a man alive that was dead. He narrates a second incident which served to give the Indians a wholesome fear of the whites: “Another ingenious savage of Powhatan having gotten a great bag of powder and the back of an armour at Werowocomoco, amongst a many of his companions, to show his extraordinary skill, he did dry it on the back as he had seen the soldiers at Jamestown. But he dried it so long, they peeping over it to see his skill, it took fire, and blew him to death, and one or two more, and the rest so scorched they had little pleasure any more to meddle with gunpowder.” “These and many other such pretty incidents,” says Smith, “so amazed and affrighted Powhatan and his people that from all parts they desired peace;” stolen articles were returned, thieves sent to Jamestown for punishment, and the whole country became as free for the whites as for the Indians. And now ensued, in the spring of 1609, a prosperous period of three months, the longest season of quiet the colony had enjoyed, but only a respite from greater disasters. The friendship of the Indians and the temporary subordination of the settlers we must attribute to Smith's vigor, shrewdness, and spirit of industry. It was much easier to manage the Indian's than the idle and vicious men that composed the majority of the settlement. In these three months they manufactured three or four lasts (fourteen barrels in a last) of tar, pitch, and soap-ashes, produced some specimens of glass, dug a well of excellent sweet water in the fort, which they had wanted for two years, built twenty houses, repaired the church, planted thirty or forty acres of ground, and erected a block-house on the neck of the island, where a garrison was stationed to trade with the savages and permit neither whites nor Indians to pass except on the President's order. Even the domestic animals partook the industrious spirit: “of three sowes in eighteen months increased 60 and od Pigs; and neare 500 chickings brought up themselves without having any meat given them.” The hogs were transferred to Hog Isle, where another block house was built and garrisoned, and the garrison were permitted to take “exercise” in cutting down trees and making clapboards and wainscot. They were building a fort on high ground, intended for an easily defended retreat, when a woful discovery put an end to their thriving plans.