%20. The Jamestown Colony.%--Thus empowered, the two companies made all haste to gather funds, collect stores and settlers, and fit out ships. The London Company was the first to get ready, and on the 19th of December, 1606, 143 colonists set sail in three ships for America with their charter, and a list of the council sealed up in a strong box. The Plymouth Company soon followed, and before the year 1607 was far advanced, two settlements were planted in our country: the one at Jamestown, in Virginia, the other near the mouth of the Kennebec, in Maine. The latter, however, was abandoned the following year (see Chapter IV). The three ships which carried the Virginia colony reached the coast in the spring of 1607, and entering Chesapeake Bay sailed up a river which the colonists called the James, in honor of the King. When about thirty miles from its mouth, a landing was made on a little peninsula, where a settlement was begun and named Jamestown.[1] It was the month of May, and as the weather was warm, the colonists did not build houses, but, inside of some rude fortifications, put up shelters of sails and branches to serve till huts could be built. But their food gave out, the Indians were hostile, and before September half of the party had died of fever. Had it not been for the energy and courage of John Smith, every one of them would have perished. He practically assumed command, set the men to building huts, persuaded the Indians to give them food, explored the bays and rivers of Virginia, and for two dreary years held the colony together. When we consider the worthless men he had to deal with, and the hardships and difficulties that beset him, his work is wonderful. The history which he wrote, however, is not to be trusted.[2] [Footnote 1: Nothing now remains of Jamestown but the ruined tower of the church shown in the picture. Much of the land on which the town stood has been washed away by the river, so that its site is now an island.] [Footnote 2: Read the _Life and Writings of Captain John Smith_, by Charles Dudley Warner; also John Fiske in _Atlantic Monthly_, December, 1895; Eggleston's _Beginners of a Nation_, pp. 31-38. Smith's _True Relation_ is printed in _American History Leaflets_, No. 27, and _Library of American Literature_ Vol. I.] [Illustration: All that is left of Jamestown]