as assisted for a short time by a council
consisting of Matthew Scrivener, Richard Waldo, and Peter Wynne. The
two former were drowned during January, 1609, and the last died not
long after. Smith was left sole ruler, and, contrary to the intention
of the king, he made no attempt to fill the council.[4]

The "Second Supply" had brought provisions, which lasted only two
months,[5] and most of Smith's time during the winter 1608-1609 was
occupied in trading for corn with the Indians on York River. In the
spring much useful work was done by the colonists under Smith's
directions. They dug a well for water, which till then had been
obtained from the river, erected some twenty cabins, shingled the
church, cleared and planted forty acres of land with Indian-corn,
built a house for the Poles to make glass in, and erected two
block-houses.

Smith started to build a fort "for a retreat" on Gray's Creek,
opposite to Jamestown (the place is still called "Smith's Fort"), but
a remarkable circumstance, not at all creditable to Smith's vigilance
or circumspection, stopped the work and put the colonists at their
wits' end to escape starvation. On an examination of the casks in
which their corn was stored it was found that the rats had devoured
most of the contents, and that the remainder was too rotten to eat.[6]

To avoid starvation, President Smith, like Lane at Roanoke Island, in
May, 1609, dispersed the whole colony in three parties, sending one to
live with the savages, another to Point Comfort to try for fish, and
another, the largest party, twenty miles down the river to the
oyster-banks, where at the end of nine weeks the oyster diet caused
their skins "to peale off from head to foote as if they had been
flead."[7]

While the colony was in this desperate condition there arrived from
England, July 14, 1609, a small bark, commanded by Samuel Argall, with
a supply of bread and wine, enough to last the colonists one month. He
had been sent out by the London Company to try for sturgeon in James
River and to find a shorter route to Virginia. He brought news that
the old charter had been repealed, that a new one abolishing the
council in Virginia had been granted, and that Lord Delaware was
coming, at the head of a large supply of men and provisions, as sole
and absolute governor of Virginia.[8]

The calamities in the history of the colony as thus far outlined have
been attributed to the great preponderance of "gentlemen" among