ttlement became an object of derision to the wits of London,
and of sympathetic interest to serious minds. The Company, reorganized
under a new charter, was strengthened by the accession of some of the
foremost men in England, including four bishops, the Earl of
Southampton, and Sir Francis Bacon. Appeals were made to the Christian
public in behalf of an enterprise so full of promise of the furtherance
of the gospel. A fleet of nine ships was fitted out, carrying more than
five hundred emigrants, with ample supplies. Captain Smith, representing
what there was of civil authority in the colony, had a brief struggle
with their turbulence, and recognized them as of the same sort with the
former companies, for the most part "poor gentlemen, tradesmen,
serving-men, libertines, and such like, ten times more fit to spoil a
commonwealth than either begin one or help to maintain one." When only
part of this expedition had arrived, Captain Smith departed for England,
disabled by an accidental wound, leaving a settlement of nearly five
hundred men, abundantly provisioned. "It was not the will of God that
the new state should be formed of these materials."[41:1] In six months
the number of the colonists was reduced to sixty, and when relief
arrived it was reckoned that in ten days' longer delay they would have
perished to the last man. With one accord the wretched remnant of the
colony, together with the latest comers, deserted, without a tear of
regret, the scene of their misery. But their retreating vessels were met
and turned back from the mouth of the river by the approaching ships of
Lord de la Warr with emigrants and supplies. Such were the first three
unhappy and unhonored years of the first Christian colony on the soil of
the United States.

One almost shrinks from being assured that this worthless crew, through
all these years of suicidal crime and folly, had been assiduous in
religious duties. First under an awning made of an old sail, seated upon
logs, with a rail nailed to two trees for a pulpit, afterward in a poor
shanty of a church, "that could neither well defend wind nor rain," they
"had daily common prayer morning and evening, every Sunday two sermons,
and every three months the holy communion, till their minister died";
and after that "prayers daily, with an homily on Sundays, two or three
years, till more preachers came." The sturdy and terrible resolution of
Captain Smith, who in his marches through the wildernes