he cold season had passed, some of the people were set about
shingling the church, and others were ordered to make clapboards that
we might have a cargo when Captain Newport returned. It was the duty of
some few to keep the streets and lanes of the village clear of filth,
lest we invite the sickness again, and the remainder of the company were
employed in planting Indian corn, forty acres of which were seeded down.

STEALING THE COMPANY'S GOODS

If I have made it appear that during all this time we lived in the most
friendly manner with the savages, then have I blundered in the setting
down of that which happened.

Although it shames one to write such things concerning those who called
themselves Englishmen, yet it must be said that the savages were no
longer in any degree friendly, and all because of what our own people
had done.

From the time when Captain Smith had declared that he who would not work
should not eat, some of our fine gentlemen who were willing to believe
that labor was the greatest crime which could be committed, began
stealing from the common store iron and copper goods of every kind
which might be come at, in order to trade with the savages for food they
themselves were too lazy to get otherwise.

They even went so far, some of those who thought it more the part of a
man to wear silks than build himself a house, as to steal matchlocks,
pistols, and weapons of any kind, standing ready to teach the savages
how to use these things, if thereby they were given so much additional
in the way of food.

As our numbers increased, by reason of the companies which were brought
over by Captain Newport and Captain Nelson, so did the thievery become
the more serious until on one day I heard Master Hunt tell my master,
that of forty axes which had been brought ashore from the Phoenix and
left outside the storehouse during the night, but eight were remaining
when morning came.

WHAT THE THIEVING LED TO

Now there was more of mischief to this than the crime of stealing, or
of indolence. The savages came to understand they could drive hard
bargains, and so increased the price of their corn that Captain Smith
set it down in his report to the London Company, that the same amount of
copper, or of beads, which had, one year before, paid for five bushels
of wheat, would, within a week after Captain Newport came in search of
the lost colony, pay for no more than one peck.

Nor was this the entire