LIFE AT JAMESTOWN.--The colonists who landed at Jamestown in 1607 were all
men. While some of them were building a fort, Captain Newport, with
Captain John Smith and others, explored the James River and visited the
Powhatan, chief of a neighboring tribe of Indians. This done, Newport
returned to England (June, 1607) with his three ships, leaving one hundred
and five colonists to begin a struggle for life. Bad water, fever, hard
labor, the intense heat of an American summer, and the scarcity of food
caused such sickness that by September more than half the colonists were
dead. [1] Indeed, had it not been for Smith, who got corn from the Indians
and directed affairs in general, the fate of Jamestown might have been
that of Roanoke. [2] As it was, but forty were alive when Newport returned
In January, 1608, with the "first supply" of one hundred and twenty men.

[Illustration: SMITH IN SLAVERY. Picture in one of his books.]

[Illustration: POWHATAN'S COAT. Now in a museum at Oxford.]

THE COMPANY'S ORDERS.--Newport was ordered to bring back a cargo. So while
some of the colonists cut down cedar and black walnut trees and made
clapboards, others loaded the ship with glittering sand which they thought
was gold dust. These labors drew the men away from agriculture, and only
four acres were planted with corn.

In September Newport was back again with the "second supply" of seventy
persons; two of them were women. This time he was ordered to crown the
Powhatan, and to find a gold mine, discover a passage to the South Sea, or
find Raleigh's lost colony. Smith laughed at these orders. But they had to
be obeyed; so several parties went southward in search of the lost colony,
but found it not; Newport went westward beyond the falls of the James in