The sixt of August there died John Asbie of the bloudie flixe. The ninth day died George Flowre of the swelling.... The fifteenth day, their died Edward Browne and Stephen Galthorpe. The sixteenth day, their died Thomas Gower Gentleman. The seventeenth day, their died Thomas Mounslic....
The remainder of the description of the significant events of the month of August is given over entirely to the listing of the deaths. Seldom did Percy give the cause of individual deaths, but as the narrative moved into September and near the end of the seasoning period, Percy stopped his grim listing to comment in general terms upon the unhappy experience.
According to his diagnosis—and perhaps he was enlightened by Thomas Wotton and Will Wilkinson, the two surgeons who arrived with the first settlers—the heavy death toll of August resulted from such ailments as fluxes, swellings, and burning fevers as well as from famine and attacks by the Indians.
Percy was of the opinion that the colonists at Jamestown suffered more during the summer and winter of 1607 than any other Englishmen have during a colonization venture. Weakened by the debilitating summer and unable during that period to make the necessary provisions for the winter, the settlers, their ranks depleted, also fared poorly during the next five months.
In describing their distress, he revealed the conditions that bred the diseases and illnesses to which the colonists fell prey. They lay on the bare ground through weather cold and hot, dry and wet, and their ration of food consisted of a small can of barley sod in water—one can for five men. Drinking water came from the river which in turn was salt at high tide, and slimy and filthy at low. With such food and drink, the small contingent within the fort lay about for weeks "night and day groaning in every corner ... most pittifull to heare."
Fortunately during the course of the winter the Indians did come to the relief of the colonists with provisions, but before this help was substantial, Percy observed:
If there were any conscience in men, it would make their harts to bleed to heare the pitifull murmurings and out-cries of our sick men without reliefe, every night and day, for the space of sixe weekes, some departing out 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.
Over one-half (approximately 60) of the original settlers perished during the summer of 1607 and the seasoning was to prove a hazard throughout the remainder of the century. Its effects became less serious, however, as the Company and the colonists, profiting from the earlier experiences began to plan departures from England so that the immigrants would arrive in Virginia in the fall: another example of the influence of disease.
Governor Yeardley, writing some years later—in 1620—reminded the Company's officials in England of the advantages of a fall arrival. He had just witnessed the distress of immigrants from three ships that had arrived in May:
had they arrived at a seasonable time of the year I would not have doubted of their lives and healths, but this season is most unfit for people to arrive here ... some [came] very weak and sick, some crazy and tainted ashore, and now this great heat of weather striketh many more but for life.