ries and other fruits unknown. We saw the woods full of cedar and
cypress trees, with other trees which issues out sweet gums like to bal-
sam. We kept on our way in this Paradise.When Percy and Smith returned from their explorations, they found
the colony in disarray. As Percy wrote:
There were never Englishmen left in a foreign country in such misery as
we were in this new-discovered Virginia...lying on the bare, cold
ground.... Our food was but a small can of barley sod in water to five
men a day; our drink cold water taken out of the river, which was at flood
very salt, at low tide full of slime and filth, which was the destruction of
many of our men.What was almost the final blow came when a fire destroyed most of the
settlers’ remaining provisions and possessions. Fifty of the small group had
died between May and September, and the rest were starving.
Horrified, Smith took off again to offer the leader of the nearby
Indians, the Powhatan, a deal: in return for food, Smith would use the
colony’s marvelous firearms to help him conquer two neighboring Indian
societies. The delighted chief responded that if the colonists did this, “all
his subjects should so esteeme us, and no man accout us strangers...and
that the Corne, weomen and Country, should be as to his own people.”
“Weomen” aside, Smith returned with a boatload of corn.
The hungry settlers soon threw aside the remaining members of their
administrative committee and elected Smith de facto governor. He immedi-
ately began whipping them into shape. He got them to dig a well for safe
water, hoe the ground to plant crops, cut timber to build or repair their
huts, and attend to their few surviving animals. But his efforts were insuffi-
cient. The 100 who were still alive were preparing to abandon the colony
when they sighted the first ship of an expedition bringing supplies and
more colonists. It was a close call.
In fact, it was a closer call than they knew, since the first ship was part of a
fleet that had been scattered and partly sunk by a “West Indian horacano.”
Thanks to the hurricane, this first ship brought no supplies. Instead, ravenously
108 THE BIRTH OF AMERICA