d the wear
and tear of civilization for three years, and then died, leaving an
infant son, who has since grown up.

The colony now prospered. All freemen had the right to vote. Religious
toleration was enjoyed first-rate, and, there being no negro slavery,
Virginia bade fair to be _the_ republic of the continent. But in 1619
the captain of a Dutch trading-vessel sold to the colonists twenty
negroes. The negroes were mostly married people, and in some instances
children were born to them. This peculiarity still shows itself among
the negroes, and now all over the South one hardly crosses a county
without seeing a negro or a person with negro blood in his or her veins.

[Illustration: NEGROES STILL HAVE FAMILIES.]

After the death of Powhatan, the friend of the English, an organized
attempt was made by the Indians to exterminate the white people and
charge more for water frontage the next time any colonists came.

March 22, 1622, was the day set, and many of the Indians were eating at
the tables of those they had sworn to kill. It was a solemn moment. The
surprise was to take place between the cold beans and the chili sauce.

But a converted Indian told quite a number, and as the cold beans were
passed, the effect of some arsenic that had been eaten with the
slim-neck clams began to be seen, and before the beans had gone half-way
round the board the children of the forest were seen to excuse
themselves, and thus avoid dying in the house.

[Illustration: PREPARING THE FEAST.]

Yet there were over three hundred and fifty white people massacred, and
there followed another, reducing the colonists from four thousand to two
thousand five hundred, then a massacre of five hundred, and so on, a
sickening record of death and horror, even worse, before a great nation
could get a foothold in this wild and savage land; even a toe-hold, as I
may say, in the sands of time.

July 30, 1619, the first sprout of Freedom poked its head from the soil
of Jamestown when Governor Yeardley stated that the colony "should have
a handle in governing itself." He then called at Jamestown the first
legislative body ever assembled in America; most of the members whereof
boarded at the Planters' House during the session. (For sample of
legislator see picture.) This body could pass laws, but they must be
ratified by the company in England. The orders from London were not
binding unless ratified by this Colonial Assembly.

This was a mutual arran