There were many in Virginia merely projecting, verbal and idle contemplators,[285] and those so devoted to pure idleness, that, though they had lived two or three years in Virginia, lordly necessity itself could not compel them to pass the peninsula or palisades of Jamestown; and those witty spirits, what would they not affirm in behalf of our transporters[286] to get victual from their ships, or obtain their good words in England to get their passes! Thus from the clamors and the influence of false informers are sprung those disasters that sprung in Virginia; and our ingenious verbalists[287] were no less a plague to us in Virginia than the locusts to the Egyptians. For the labor of twenty or thirty of the best only preserved in Christianity by their industry the idle lives of near two hundred of the rest, who, living near ten months of such natural means as the country naturally of itself affordeth. Notwithstanding all this, and the worst fury of the savages, the extremity of sickness, mutinies, faction, ignorances, and want of victual, in all that time I lost but seven or eight men, yet subjected the savages to our desired obedience, and received contribution from thirty-five of their kings, to protect and assist them against any that should assault them. In which order they continued true and faithful, and as subjects to his Majesty, so long after as I did govern there, until I left the country. III.――SMITH CAPTURED BY THE INDIANS. AND now the winter approaching, the rivers became so covered with swans, geese, ducks, and cranes, that we daily feasted with good bread, Virginia peas, pumpkins and putchamins,[288] fish, fowl, and divers sorts of wild beasts as fat as we could eat them: so that none of our tuftaffatty humorists[289] desired to go for England. But our comedies never endured long without a tragedy; some idle exceptions being muttered against Captain Smith for not discovering the head of Chickahamania[290] River, and taxed by the council to be too slow in so worthy an attempt. The next voyage he proceeded so far, that, with much labor by cutting of trees asunder, he made his passage; but, when his barge could pass no farther, he left her in a broad bay, out of danger of shot, commanding none should go ashore until his return. Himself, with two English and two savages, went up higher in a canoe; but he was not long absent. But his men went ashore, whose want of government gave both occasion and opportunity to the savages to surprise one George Cassen, whom they slew, and much failed not[291] to have cut off the boat and all the rest. Smith, little dreaming of that accident, being got to the marshes at the river’s head, twenty miles in the desert, had his two men slain, as is supposed, sleeping by the canoe, while himself, by fowling, sought them victuals; who finding he was beset with two hundred savages, two of them he slew, still defending himself with the