Newport returned to England with his vessels in June, leaving one hundred men, and a pinnace with stores, at Jamestown. The colonists, wanting habits of industry, soon perceived the helplessness of their situation. Many of them were of dissolute habits; and before autumn, the dampness of the climate, and the malaria arising from the decay of luxuriant vegetation, produced diseases which swept away fifty of their number, among whom was Bartholomew Gosnold, * the eminent navigator and projector of the settlement.
The survivors relied chiefly upon sturgeons and crabs, and scanty supplies of maize, for their subsistence, while Wingfield and a part of his council were appropriating the stores to their own use. Wingfield, and Kendall (one of the council), were detected in a conspiracy to abandon the colony, and escape with the pinnace and stores to the West Indies. They were deposed, and, Ratcliffe, an irresolute and indolent man, was appointed president. Fortunately for the colony, he was quite willing to bear the empty honors of his office without exercising its functions, and he allowed Captain Smith, by far the ablest man among them, to have the principal management of affairs. The colony at once assumed a new and better aspect under the direction of Smith. As far as possible, he infused his own energetic spirit into his companions; but they were generally too indolent and dissolute to profit much by his example. Smith quelled the spirit of anarchy and rebellion; restored order in the midst of confusion; visited the chiefs of the neighboring tribes, and inspired them with respect for the English; and, by his consummate skill, he procured from the natives an ample stock of corn and wild fowl when winter approached.
We are now at a point in the history of the New World full of the most romantic interest, and the pen is tempted from its present line of duty by a thousand seductive influences. The exploits of Smith—his exploring voyages—his discoveries—his indomitable perseverance
* Gosnold crossed the Atlantic in 1602. and, after a voyage of six weeks, saw land at the northern extremity of Massachusetts Bay. He sailed southward, and landed upon a promontory, which he called Cape Cod, on account of the great quantity of cod fish which abounded there. Pursuing his voyage along the coast, he discovered and named Elizabeth Islands, thirteen in number, Martha's Vineyard, and others in the neighborhood of Buzzard's Bay. After an absence of only four months, Gosnold returned to England.
Progress of Jamestown Colony.—Smith's Voyage up the Chickahominy.—His Capture.—His Adventures in Europe.
and courage—his hardships, sufferings, escapes, and forbearance with his ungrateful companions, all plead eloquently for the services of pen and pencil. These must be briefly sketched in faint outline, for it is foreign to my plan to detail colonial history, except so much as is necessary to illustrate the main subject of these volumes—The War for Independence.
The Jamestown colony was placed beyond the effects of want in the autumn of 1607, and Smith, with a few companions, set out to explore the country.
