Smith says in his “True Relation,” which was written on the spot, and is
much less embittered than his “General Historie,” that they were in
good health and content when Newport departed, but this did not long
continue, for President Wingfield and Captain Gosnold, with the most of
the Council, were so discontented with each other that nothing was done
with discretion, and no business transacted with wisdom. This he charges
upon the “hard-dealing of the President,” the rest of the Council being
diversely affected through his audacious command. “Captain Martin,
though honest, was weak and sick; Smith was in disgrace through the
malice of others; and God sent famine and sickness, so that the living
were scarce able to bury the dead. Our want of sufficient good food, and
continual watching, four or five each night, at three bulwarks, being
the chief cause; only of sturgeon we had great store, whereon we would
so greedily surfeit, as it cost many their lives; the sack, Aquavite,
and other preservations of our health being kept in the President's
hands, for his own diet and his few associates.”
In his “General Historie,” written many years later, Smith enlarges this
indictment with some touches of humor characteristic of him. He says:
“Being thus left to our fortunes, it fortuned that within ten days
scarce ten amongst us could either go, or well stand, such extreme
weakness and sicknes oppressed us. And thereat none need marvaile if
they consider the cause and reason, which was this: whilst the ships
stayed, our allowance was somewhat bettered, by a daily proportion of
Bisket, which the sailors would pilfer to sell, give, or exchange with
us for money, Saxefras, furres, or love. But when they departed, there
remained neither taverne, beere-house, nor place of reliefe, but the
common Kettell. Had we beene as free from all sinnes as gluttony, and
drunkennesse, we might have been canonized for Saints. But our President
would never have been admitted, for ingrissing to his private, Oatmeale,
Sacke, Oyle, Aquavitz, Beef, Egges, or what not, but the Kettell: that
indeed he allowed equally to be distributed, and that was half a pint
of wheat, and as much barley boyled with water for a man a day, and this
being fryed some twenty-six weeks in the ship's hold, contained as many
wormes as graines; so that we might truly call it rather so much bran
than corrne, our drinke was water, our lodgings Castles in the ayre;
with this lodging and dyet, our extreme toile in bearing and planting
Pallisadoes, so strained and bruised us, and our continual labour in the
extremitie of the heat had so weakened us, as were cause sufficient to
have made us miserable in our native countrey, or any other place in the
world.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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