ortality was not so large, but the actual number of deaths increased.
During the months from March, 1621, to March, 1622, nearly twelve
hundred persons perished. It was like condemning a man to death to send
him to the colony. Seventy-five or eighty per cent. of the laborers that
left England in search of new homes across the Atlantic died before the
expiration of their first year. The exact number of deaths in 1622 is
not known, but there is reason to believe that it approximated thirteen
hundred.[169] Mr. George Sandys, brother of the Secretary of the London
Company, wrote, "Such a pestilent fever rageth this winter amongst us:
never knowne before in Virginia, by the infected people that came over
in ye _Abigall_, who were poisoned with ... beer and all falling sick &
many dying, every where dispersed the contagion, and the forerunning
Summer hath been also deadly upon us."[170] Not until 1624 did the
mortality decline. Then it was that the Governor wrote, "This summer,
God be thanked, the Colony hath very well stood to health".[171] The
dread sickness had spent itself for lack of new victims, for the
immigration had declined and the old planters had become "seasoned".

History does not record an epidemic more deadly than that which swept
over Virginia during these years. It is estimated that the number of
those that lost their lives from the diseases native to the colony and
to those brought in from the infected ships amounts to no less than four
thousand.[172] When the tide of immigration was started by Sir Edwin
Sandys in 1619, there were living in Virginia about nine hundred
persons; when it slackened in 1624 the population was but eleven
hundred. The sending of nearly five thousand settlers to Virginia had
resulted in a gain of but two hundred. It is true that the tomahawk and
starvation accounts for a part of this mortality, but by far the larger
number of deaths was due to disease.

Yet hardly less horrible than the sickness was the Indian massacre of
1622. This disaster, which cost the lives of several hundred persons,
struck terror into the hearts of every Englishman in Virginia. The
colonists had not the least intimation that the savages meditated harm
to them, for peace had existed between the races ever since the marriage
of Rolfe and Pocahontas. Considering the protection of their palisades
no longer necessary after that event, they had spread out over the
colony in search of the most fertile lands. Their