We are set down eighty miles within a river, for breadth, sweetness of water, length navigable up into the country, deep and bold channel, so stored with sturgeon and other sweet fish as no man's fortune has ever possessed the like. And, as we think, if more may be wished in a river it will be found.
After various vicissitudes John Smith confessed:
Though there be fish in the sea, fowls in the air, and beasts in the woods, their bounds are so large, they so wild, and we so weak and ignorant, we cannot much trouble them.
George Percy introduced a happier note:
It pleased God, after a while, to send those people which were our mortal enemies [Indians] to relieve us with victuals, as bread, corn, fish, and flesh in great plenty, which was the setting up of our feeble men, otherwise we had all perished.
John Smith tells about another crisis:
Our victuals being within eighteen days spent and the Indians' trade decreasing, I was sent to the mouth of the river, to Kecoughtan [Hampton], an Indian town, to trade for corn and try the river for fish, but our fishing we could not effect by reason of the stormy weather.... Only of sturgeon we had great store, whereon our men would so greedily surfeit, as it cost many their lives.
And still another:
From May to September, those that escaped lived upon sturgeon and sea crabs.
And this: