Works 1608-1631 / Capt. John Smith ; edited by Edward Arber.

  • John Smith
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Works 1608-1631 / Capt. John Smith ; edited by Edward Arber. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    neard of: and the corresponding attempt of the Northern Virginian Company to Sagadahock, in that same year 1606, came to nothing. To what one single cause, under GOD, can be assigned the preservation of the James river Settlement after the early death of Captain Bartholomew Gosnold, on 22 August 1607, but to the fortunate presence of this English Captain, so self-denying, so ener- getic, so full of resources, and so trained (by his conflicts and captivity in Eastern Europe) in dealing with the savage races? Ratcliffe, Archer, and Martin, with all the rest of those who opposed him, lived in a fool’s Paradise ; and paid for their folly with the loss of their lives, after Smith came home : when, in spite of all that he had done, the Colony went to rack and ruin, all through that terrible winter of 1609-10, known as The Starving Time. If Smith had died, or left, earlier than he did; the James river Settlement must have succumbed : for manifestly he was the life and energy of the whole Plantation. If the Third Supply, on their arrival there, in August i6og [pp. xcvi, xcviii] had found an abandoned, or a destroyed Colony: that they alone could not have succeeded, where Smith would have failed, is quite evident from the fact that they did all but perish through The Starving Time, in spite of all the following resources, which he left ready to their hands, at his going home, after he had been accidentally blown up by gunpowder, on the 4th of October 1609. Leaving vs thus with three ships, seaven boats, commodities readie to trade, the harvest newly gathered, ten weeks provision in the store, pure hundred nintie and od persons, twentie-foure Peeces of Ordnance, Snaphances and Firelockes; Shot Powder and S-^ords and Morrio[n]s, more then Zr h’Jj language, and habitations well hiowne to Tod ^ Nets for fishing; a Horfe our wants; six Mares and smnJcnni 7 hundred Swine; as many Hennes and Chickens; fifUe or JrT i Pallizadoed, containing some ^^^^rall Forts and expected iL\, not so sumptuous as our successors ^^Pected, they were better then they provided any for vs. All this^Z
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