Having examined the various types of men that entered Virginia as indentured servants, it now remains to determine to what extent these types survived and became welded into the social life of the colony. The importation of starving laborers and even of criminals was of vital importance only in proportion to the frequency with which they survived their term of service, acquired property, married and left descendants. The law of the survival of the fittest, which is so great a factor in elevating the human race, operated with telling effect in Virginia. The bulk of the servants were subjected to a series of tests so severe, that, when safely passed through, they were a guarantee of soundness of body, mind, and character.
The mortality among the laborers in the tobacco fields was enormous. Scattered along the banks of the rivers and creeks and frequently adjacent to swamps and bogs, the plantations were unhealthful in the extreme. Everywhere were swarms of mosquitoes,[176] and the colonists were exposed to the sting of these pests both by night and day, and many received through them the deadly malaria bacteria. Scarcely three months had elapsed from the first landing at Jamestown in 1607, when disease made its appearance in the colony. The first death occurred in August, and so deadly were the conditions to which the settlers were subjected that soon hardly a day passed without one death to record. Before the end of September more than fifty were in their graves. Part of the mortality was due, it is true, to starvation, but "fevers and fluxes" were beyond doubt responsible for many of the deaths.[177] George Percy, one of the party, describes in vivid colors the sufferings of the settlers. "There were never Englishmen," he says, "left in a forreigne countrey in such miserie as wee were in this new discovered Virginia, Wee watched every three nights, lying on the bare ground, what weather soever came; ... which brought our men to be most feeble wretches, ... If there were any conscience in men, it would make their harts to bleed to hears the pitifull murmurings and outcries of our sick men without reliefe, every night and day for the space of six weekes: some departing out of the World, many times three or foure in a night; in the morning, their bodies trailed out of their cabines like dogges, to be buried."[178] Of the hundred colonists that had remained at Jamestown, but thirty-eight were alive when relief came in January, 1608.
Nor were the colonists that followed in the wake of the Susan Constant, the Godspeed and the Discovery more fortunate. In the summer of 1609, the newcomers under Lord Delaware were attacked by fever and in a short while one hundred and fifty had died. It seemed for a while that no one would escape the epidemic and that disease would prove more effective than the Indians in protecting the country from the encroachment of the Englishmen.[179] How terrible was the mortality in these early years is shown by the statement of Molina in 1613, that one hundred and fifty in every three hundred colonists died before being in Virginia twelve months.[180]
In 1623 a certain Nathaniel Butler, who had been at one time governor of the Bermuda Islands, testified to the unhealthfulness of the colony. "I found," he says, "the plantations generally seated upon meer salt marishes full of infectious boggs and muddy creeks and lakes, and thereby subjected to all those inconveniences and diseases which are soe commonly found in the most unsounde and most unhealthy parts of England whereof everie country and clymate hath some." Butler asserted that it was by no means uncommon to see newcomers from England "dying under hedges and in the woods." He ended by declaring that unless conditions were speedily redressed by some divine or supreme hand, instead of a plantation Virginia would shortly get the name of a slaughter house.[181]
The mortality was chiefly among the newcomers. If one managed to survive during his first year of residence in the colony, he might reasonably expect to escape with his life, being then "seasoned" as the settlers called it. The death rate during this first year, however, was frightful. De Vries said of the climate "that during the months of June, July and August it was very unhealthy, that then people that had lately arrived from England, die, during these months, like cats and dogs, whence they call it the sickly season."[182] So likely was it that a newcomer would be stricken down that a "seasoned" servant was far more desirable than a fresh arrival. A new hand, having seven and a half years to serve, was worth not more than others, having one year more only. Governor William Berkeley stated in 1671, "there is not oft seasoned hands (as we term them) that die now, whereas heretofore not one of five escaped the first year."[183]
Robert Evelyn, in his Description of the Province of New Albion, printed in 1648, gives a vivid picture of the unhealthful climate of Virginia. He declared that formerly five out of every six men imported from Europe fell speedy victims to disease. "I," he said, "on my view of Virginia, disliked Virginia, most of it being seated scatteringly ... amongst salt-marshes and creeks, whence thrice worse than Essex, ... and Kent for agues and diseases ... brackish water to drink and use, and a flat country, and standing waters in woods bred a double corrupt air."[184]
Much of the ill health of the immigrants was undoubtedly due to the unwholesome conditions on board the ships during their passage from Europe. The vessels were often crowded with wretched men, women and children, and were foul beyond description. Gross uncleanliness was the rule rather than the exception. William Copps, in a letter to Deputy Treasurer Ferrar, says, "Betwixt decks there can hardlie a man fetch his breath by reason there arisith such a funke in the night that it causes putrifacation of blood and breedeth disease much like the plague." Often the number of persons that died at sea was frightful. One vessel lost one hundred and thirty persons out of one hundred and eighty. The disease started in this way was often spread in Virginia after the settlers had reached their new homes, and terrible epidemics more than once resulted.
If the assertion of Berkeley that four out of five of the indentured servants died during the first year's residence in the colony, or Evelyn's statement that five out of six soon succumbed, be accepted as correct, the number of deaths must have been very large indeed. Among the hundreds of servants that were brought to the colony each year a mortality of over eighty per cent would have amounted in a few years to thousands. Statements made in regard to early Virginia history are so frequently inaccurate, and the conditions here described are so horrible that one is inclined to reject this testimony as obviously exaggerated. However, a close examination of the number of persons that came to Virginia from 1607 to 1649, and of the population between those dates forces us to the conclusion that the statements of Berkeley and Evelyn were not grossly incorrect. When, however, Evelyn adds that "old Virginians affirm, the sicknesse there the first thirty years to have killed 100,000 men," it is evident that this rumor was false.[185] Yet even this is valuable because it shows in an indefinite way that the mortality was very large.
When we consider the fact that it was the lowest class of immigrants that were chiefly exposed to these perils it becomes evident how great a purifying force was exerted. The indentured servants more than any others had to face the hot sun of the fields, and upon them alone the climate worked with deadly effect.
But disease was not the only danger that the indentured servant faced in those days. At times starvation carried off great numbers. Even after the colony had attained a certain degree of prosperity famines occurred that bore with fearful weight upon the servants. In 1636 there was great scarcity of food and in that year 1,800 persons perished. A servant, in 1623, complained in a letter to his parents that the food that was given him would barely sustain life, and that he had often eaten more at home in a day than was now allowed him for a week.[186]