rl
lacks luster. But the mussel, particularly the one found in the James
river, yields an iridescent pearl of some little value.

A month later more oysters, in a form unknown in Virginia today, were
obtained from Indians by Captain Christopher Newport in return for
ornaments, according to Gabriel Archer in 1607:

He notwithstanding with two women and another fellow of his own
consort followed us some six miles with baskets full of dried
oysters and met us at a point, where calling to us, we went ashore
and bartered with them for most of their victuals.

A letter from the Council in Virginia to the Council in England in 1607
stated:

We are set down eighty miles within a river, for breadth, sweetness
of water, length navigable up into the country, deep and bold
channel, so stored with sturgeon and other sweet fish as no man's
fortune has ever possessed the like. And, as we think, if more may
be wished in a river it will be found.

After various vicissitudes John Smith confessed:

Though there be fish in the sea, fowls in the air, and beasts in
the woods, their bounds are so large, they so wild, and we so weak
and ignorant, we cannot much trouble them.

George Percy introduced a happier note:

It pleased God, after a while, to send those people which were our
mortal enemies [Indians] to relieve us with victuals, as bread,
corn, fish, and flesh in great plenty, which was the setting up of
our feeble men, otherwise we had all perished.

John Smith tells about another crisis:

Our victuals being within eighteen days spent and the Indians'
trade decreasing, I was sent to the mouth of the river, to
Kecoughtan [Hampton], an Indian town, to trade for corn and try the
river for fish, but our fishing we could not effect by reason of
the stormy weather.... Only of sturgeon we had great store, whereon
our men would so greedily surfeit, as it cost many their lives.

And still another:

From May to September, those that escaped lived upon sturgeon and
sea crabs.

And this:

So it happened that neither we nor they had anything to eat but
what the country afforded naturally. Yet of eighty who lived upon
oysters in June or July, with a pint of corn a week for a man lying
under trees, and one hundred twenty for the most part living upon
sturgeon, which are dried till we pounded it to powder for meal,