together, but his credit with the company was undermined by enemies in
England, nor did his own blunt letter help matters. The company was
re-organized on a larger scale, a new governor appointed, new colonists
started on the way; and, finally, in 1609, Smith was so seriously
wounded by the explosion of a bag of gun-powder, that he gave up the
struggle and returned to England.

Instant disaster followed. When he left the colony, it numbered five
hundred souls; when the next supply ship reached it in May, 1610, it
consisted of sixty scarecrows, mere wrecks of human beings. The rest had
starved to death--or been eaten by their companions! There was a hasty
consultation, and it was decided that Virginia must be abandoned. On
Thursday, June 7, 1610, the cabins were stripped of such things as were
of value, and the whole company went on shipboard and started down the
river--only to meet, next day, in Hampton Roads, a new expedition headed
by the new governor, Lord Delaware, himself! By this slight thread of
coincidence was the fate of Virginia determined.

The ship put about at once, and on the following Sunday morning, Lord
Delaware stepped ashore at Jamestown, and, falling to his knees, thanked
God that he had been in time to save Virginia. He proceeded at once to
place the colony upon a new and sounder basis, and it was never again in
danger of extinction, though Jamestown itself was finally abandoned as
unsuited to a settlement on account of its malarious atmosphere. But
Virginia itself grew apace into one of the greatest of England's
colonies in America.

John Smith himself never returned to Virginia. In 1614, he explored the
coast south of the Penobscot, giving it the name it still bears, New
England. A year later, while on another expedition, he was captured by