6. "They thought it was all due to magic, and met in council to decide my fate. Some feared to put me to death, others feared to let me live. After a long and solemn talk there was a dead silence, whilst a huge stone was dragged into the centre, and I was forced to kneel down beside it, Indians standing around with their heavy clubs. At this critical moment the chief's daughter, Pocahontas, a young girl of ten or twelve, flew to my side and, spreading her arms over me pleaded for my life. Another council was held, and I was set free."
7. Meanwhile everything had fallen into confusion at Jamestown, and Smith had much ado to keep the men from sailing away in the pinnace. In the following spring another party of emigrants arrived, composed mostly of mere reckless adventurers, whose one object was to find gold. "When you send again," Smith wrote to the Council at home, "I entreat you rather send but thirty carpenters, husbandmen, gardeners, fishermen, blacksmiths, masons, and diggers up of trees' roots than a thousand of such as we have.... Nothing is to be won here but by honest toil." Under Smith's rule the colony passed safely through another winter, and then an explosion of a bag of gunpowder slung around his neck, rendered him for a time useless, and he returned to England.
8. The colony went to pieces in Smith's absence, and within six months of his departure it was reduced to a miserable remnant of sixty persons, supporting themselves mainly on roots and berries. They were on the point of abandoning their settlement and had just reached the mouth of the river when they were astonished by the sight of a ship coming up to meet them. The ship was the forerunner of a small squadron, under the command of Lord de la Warr, who had been sent to the relief of the colony.
9. The turning-point had come. The new governor had brought provisions for a year and a large band of emigrants. He assembled the old settlers, sternly rebuked them for their "sluggish idleness," and entreated them to amend their ways, and so avoid the sword of justice, which he was determined to wield. It is amusing to read the old chronicler's idea of hard work. "Let not any man," says he, "be discouraged by the relation of their daily labour. It began at six and went on till ten, and again from two to four when they went to church, and after that returned home and received their rations."
10. With the coming of Lord de la Warr, the prospects of the colony began to brighten and progress to be made. The first decided step onward was taken when a few acres of land were assigned to each settler for his orchard and garden and other private uses. Hitherto all had been expected to work for the common good, and the result had been reluctant labour and waste of time, the few willing to work having no heart to do so, when the majority were idly whiling away the time. Hence we see the advantage of giving every man the right to hold private property.
11. The colonists for some little time lost much of their labour in growing grapes, but on turning their chief attention and care to the cultivation of tobacco, they found themselves on the highway to prosperity. Very soon the fields, the gardens, the public squares, even the sides of the streets of Jamestown, were planted with tobacco for the English market. Few women had as yet dared to cross the Atlantic, but the growing prosperity of the colony induced ninety women to throw in their lot with their countrymen in Virginia. They were not long in finding husbands. Thus arose new English homes in the land beyond the seas. England's first colony had taken root, and in time a new English nation sprang therefrom.
THE PILGRIM FATHERS LEAVING ENGLAND.
12. From the many blunders made in trying to found our first colony, we learned how to secure success in similar undertakings in future. Virginia served as our school of wisdom and experience in planting colonies; we had still to learn, by losing her and her sister states, how to keep colonies within the empire after planting them.