w tide full of shrimp and filth, which was the destruction of many
of our men. Thus we lived for the space of five months in this miserable
distress, but having five able men to man our bulwarks upon any
occasion. If it had not pleased God to put a terror in the savage
hearts, we had all perished by those wild and cruel Pagans, being in
that weak state as we were: our men night and day groaning in every
corner of the fort, most pitiful to hear. If there were any conscience
in men, it would make their hearts to bleed to hear the pitiful
murmurings and outcries of our sick men, without relief, every night and
day, for the space of six weeks: some departing out of the world; many
times three or four in a night; in the morning their bodies trailed out
of their cabins, like dogs, to be buried. In this sort did I see the
mortality of divers of our people."

A severe loss to the colony was the death on the 22d of August of
Captain Bartholomew Gosnold, one of the Council, a brave and adventurous
mariner, and, says Wingfield, a "worthy and religious gentleman." He
was honorably buried, "having all the ordnance in the fort shot off with
many volleys of small shot." If the Indians had known that those volleys
signified the mortality of their comrades, the colony would no
doubt have been cut off entirely. It is a melancholy picture, this
disheartened and half-famished band of men quarreling among themselves;
the occupation of the half-dozen able men was nursing the sick and
digging graves. We anticipate here by saying, on the authority of a
contemporary manuscript in the State Paper office, that when Captain
Newport arrived with the first supply in January, 1608, "he found the
colony consisting of no more than forty persons; of those, ten only able
men."

After the death of Gosnold, Captain Kendall was deposed from the Council
and put in prison for sowing discord between the President and Council,
says Wingfield; for heinous matters which were proved against him,
says Percy; for "divers reasons," says Smith, who sympathized with his
dislike of Wingfield. The colony was in very low estate at this time,
and was only saved from famine by the providential good-will of the
Indians, who brought them corn half ripe, and presently meat and fruit
in abundance.

On the 7th of September the chief Paspahegh gave a token of peace by
returning a white boy who had run away from camp, and other runaways
were returned by other chiefs, who report