Bad as matters were, they became worse when a little fleet arrived with many new settlers, making the whole number about 500. The newcomers were a worthless set picked up in the streets of London or taken from the jails, and utterly unfit to become the founders of a state in the wilderness of the New World. Out of such material Smith in time might have made something, but he was forced by a wound to return to England, and the colony went rapidly to ruin. Sickness and famine did their work so quickly that after six months there were but sixty of the 500 men alive. Then two small ships, under Sir Thomas Gates and Sir George Somers, arrived at Jamestown with more settlers; but all decided to flee, and had actually sailed a few miles down the James, when, June 8, 1610, they met Lord Delaware with three ships full of men and supplies coming up the river. Delaware came out as governor under a new charter granted in 1609.[1] [Footnote 1: Read "The Jamestown Experiments," in Eggleston's _Beginners of a Nation,_ pp. 25-72.] [Illustration: Vicinity of Jamestown] %21. The Virginia Charter of 1609% made a great change in the boundary of the company's property. By the 1606 charter the colony was limited to 100 miles along the seaboard and 100 miles west from the coast. In 1609 the company was given an immense domain reaching 400 miles along the coast,--200 miles each way from Old Point Comfort,--and extending "up into the land throughout _from sea to sea_, west and northwest." This description is very important, for it was afterwards claimed by Virginia to mean a grant of land of the shape shown on the map.[1] [Footnote 1: Read Hinsdale's _Old Northwest_, pp. 74, 75.] [Illustration] %22. The First Representative Assembly in America.%--Under the new charter and new governors Virginia began to thrive. More work and less grumbling were done, and a few wise reforms were introduced. One governor, however, Argall, ruled the colony so badly that the people turned against him and sent such reports to England that immigration almost ceased. The company, in consequence, removed Argall, and gave Virginia a better form of government. In future, the governor's power was to be limited, and the people were to have a share in the making of laws and the management of affairs. As the colonists, now numbering 4000 men, were living in eleven settlements, or "boroughs," it was ordered that each borough should elect two men to sit in a legislature to be called the House of Burgesses. This house, the first representative assembly ever held by white men in America, met on July 30, 1619, in the church at Jamestown, and there began "government of the people, by the people, for the people."