"The Proceedings of the English Colony of Virginia," Travels and Works of Captain John Smith

Captain John Smith describes the founding of James Town 1607.

In this short passage Captain John Smith desribes the horrible conditions him and his men endured for some time. He explains that the men and himself had to live off a daily portion of buscuit. There only drink was water. As well as having biscuits they were rationed half a pint of wheat and as much barley with bolied water as they wanted. However Smith say that these food supplies had been in the ship's hold for some 26 weeks and contained more worms than grain. He goes on to desribe there sleeping arangements which he describes as "castles in the air". (In the trees). He also describes the continual labour in the scorching heat had weakened the men considerably. In the first few months 50 were buried.

The account later goes on to say that the "Savages" brought fruit and many provisions. At this time he believed that God had told them to do this and thats why they survived. Smith bagan to build and thatch houses always taking the heaviest load. However the generosity of the Native American's begin to decrease. Himself and a company of 6 or 7 men went down the river to Kecoughtan and traded commodities for a boat full of corn. This became a regular occurance.

I found this short passage very interesting because he does not speak of the Native people's being less important than him. I realise that he does call them "savages" but I think this is a defence machanism as he realised that they had skills which he didn't possess to survive comfortably in this new found world. It is also interesting to read of how their living conditions were very inhumane. It is no wonder that the first settlers had a very low life expectancy as they did not have a balanced diet and were doing very hard manual labour. It is fairly obvious that many of the men died from exhaustion and malutrition. Aslo as it was a new land they were unaware that the land was boggy and marshy and unsuitable to grow crops or have a farm. It also took the colonie a lot longer than anticipated and missed the perfect time slot for plating and harvesting crops.