, was Lane’s fort and surmised that its shape was similar to that of the fort built by Lane in Puerto Rico in 1585. They could only surmise this because, unlike Lane’s fort in Puerto Rico which is shown in a drawing by John White now in the British Museum, no picture or plan of Lane’s fort on Roanoke Island has survived. National Park Service archeological work carried on under the direction of Archeologist J. C. Harrington during the summers of 1947, 1948, and 1950 established the truth of the conjectures of the historians. The true shape of the fort was made known. Enough of the fort moat, or ditch, was found intact to justify the restoration of the fort, and valuable artifact materials were recovered at the fort site and west of the fort entrance. [Illustration: _The fort during the work of restoration._] As the fort stands today, the greater part of the ditch is the original moat of 1585-86, but the parapet has been restored. In the interval between 1586 and 1947, wind, rain, and snow had washed the parapet of the fort into the fort ditch. Leaf mold had also accumulated there. Archeological studies of these materials indicated that the fort was of great age. After careful archeological work at the fort and its environs in 1947 and 1948, it was decided in 1950 to restore the fort which had been shown to be the remains of an Elizabethan work. The earthen fill was removed from the ditch, or moat, of the fort and was placed where the parapet had been and the parapet built up once more. Except for the fact that the archeologists worked slowly with painstaking care to follow the lines of the original ditch, and Lane’s soldiers must have worked rapidly with shovels, the new and the old process of building the parapet of the fort must have been much the same. The amount of earth in the original ditch, as disclosed through archeological methods, determined the height of the parapet, which was shaped in accordance with normal angles of repose and data from contemporary manuals on fortification such as Paul Ive’s, _The Practice of Fortification_, (London, 1589).