Smith succeeded to the presidency.
About this time John Laydon, a laborer, and Anne Burras, that maid of
Mistress Forest's, fell in love and would marry. So came about the first
English wedding in Virginia.
Winter followed with snow and ice, nigh two hundred people to feed, and not
overmuch in the larder with which to do it. Smith with George Percy and
Francis West and others went again to the Indians for corn. Christmas found
them weather-bound at Kecoughtan. "Wherever an Englishman may be, and in
whatever part of the world, he must keep Christmas with feasting and
merriment! And, indeed, we were never more merrie, nor fedde on more
plentie of good oysters, fish, flesh, wild fowle and good bread; nor never
had better fires in England than in the drie, smokie houses of Kecoughtan!"
But despite this Christmas fare, there soon began quarrels, many and
intricate, with Powhatan and his brother Opechancanough.
CHAPTER V. THE "SEA ADVENTURE"
Experience is a great teacher. That London Company with Virginia to
colonize had now come to see how inadequate to the attempt were its means
and strength. Evidently it might be long before either gold mines or the
South Sea could be found. The company's ships were too slight and few;
colonists were going by the single handful when they should go by the
double. Something was at fault in the management of the enterprise. The
quarrels in Virginia were too constant, the disasters too frequent. More
money, more persons interested with purse and mind, a great company instead
of a small, a national cast to the enterprise these were imperative needs.
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