It was necessary to follow for a time the fortune of the Virginiacolony after the departure of Captain Smith. Of its disasters andspeedy decline there is no more doubt than there is of the opinion ofSmith that these were owing to his absence. The savages, we read inhis narration, no sooner knew he was gone than they all revolted andspoiled and murdered all they encountered.

　　The day before Captain Smith sailed, Captain Davis arrived in a smallpinnace with sixteen men. These, with a company from the fort underCaptain Ratcliffe, were sent down to Point Comfort. Captain West andCaptain Martin, having lost their boats and half their men among thesavages at the Falls, returned to Jamestown. The colony now livedupon what Smith had provided, "and now they had presidents with alltheir appurtenances. President Percy was so sick he could neither gonor stand. Provisions getting short, West and Ratcliffe went abroadto trade, and Ratcliffe and twenty-eight of his men were slain by anambush of Powhatan's, as before related in the narrative of HenrySpelman. Powhatan cut off their boats, and refused to trade, so thatCaptain West set sail for England. What ensued cannot be morevividly told than in the "General Historie":

　　"Now we all found the losse of Capt. Smith, yea his greatestmaligners could now curse his losse; as for corne provision andcontribution from the salvages, we had nothing but mortall wounds,with clubs and arrowes; as for our hogs, hens, goats, sheep, horse,or what lived, our commanders, officers and salvages daily consumedthem, some small proportions sometimes we tasted, till all wasdevoured; then swords, arms, pieces or anything was traded with thesalvages, whose cruell fingers were so oft imbrued in our blouds,that what by their crueltie, our Governor's indiscretion, and thelosse of our ships, of five hundred within six months after Capt.

　　Smith's departure, there remained not past sixty men, women andchildren, most miserable and poore creatures; and those werepreserved for the most part, by roots, herbes, acorns, walnuts,berries, now and then a little fish; they that had starch in theseextremities made no small use of it, yea, even the very skinnes ofour horses. Nay, so great was our famine, that a salvage we slew andburied, the poorer sort took him up again and eat him, and so diddivers one another boyled, and stewed with roots and herbs. And oneamongst the rest did kill his wife, poudered her and had eaten partof her before it was knowne, for which he was executed, as he welldeserved; now whether she was better roasted, boyled, or carbonaded,I know not, but of such a dish as powdered wife I never heard of.

　　This was that time, which still to this day we called the starvingtime; it were too vile to say and scarce to be believed what weendured; but the occasion was our owne, for want of providence,industrie and government, and not the barreness and defect of thecountry as is generally supposed."This playful allusion to powdered wife, and speculation as to how shewas best cooked, is the first instance we have been able to find ofwhat is called "American humor," and Captain Smith has the honor ofbeing the first of the "American humorists" who have handled subjectsof this kind with such pleasing gayety.

　　It is to be noticed that this horrible story of cannibalism and wife-eating appears in Smith's "General Historie" of 1624, without a wordof contradiction or explanation, although the company as early as1610 had taken pains to get at the facts, and Smith must have seentheir "Declaration," which supposes the story was started by enemiesof the colony. Some reported they saw it, some that Captain Smithsaid so, and some that one Beadle, the lieutenant of Captain Davis,did relate it. In "A True Declaration of the State of the Colonie inVirginia," published by the advice and direction of the Council ofVirginia, London, 1610, we read:

　　"But to clear all doubt, Sir Thomas Yates thus relateth the tragedie:

　　"There was one of the company who mortally hated his wife, andtherefore secretly killed her, then cut her in pieces and hid her indivers parts of his house: when the woman was missing, the mansuspected, his house searched, and parts of her mangled body werediscovered, to excuse himself he said that his wife died, that he hidher to satisfie his hunger, and that he fed daily upon her. Uponthis his house was again searched, when they found a good quantitieof meale, oatmeale, beanes and pease. Hee therefore was arraigned,confessed the murder, and was burned for his horrible villainy."This same "True Declaration," which singularly enough does notmention the name of Captain Smith, who was so prominent an actor inVirginia during the period to which it relates, confirms all thatSmith said as to the character of the colonists, especially the newsupply which landed in the eight vessels with Ratcliffe and Archer.

　　"Every man overvalueing his own strength would be a commander; everyman underprizing another's value, denied to be commanded." They werenegligent and improvident. "Every man sharked for his presentbootie, but was altogether careless of succeeding penurie." Toidleness and faction was joined treason. About thirty "unhallowedcreatures," in the winter of 1610, some five months before thearrival of Captain Gates, seized upon the ship Swallow, which hadbeen prepared to trade with the Indians, and having obtained cornconspired together and made a league to become pirates, dreaming ofmountains of gold and happy robberies. By this desertion theyweakened the colony, which waited for their return with theprovisions, and they made implacable enemies of the Indians by theirviolence. "These are that scum of men," which, after roving the seasand failing in their piracy, joined themselves to other pirates theyfound on the sea, or returned to England, bound by a mutual oath todiscredit the land, and swore they were drawn away by famine. "Theseare they that roared at the tragicall historie of the man eating uphis dead wife in Virginia"--"scandalous reports of a viperousgeneration."If further evidence were wanting, we have it in "The New Life ofVirginia," published by authority of the Council, London, 1612. Thisis the second part of the "Nova Britannia," published in London,1609. Both are prefaced by an epistle to Sir Thomas Smith, one ofthe Council and treasurer, signed "R. I." Neither document containsany allusion to Captain John Smith, or the part he played inVirginia. The "New Life of Virginia," after speaking of the tempestwhich drove Sir Thomas Gates on Bermuda, and the landing of the eightships at Jamestown, says: "By which means the body of the plantationwas now augmented with such numbers of irregular persons that it soonbecame as so many members without a head, who as they were bad andevil affected for the most part before they went hence; so now beinglanded and wanting restraint, they displayed their condition in allkinds of looseness, those chief and wisest guides among them (whereofthere were not many) did nothing but bitterly contend who should befirst to command the rest, the common sort, as is ever seen in suchcases grew factious and disordered out of measure, in so much as thepoor colony seemed (like the Colledge of English fugitives in Rome)as a hostile camp within itself; in which distemper that envious manstept in, sowing plentiful tares in the hearts of all, which grew tosuch speedy confusion, that in few months ambition, sloth andidleness had devoured the fruit of former labours, planting andsowing were clean given over, the houses decayed, the church fell toruin, the store was spent, the cattle consumed, our people starved,and the Indians by wrongs and injuries made our enemies.... As forthose wicked Impes that put themselves a shipboard, not knowingotherwise how to live in England; or those ungratious sons that dailyvexed their fathers hearts at home, and were therefore thrust uponthe voyage, which either writing thence, or being returned back tocover their own leudnes, do fill mens ears with false reports oftheir miserable and perilous life in Virginia, let the imputation ofmisery be to their idleness, and the blood that was spilt upon theirown heads that caused it."Sir Thomas Gates affirmed that after his first comin............