n soil. By this time,
Jamestown had grown to have a population of more than five hundred
souls, of whom not more than two hundred were fighting men; so that the
proportion of women and children must have been far larger than might be
supposed by those looking at the circumstances of colonization and
existence. It must have taken a stout heart in a woman's breast to face
the unknown dangers of the unknown world; and soon the women of the
infant colony had need for all their bravery. There is no doubt that the
women played a noble part in the terrible days that followed the Indian
siege of Jamestown--the days which were afterward known as the "Starving
Time." Not more than sixty of the original five hundred souls remained
at the end of that period; and its record presents the probably unique
account of women of the higher civilizations descending to the horrors
of cannibalism, the "common kettel" at last containing the bodies of
Indians and even of kinsmen. Indeed, there was one foul deed of that
time wherein a woman was directly concerned, though as victim, not
principal: a colonist killed his wife and had eaten part of the body
before he was discovered. He was burned alive; but those who punished
him for his crime looked fearfully forward to the day when their own
temptations might become too strong. At last came succor; and there
seems to be for us assurance of the temper and mettle of the women of
that time when we find that of the sixty survivors a fair proportion was
of the weaker sex. There were children also, witnesses to the devotion
of their mothers in their care.

The colony was abandoned; but only for three days, and then began the
time of uninterrupted English dominance. There is, however, in its
history nothing of importance to our subject until we reach 1621,--very
near the limit which has been set as the end of the "period of
settlement." At this time there occurred an event so peculiar and so
far-reaching in its social results and withal so intimately connected
with the general, though not the particular, chronicle of woman in the
early colonies that it may be set forth in some fulness, even though it
was one that does not give us any instance of feminine development. But
it was so typical of its time and so ominous of the mothers that moulded
the characters of the native-born pioneers in the southern settlements
that it has its legitimate place in a history of American women. That
event is the coming of