"
This man had a soldier's way with him and an iron will. For five years in
Virginia he exhibited a certain stern efficiency which was perhaps the best
support and medicine that could have been devised. At the end of that time,
leaving Virginia, he did not return to the Dutch service, but became
Admiral of the fleet of the English East India Company, thus passing from
one huge historic mercantile company to another. With six ships he sailed
for India. Near Java, the English and the Dutch having chosen to quarrel,
he had with a Dutch fleet "a cruel, bloody fight." Later, when peace was
restored, the East India Company would have given him command of an allied
fleet of English and Dutch ships, the objective being trade along the coast
of Malabar and an attempt to open commerce with the Chinese. But Sir
Thomas Dale was opening commerce with a vaster, hidden land, for at
Masulipatam he died. "Whose valor," says his epitaph, "having shined in the
Westerne, was set in the Easterne India."
But now in Maytime of 1611 Dale was in Virginian waters. By this day,
beside the main settlement of Jamestown, there were at Cape Henry and Point
Comfort small forts garrisoned with meager companies of men. Dale made
pause at these, setting matters in order, and then, proceeding up the
river, he came to Jamestown and found the people gathered to receive him.
Presently he writes home to the Company a letter that gives a view of the
place and its needs. Any number of things must be done, requiring
continuous and hard work, "as, namely, the reparation of the falling Church
and so of the Store-house, a stable for our horses, a munition house, a
Powder house, a new well for the amending of the most unwholesome water
which the old afforded.
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