uilding had to be
abandoned, and the settlers dispersed to provide victuals. A party
of sixty or eighty men under Ensign Laxon were sent down the river to
live on oysters; some twenty went with Lieutenant Percy to try
fishing at Point Comfort, where for six weeks not a net was cast,
owing to the sickness of Percy, who had been burnt with gunpowder;
and another party, going to the Falls with Master West, found nothing
to eat but a few acorns.

Up to this time the whole colony was fed by the labors of thirty or
forty men: there was more sturgeon than could be devoured by dog and
man; it was dried, pounded, and mixed with caviare, sorrel, and other
herbs, to make bread; bread was also made of the "Tockwhogh" root,
and with the fish and these wild fruits they lived very well. But
there were one hundred and fifty of the colony who would rather
starve or eat each other than help gather food. These "distracted,
gluttonous loiterers" would have sold anything they had--tools, arms,
and their houses--for anything the savages would bring them to eat.
Hearing that there was a basket of corn at Powhatan's, fifty miles
away, they would have exchanged all their property for it. To
satisfy their factious humors, Smith succeeded in getting half of it:
"they would have sold their souls," he says, for the other half,
though not sufficient to last them a week.

The clamors became so loud that Smith punished the ringleader, one
Dyer, a crafty fellow, and his ancient maligner, and then made one of
his conciliatory addresses. Having shown them how impossible it was
to get corn, and reminded them of his own exertions, and that he had
always shared with them anything he had, he told them that he should
stand their nonsense no longer; he should force the idle to work, and
punish them if they railed; if any attempted to escape to
Newfoundland in the pinnace they would arrive at the gallows; the
sick should not starve; every man able must work, and every man who
did not gather as much in a day as he did should be put out of the
fort as a drone.

Such was the effect of this speech that of the two hundred only seven
died in this pinching time, except those who were drowned; no man
died of want. Captain Winne and Master Leigh had died before this
famine occurred. Many of the men were billeted among the savages,
who used them well, and stood in such awe of the power at the fort
that they dared not wrong the whites out of a pin. The Indians
caught