From the very first day we came ashore, good Master Hunt went about urging that great effort be made to keep the houses, and the paths around them, cleanly, saying that unless we did so, there was like to be a sickness come among us. With some his preaching did good, but by far the greater number, and these chiefly to be found among the self called gentlemen, gave no heed.
It was as if these lazy ones delighted in filth. Again and again have I seen one or another throw the scrapings of the trencher bowls just outside the door of the tent or hut, where those who came or went must of a necessity tread upon them, and one need not struggle hard to realize what soon was the condition of the village.
After a heavy shower many of the paths were covered ankle deep with filth of all kinds, and when the sun shone warm and bright, the stench was too horrible to be described by ordinary words.
CAVE HOMES
There were other kinds of homes, and quite a number of them, that were made neither of cloth nor of logs. These were holes dug in the side of small hillocks until a sleeping room had been made, when the front part was covered with brush or logs, built outward from the hill to form a kitchen.
During a storm these cave homes were damp, often times actually muddy, and those who slept therein were but inviting the mortal sickness that came all too soon among us, until it was as if the Angel of Death had taken possession of Jamestown.
Captain Smith said everything he could to persuade these people, who were content to live in a hole in the ground, that they were little better than beasts of the field.
But so long as the foolish ones continued to believe this new world was much the same as filled with gold and silver, so long they wasted their time searching.