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clothing, furniture, tools, arms and ammunition, seeds, stock of all kinds for breeding, and such articles of food as meal, bread, butter, cheese, salt, meat, and preserved fruits. For many years the existence of the colony depended on the prompt arrival, every few months, of a "supply "; and the colonists measured time by dating from "the First Supply," or "the Third Supply."

The system of "industry in common" has frequently been called an experiment in communism. In reality it was no more communism than was a Virginia slave plantation in 1850. The London Company would have been the last men to approve any theory of communism. The common industry and undivided profits were simply clumsy features of management by a distant proprietary company.

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JAMESTOWN IN 1622. From a Dutch print of 1707, based on an old sketch.

28. The location of Jamestown was low and unhealthy; the committee government was not suited to vigorous action; and only the stern school of experience could teach men in that day how to colonize an unknown continent. The early years were a time of cruel suffering. The first summer saw two thirds of the settlers perish, while most of the rest were helpless with fever much of the time. Said one of them:

§ 31]

THE STARVING TIME

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"Our men were destroyed by cruell diseases. and by warres, and some departed suddenly, but for the most part they died of meere famine. There were never Englishmen left in a forreigne Country in such miserie as wee were . . . Our feed was but a small can of Barlie, sod in Water, to five men a day; our drinke, cold Water taken out of the River, which was at flood verie Salt, at a low tide full of slime and filth. Thus we lived for the space of five months in this miserable distresse, not having five able men to man our Bulwarkes . . . our men night and day groaning in every corner of the Fort most pittiful to heare . some departing out of the World, many times three or four in a night, in the morning their bodies trailed out of their Cabines, like Dogges, to be burried." (See Source Book for more of Captain Percy's Discourse.)

The First Supply, in the fall of 1607, found only 38 survivors at Jamestown. Nor was this suffering then at an end. For 20 years each new immigration lost, on an average, half its members the first season.

29. From one peril the colony was saved by its very misery. Spain watched jealously this intrusion into a region which she claimed as her own, and the government contemplated an attack upon Jamestown. In particular, the Spanish ambassador at London urged his king repeatedly to have "those insolent people in Virginia annihilated." "It will be serving God," he wrote, "to drive these villains out and hang them." But the Spanish spies in the colony reported that it must fall of itself; and the dilatory Spanish government, already slipping into decay and unwilling needlessly to make King James an enemy, failed to act (Source Book, No. 22).

30. The most interesting figure during the first three years was the burly, bustling, bragging, efficient Captain John Smith. Smith finally became President of the ineffective Council. Then he quickly usurped all the power of government, and his beneficent tyranny saved the colony from ruin. In 1609, however, he was injured by an explosion of gunpowder, and went back to England.

31. The next winter was "The Starving Time." A special effort had been made, the summer before, to reinforce the colony; and in the fall the number of settlers had risen to more

than three hundred. Spring found only sixty gaunt survivors. These had embarked to abandon the colony, with slight chance of life whether they went or stayed, when they met Lord Dela

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ware, the new governor, with a fleet bringing reinforcements and supplies. Had Delaware been later by three days, Jamestown would have been another failure, to count with Raleigh's at Roanoke.

32. Meantime, the year 1609 had seen a remarkable outburst of enthusiasm in England in behalf of the sinking colony. Sermons and pamphlets appealed to the patriotism of the nation not to let this new England perish. The list of the Company's stockholders was greatly multiplied, and came to include the most famous names in England, along with good men from all

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CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. From the wood-cut by Smith in the corner of his map of New England [§ 58] in his Generall Historie. Smith's rhyming inscription below the picture refers to his "deeds more fair" than his face.

classes of society; and this enlarged London Company received enlarged powers through two new charters in 1609 and 1612. Three things were accomplished by these grants:

The territory of the Company was extended. It was made to reach along the coast each way 200 miles from Point Comfort, and "up into the land throughout from sea to sea, west and northwest."

1 See note in Source Book to No. 20. Each of the 650 subscribers bought from one to ten shares of stock, at £12 10 s. a share, or about $400 a share in our values. (Cf. § 18, note, on the value of money.)

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"THE TIME OF SLAVERY"

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The map shows two possible interpretations of this clumsy "northwest " phrase. The Virginians themselves had no trouble in deciding which to

insist upon. Probably the words "west and northwest" were used vaguely, with the meaning, "toward the western ocean," which was supposed to lie rather to the northwest.

The authority before kept by the king was now turned over to the Company; and that body received a democratic organization. It was to elect its own "Treasurer" and Council (President and Directors, in modern phrase), and to rule the colony in all respects.

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A more efficient government was provided in the colony. There was no hint yet of self-government. The Company in England made all laws and appointed all officers for the colony. But the inefficient plural head in the colony, with its divisions and jealousies, was replaced by one "principal governor" with a Council to assist him.

33. Virginia had left anarchy behind, but she had not reached liberty. The Company continued the "plantation" plan; and from 1611 to 1616, its chief officer in Virginia was Sir Thomas Dale. This stern soldier put in force a military government, with a savage set of laws known as Dale's Code.

Among other provisions, these laws compelled attendance at divine worship daily, under penalty of six months in the galleys, and on Sundays on pain of death for repeated absence. Death was the penalty also for repeated blasphemy, for "speaking evil of any known article of the Christian faith," for refusing to answer the catechism of a clergyman, and for neglecting work. The military courts, too, made use of ingeniously atrocious

punishments, such as burning at the stake, breaking on the wheel, or leaving bound to a tree to starve, with a bodkin thrust through the tongue. These years of tyranny were long remembered as "the time of slavery." An old Virginian historian

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PROCLAMATION OF VIRGINIA LOTTERY, issued Feb. 22, 1615, to raise funds for the Company's use. From a facsimile of the original, belonging to the Society of Antiquaries of London. The two sides of the Seal of Virginia are shown in the squares.

fitly called the government "very bloody and severe . . . in no wise agreeable to a free people or to the British constitution."

Dale, however, was conscientious and efficient, and full of enthusiasm for Virginia. "Take the best four kingdoms of Europe," he wrote home," and put them all together, and they may no way compare with this country for commodity and goodness of soil." Moreover, he kept order and protected the colony from the Indians, and in 1614 he made 81 three-acre allotments of land to private holders-a small garden to each free settler. At his departure, in 1616, the colonists numbered 351. Of these, 65 were women or children, and some 200 were "servants."

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