COLONISTS EMBARK FOR VIRGINIA. 123 IV. entirely independent of the emigrants whom they were CHAP. to govern; having power to elect or remove its president, to remove any of its members, and to supply its 1606 own vacancies. Not an element of popular liberty was introduced into the form of government. Religion was specially enjoined to be established according to the doctrine and rites of the church of England; and no emigrant might withdraw his allegiance from King James, or avow dissent from the royal creed. Lands were to descend according to the common law. Not only murder, manslaughter, and adultery, but dangerous tumults and seditions were punishable by death; so that the security of life depended on the discretion of the magistrate, restricted only by the necessity of a trial by jury. All civil causes, requiring corporal punishment, fine or imprisonment, might be summarily determined by the president and council; who also possessed full legislative authority in cases not affecting life or limb. Kindness to the savages was enjoined, with the use of all proper means for their conversion. It was further, and most unwisely, though probably at the request of the corporation, ordered, that the industry and commerce of the respective colonies should for five years, at least, be conducted in a joint stock. The king also reserved to himself the right of future legislation. Thus were the political forms of the colony established, when, on the nineteenth day of December, in the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and six, one hundred and nine years after the discovery of the American continent by Cabot, forty-one years from the settlement of Florida, the little squadron of three vessels, the largest not exceeding one hundred tons CHAP. burthen,' bearing one hundred and five men, destined to remain, set sail for a harbor in Virginia. IV. 2 Of The voyage began under inauspicious omens. the one hundred and five, on the list of emigrants, there were but twelve laborers, and very few mechanics. They were going to a wilderness, in which, as yet, not a house was standing; and there were fortyeight gentlemen to four carpenters. Neither were there any men with families. It was evident, a commercial and not a colonial establishment was designed by the projectors. Dissensions sprung up during the voyage; as the names and instructions of the council had, by the folly of James, been carefully concealed in a box, which was not to be opened till after the arrival in Virginia, no competent authority existed to check the progress of envy and disorder. The genius of Smith excited jealousy; and hope, the only power 1607. which can still the clamors and allay the feuds of the selfish, early deserted the colonists. Newport, who commanded the ships, was acquainted with the old passage, and, consuming the whole of the early spring in a navigation which should have been completed in February, sailed by way of the Canaries and the West India Islands. As he turned to the north, a severe storm carried his fleet beyond the settlement of Raleigh, into the magnificent Bay of April the Chesapeake. The head-lands received and retain the names of Cape Henry and Cape Charles, from the sons of King James; the deep water for anchorage, "putting the emigrants in good Comfort," gave a name to the Northern Point; and within the capes a country 26. 1 Smith's Virginia, i. 150. 2 See the names in Smith, i. 153, and in Purchas, iv. 1706. 3 Smith, i. 150. Chalmers, 17. COLONISTS ESTABLISHED AT JAMESTOWN. 125 IV. opened, which appeared to the emigrants to "claim CHAP the prerogative over the most pleasant places in the world." Hope revived for a season, as they advanced. 1607 "Heaven and earth seemed never to have agreed better to frame a place for man's commodious and delightful habitation." A noble river was soon entered, which was named from the monarch; and, after a search of seventeen days, during which they encountered the hostility of one little savage tribe, and at Hampton smoked the calumet of peace with another, the peninsula of Jamestown, about fifty miles above the mouth of the stream, was selected for the site of the colony. Thus admirable was the country. The emigrants themselves were weakened by divisions, and degraded by jealousy. So soon as the members of the council were duly constituted, they proceeded to choose Wingfield president; and then, as by their instructions they had power to do, they excluded Smith from their body, on a charge of sedition. But as his only offence consisted in the possession of enviable qualities, the attempt at his trial was abandoned, and by "the good doctrine and exhortation" of the sincere Hunt, the man without whose aid the vices of the colony would have caused its immediate ruin, was soon restored to his station.3 While the men were busy in felling timber and providing freight for the ships, Newport and Smith and twenty others ascended the James River to the falls. They visited the native chieftain Powhatan, who has been styled "the emperor of the country," at his principal seat, just below the falls of the river at Richmond. 1 Smith, i. 114. Stith, 45. 2 Smith, i. 151. Stith, 45. 3 Stith, 47. Smith, 1. 152, 153. May 13. IV. 1607. CHAP. The imperial residence was a village of twelve wigwams! The savages murmured at the intrusion of strangers into the country; but Powhatan disguised his fear, and would only say, "They hurt you not; they take but a little waste land."1 About the middle of June, Newport set sail for England. What condition could be more pitiable, than that of the English whom he had left in Virginia? The proud hopes which the beauty of the country had excited, soon vanished; and as the delusion passed away, they awoke and beheld that they were in the wilderness. Weak in numbers, and still weaker from want of habits of industry, they were surrounded by natives whose hostility and distrust had already been displayed; the summer heats were intolerable to their laborers; the moisture of the climate generated disease; and the fertility of the soil, covered with a rank luxuriance of forest, increased the toil of culture. Their scanty provisions had become spoiled on the long voyage. “Our drink,” say they, "was unwholesome water; our lodgings, castles in the air: had we been as free from all sins as from gluttony and drunkenness, we might have been canonized for saints." Despair of mind ensued; so that, in less than a fortnight after the departure of the fleet, "hardly ten of them were able to stand; " the labor of completing some simple fortifications was exhausting; and no regular crops could be planted. During the summer, there were not, on any occasion, five able men to guard the bulwarks; the fort was filled in every corner with the groans of the sick, whose outcries, night and day, for six weeks, rent the hearts of those who could minister no relief. Many times, three or four died in 1 Percy, in Purchas, iv. 1689. ADVENTURES OF SMITH. 127 IV. a night; in the morning, their bodies were trailed out CHAP of the cabins, like dogs, to be buried. Fifty men, one half of the colony, perished before autumn; among 1607 them Bartholomew Gosnold, the projector of the set- Aug. tlement, a man of rare merits, worthy of a perpetual memory in the plantation,' and whose influence had alone thus far preserved some degree of harmony in the council.2 Disunion completed the scene of misery. It became necessary to depose Wingfield, the avaricious president, who was charged with engrossing the choicest stores, and who was on the point of abandoning the colony and escaping to the West Indies. Ratcliffe, the new president, possessed neither judgment nor industry; so that the management of affairs fell into the hands of Smith, whose deliberate enterprise and cheerful courage alone diffused light amidst the general gloom. He possessed by nature the buoyant spirit of heroic daring. In boyhood he had sighed for the opportunity of "setting out on brave adventures;" and though not yet thirty years of age, he was already a veteran in the service of humanity and of Christendom. His early life had been given to the cause of freedom in the Low Countries, where he had fought for the independence of the Batavian Republic. Again, as a traveller, he had roamed over France; had visited the shores of Egypt; had returned to Italy; and, panting for glory, had sought the borders of Hungary, where there had long existed an hereditary warfare with the followers of Mahomet. It was there that the young English cavalier distinguished himself by the bravest feats of arms, in the sight of Christians and infidels, 1 Edmund Howes, 1018. ? Smith, i. 154. Percy, in Pur chas, iv. 1690. Smith and Percy 22 |