telling effect in
Virginia. The bulk of the servants were subjected to a series of tests
so severe, that, when safely passed through, they were a guarantee of
soundness of body, mind, and character.

The mortality among the laborers in the tobacco fields was enormous.
Scattered along the banks of the rivers and creeks and frequently
adjacent to swamps and bogs, the plantations were unhealthful in the
extreme. Everywhere were swarms of mosquitoes,[176] and the colonists
were exposed to the sting of these pests both by night and day, and
many received through them the deadly malaria bacteria. Scarcely three
months had elapsed from the first landing at Jamestown in 1607, when
disease made its appearance in the colony. The first death occurred in
August, and so deadly were the conditions to which the settlers were
subjected that soon hardly a day passed without one death to record.
Before the end of September more than fifty were in their graves. Part
of the mortality was due, it is true, to starvation, but "fevers and
fluxes" were beyond doubt responsible for many of the deaths.[177]
George Percy, one of the party, describes in vivid colors the
sufferings of the settlers. "There were never Englishmen," he says,
"left in a forreigne countrey in such miserie as wee were in this new
discovered Virginia, Wee watched every three nights, lying on the
bare ground, what weather soever came; ... which brought our men to be
most feeble wretches, ... If there were any conscience in men, it
would make their harts to bleed to hears the pitifull murmurings and
outcries of our sick men without reliefe, every night and day for the
space of six weekes: some departing out of the World, many times three
or foure in a night; in the morning, their bodies trailed out of their
cabines like dogges, to be buried."[178] Of the hundred colonists that
had remained at Jamestown, but thirty-eight were alive when relief
came in January, 1608.

Nor were the colonists that followed in the wake of the Susan
Constant, the Godspeed and the Discovery more fortunate. In the summer
of 1609, the newcomers under Lord Delaware were attacked by fever and
in a short while one hundred and fifty had died. It seemed for a while
that no one would escape the epidemic and that disease would prove
more effective than the Indians in protecting the country from the
encroachment of the Englishmen.[179] How terrible was the mortality in
these early years is shown by the stat