Thomas Wentworth Higginson, A book of American explorers

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[236] their ships, or obtain their good words in England to get their passes! Thus from the clamors and the influence of false informers are sprung those disasters that sprung in Virginia; and our ingenious verbalists¹ were no less a plague to us in Virginia than the locusts to the Egyptians. For the labor of twenty or thirty of the best only preserved in Christianity by their industry the idle lives of near two hundred of the rest, who, living near ten months of such natural means as the country naturally of itself affordeth. Notwithstanding all this, and the worst fury of the savages, the extremity of sickness, mutinies, faction, ignorances, and want of victual, in all that time I lost but seven or eight men, yet subjected the savages to our desired obedience, and received contribution from thirty-five of their kings, to protect and assist them against any that should assault them. In which order they continued true and faithful, and as subjects to his Majesty, so long after as I did govern there, until I left the country.

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Iii.—Smith captured by the Indians.

And now the winter approaching, the rivers became so covered with swans, geese, ducks, and cranes, that we daily feasted with good bread, Virginia peas, pumpkins and putchamins,² fish, fowl, and divers sorts of wild beasts as fat as we could eat them: so that none of our tuftaffatty humorists³ desired to go for England. But our comedies never endured long without a tragedy; some idle exceptions being muttered against