When Smith returned from captivity the colony was on the verge of extinction. Only thirty-eight persons were left, and they were preparing to depart. With Smith, hope returned to the despairing settlers. They resumed their work, confident in the resources of their chief. Fresh arrivals from England cheered them. The character of these reinforcements had not as yet improved. “Vagabond gentlemen” formed still a large majority of the settlers--many of them, we are told, “packed off to escape worse destinies at home.” The colony, thus composed, had already gained a very bad reputation: so bad that some, rather than be sent there, “chose to be hanged, _and were_.” Over these most undesirable subjects Smith ruled with an authority which no man dared or desired to question. But he was severely injured by an accidental explosion of gunpowder. Surgical aid was not in the colony. Smith required to go to England, and once more hungry ruin settled down upon Virginia. [Sidenote: 1610 A.D.] In six months the five hundred men whom Smith had left dwindled to sixty. These were already embarked and departing, when they were met by Lord Delaware, the new governor. Once more the colony was saved. Years of quiet growth succeeded. Emigrants--not wholly now of the dissolute sort--flowed steadily in. Bad people bore rule in England during most of the seventeenth century, and they sold the good people to be slaves in Virginia. The victims of the brutal Judge Jeffreys--the Scotch Covenanters taken at Bothwell Bridge--were shipped off to this profitable market. In 1688 the population of Virginia had increased to 50,000. The little wooden capital swelled out. Other little wooden towns established themselves. Deep in the unfathomed wilderness rose the huts of adventurous settlers, in secluded nooks, by the banks of nameless Virginian streams. A semblance of roads connected the youthful communities. The Indians were relentlessly suppressed. The Virginians bought no land; they took what they required--slaying or expelling the former occupants. Perhaps there were faults on both sides. Once the Indians planned a massacre so cunningly that over three hundred Englishmen perished before the bloody hand of the savages could be stayed. The early explorers of Virginia found tobacco in extensive use among the Indians. It was the chief medicine of the savages. Its virtues--otherwise unaccountable--were supposed to proceed from a spiritual presence whose home was in the plant. Tobacco was quickly introduced into England, where it rose rapidly into favour. Men who had heretofore smoked only hemp knew how to prize tobacco. King James wrote vehemently against it. He issued a proclamation against trading in an article which was corrupting to mind and body. He taxed it heavily when he could not exclude it. The Pope excommunicated all who smoked in churches. But, in defiance of law and reason, the demand for tobacco continued to increase.