The "small towne" was a bit of prophetic imagination. Up to the hour of Newport's sailing the colonists had been employed, with infinite labour and toil, in felling trees and hewing them into clapboards for freighting the two returning ships, the Goodspeed and Susan (or Sarah) Constant. The Discovery, a little pinnace of twenty tons, was left behind for the use of the colony, in case of flight from the savages. It is wonderful, in view of ensuing events, that the colonists did not at once reëmbark in the pinnace and seek some healthier spot for the proposed town. The river—the "famousest river in Christendom"—seems to have held them with a strange fascination.
There was absolutely no dwelling of any kind erected during the summer.[26] Some of the settlers slept in holes in the ground, roofed with rails. A rough palisade had been made of boards, and rude cabins covered with sail cloth sheltered the ammunition and stores. The first church was a log between two trees to serve as a lectern, and a rotten sail was stretched overhead in case of rain; for in all weathers, rain or shine, the good Master Hunt ministered to his flock, morning and evening, leading them in supplication for protection to Almighty God; and from an unhewn log as an altar, administered to them the holy emblems of the Christian faith.
Before the men could begin to build comfortable quarters, they were smitten with illness, which continued until September. More than half of their number perished. The story is told so well by George Percy that I will be pardoned for giving it in his own words:—
"Our men were destroyed with cruell diseases, as Swellings, Flixes, Burning Fevers, and by warres; and some departed suddenly; but for the most part they died of meere famine!
"There were never Englishmen left in a foreigne Country in such miserie as wee were in this new discovered Virginia. Wee watched every three nights, lying on the bare, cold ground, what weather soever came; and warded all the next day; which brought our men to bee most feeble wretches. Our food was but a small Can of Barlie sodden in water to five men a day. Our drinke, cold water taken out of the River; which was at a flood verie salt; at a low tide full of slime and filth; which was the destruction of many of our men.
"Thus we lived for the space of five months in this miserable distresse, not having five able men to man our Bulwarkes upon any occasion. If it had not pleased God to put a terrour in the Savages hearts, we had all perished by those wild and cruell Pagans, being in that weake estate as we were; our men night and day groaning in every corner of the Fort most pitifull to heare. If there were any conscience in men, it would make their harts to bleed to heare the pitifull murmurings and outcries of our sicke men without reliefe; every night and day for the space of six weekes; some departing out of the Worlde, many times three or foure in a night; in the morning, their bodies trailed out of their Cabines like Dogges to be buried. In this sort did I see the mortalities of divers of our people."
Among those who perished was our friend, Thomas Studley, the "Cape Merchant," and another was Elizabeth's brave mariner, Bartholomew Gosnold, the projector of the enterprise, and one of the Council. How strange that he should, after his many voyages, have so eagerly insisted upon this colonization of Virginia, to find there his own grave—far away from the England whose honour he loved so ardently! His unhappy comrades did what they could. Smitten with fever and weakened by starvation, they bore him to his humble grave, reverently and decently, "having all ordinance of the fort shot off, with many vollies of small shot." Thus old Virginia received her first-born into her bosom! She lovingly holds him there still. We can imagine these scenes, softened by the faithful, untiring care of Thomas Walton, the surgeon, and the priestly offices and consolations of good Master Hunt.
It seems unthinkable that England should have so starved her colony. In Elizabeth's reign the narrow, selfish charter and the meagre outfit would have been impossible. All things were possible to James that could in any way contribute to his own self-aggrandizement. Bitter as was the lot of the unhappy adventurers, they were too manly to complain. "When some affirm," says a historian of the time,[27] "that it was ill done of the Council to send forth men so badly provided, this incontradictable reason will show them plainly they are ill-advised to nourish such ill conceits: first, the fault of going was our own, what could be thought fitting or necessary we had; but what we should find or want or where we should be, we were all ignorant, and supposing to make our passage in two months, with victuall to live, and the advantage of the spring to work; we were at sea five months where we both spent our victuall and lost the time and opportunity to plant by the unskilful presumption of our ignorant transporters that understood not at all what they undertook. Such actions have ever since the world's beginning been subject to such accidents and everything of worth is found full of difficulties; but nothing so difficult as to establish a commonwealth so far remote from men and means and where men's minds are so untoward as neither to do well themselves nor suffer others."
The closing sentence was a very mild commentary indeed upon the state of things at Jamestown. The miniature republic—for such it rapidly grew to be in nearly everything except in name—held within its borders just the elements that distinguish the great republic of to-day: some noble spirits with high aims and fervent patriotism; some sordid souls intent alone on gain; some unprincipled, desperate characters; others simply useless, idle, and ignoble. Of the latter class, the President, Wingfield, was notably conspicuous. It was evident, from the first, that he was utterly unfit for his position. One of the earliest efforts of the convalescents was to get rid of him.
The store held in common, of "oyle, vinegar, sack and aqua vitæ," being nearly all spent, the Council ordered that the sack should be reserved for the Communion table, and all the rest sealed up against greater extremities—if there could be greater. John Smith accused Wingfield of using the reserved stores for his own benefit and that of his friends. Wingfield soon appeared in his true character, and added cowardice to incapacity. He made an effort to seize the pinnace and escape to England, thus leaving the colony to the mercy of the savages. This baseness roused the indignation even of the emaciated survivors, and they deposed him and appointed Captain Ratcliffe in his place. Wingfield's defence, addressed to his government, now preserved among the manuscripts of Lambeth Palace Library, is a curious mixture of dignified, not to say lofty, sentiments—for all the colonial writers used a formula of pious aspiration—and of fierce invective and very petty unworthy gossip; but if England has seen fit to preserve it all, we may quote a representative part of it.