oke up the empty houses to make fires to warm
themselves. They began to die of hunger as well as by Indian arrows.
On went the winter, and every day some died. Tales of cannibalism are
told....This was the Starving Time.

When the leaves were red and gold, England-in-America had a population
of four hundred and more. When the dogwood and the strawberry bloomed,
England-in-America had a population of but sixty.

Somewhat later than this time there came from the pen of Shakespeare a
play dealing with a tempest and shipwreck and a magical isle and rescue
thereon. The bright spirit Ariel speaks of "the still-vex'd Bermoothes."
These were islands "two hundred leagues from any continent," named after
a Spanish Captain Bermudez who had landed there. Once there had been
Indians, but these the Spaniards had slain or taken as slaves. Now the
islands were desolate, uninhabited, "forlorn and unfortunate." Chance
vessels might touch, but the approach was dangerous. There grew rumors
of pirates, and then of demons. "The Isles of Demons," was the name
given to them. "The most forlorn and unfortunate place in the world" was
the description that fitted them in those distant days:

All torment, trouble, wonder and amazement Inhabits here: some heavenly
power guide us Out of this fearful country.

When Shakespeare so wrote, there was news in England and talk went to
and fro of the shipwreck of the Sea Adventure upon the rocky teeth of
the Bermoothes, "uninhabitable and almost inaccessible," and of the
escape and dwelling there for months of Gates and Somers and the
colonists in that ship. It is generally assumed that this incident
furnished timber for the framework of The Tempest.

The storm that broke on St. James's Day, scattering the ships of the
third supply, drove the Sea Adventure here and there at will. Upon her
watched Gates and Somers and Newport, above a hundred men, and a few
women and children. There sprang a leak; all thought of death. Then
rose a cry "Land ho!" The storm abated, but the wind carried the Sea
Adventure upon this shore and grounded her upon a reef. A certain R.
Rich, gentleman, one of the voyagers, made and published a ballad upon
the whole event. If it is hardly Shakespearean music, yet it is not
devoid of interest.

... The Seas did rage, the windes did blowe,
Distressed were they then;
Their shippe did leake, her tacklings breake,
In daunger were her men;
But heaven was pylo