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.

   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.

   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 arrangement reminding one of the fearful yet mutual apprehension spoken of by the poet when he says,—

    "Jim Darling didn't know but his father was dead,

    And his father didn't know but Jim Darling was dead."

 Prev. P 13/135 next