seen in such cases grew factious and disordered out
of measure, in so much as the poor colony seemed (like the Colledge of
English fugitives in Rome) as a hostile camp within itself; in which
distemper that envious man stept in, sowing plentiful tares in the
hearts of all, which grew to such speedy confusion, that in few months
ambition, sloth and idleness had devoured the fruit of former labours,
planting and sowing were clean given over, the houses decayed, the
church fell to ruin, the store was spent, the cattle consumed, our
people starved, and the Indians by wrongs and injuries made our
enemies.... As for those wicked Impes that put themselves a shipboard,
not knowing otherwise how to live in England; or those ungratious sons
that daily vexed their fathers hearts at home, and were therefore thrust
upon the voyage, which either writing thence, or being returned back to
cover their own leudnes, do fill mens ears with false reports of their
miserable and perilous life in Virginia, let the imputation of misery
be to their idleness, and the blood that was spilt upon their own heads
that caused it."

Sir Thomas Gates affirmed that after his first coming there he had seen
some of them eat their fish raw rather than go a stone's cast to fetch
wood and dress it.

The colony was in such extremity in May, 1610, that it would have been
extinct in ten days but for the arrival of Sir Thomas Gates and Sir
George Somers and Captain Newport from the Bermudas. These gallant
gentlemen, with one hundred and fifty souls, had been wrecked on the
Bermudas in the Sea Venture in the preceding July. The terrors of the
hurricane which dispersed the fleet, and this shipwreck, were much
dwelt upon by the writers of the time, and the Bermudas became a sort of
enchanted islands, or realms of the imagination. For three nights,
and three days that were as black as the nights, the water logged Sea
Venture was scarcely kept afloat by bailing. We have a vivid picture of
the stanch Somers sitting upon the poop of the ship, where he sat three
days and three nights together, without much meat and little or no
sleep, conning the ship to keep her as upright as he could, until he
happily descried land. The ship went ashore and was wedged into the
rocks so fast that it held together till all were got ashore, and a good
part of the goods and provisions, and the tackling and iron of the ship
necessary for the building and furnishing of a new ship.

This go