1, pp. 116-118.
It would seem that there was cause indeed for watching down the river by
that small, small town that was all of the United States! But there follows
a Spanish memorandum. "The driving out . . . by the fleet stationed to the
windward will be postponed for a long time because delay will be caused by
getting it ready."* Delay followed delay, and old Spain--conquistador Spain
--grew older, and the speech on Jamestown Island is still English.
* Op. cit., vol. 1, p. 127.
Christopher Newport was gone; no ships--the last refuges, the last
possibilities for hometurning, should the earth grow too hard and the sky
too black--rode upon the river before the fort. Here was the summer heat. A
heavy breath rose from immemorial marshes, from the ancient floor of the
forest. When clouds gathered and storms burst, they amazed the heart with
their fearful thunderings and lightnings. The colonists had no well, but
drank from the river, and at neither high nor low tide found the water
wholesome. While the ships were here they had help of ship stores, but now
they must subsist upon the grain that they had in the storehouse, now scant
and poor enough. They might fish and hunt, but against such resources stood
fever and inexperience and weakness, and in the woods the lurking savages.
The heat grew greater, the water worse, the food less. Sickness began. Work
became toil. Men pined from homesickness, then, coming together, quarreled
with a weak violence, then dropped away again into corners and sat
listlessly with hanging heads.
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