These numbers, thus meanly provided, not being able to subsist and live together weare soone after devided into three parties and dispersed abroad for their better reliefe. The first under commande of Captaine Francis West to feat at the head of the River; a second under commande of Captaine John Smith, then President, at James Towne, & the other, with Capt. John Martin, in the River at Nansamun, which divisions gave occasions to the Indiens treacherously to cutt off divers of our men & boates, and forced the rest at the end of sixe weekes, havinge spent those small provisions they had with them, to retire to James Town & that in the depth of winter, when by reason of the colde, it was not possible for us to endure to wade in the water (as formerly) to gather oysters to satisfie our hungry stomacks, but constrained to digge in the grounde for unwholesome rootes whereof we were not able to get so many as would suffice us, in respect of the frost at that season & our poverty & weakness, so that famine compelled us wholly to devoure those Hogges, Dogges & horses that weare then in the Collony, together with rates, mice, snakes, or what vermin or carryon soever we could light on, as alsoe Toadstooles, Jewes eares, or what els we founde growing upon the grounde that would fill either mouth or belly; and weare driven through unsufferable hunger unnaturallie to eat those thinges which nature most abhorred, the flesh and excrements of man, as well of our owne nation as of an Indian, digged by some out of his grave after he had laien buried three daies & wholly devoured him; others, envyinge the better state of boddie of any whom hunger had not yet so much wasted as there owne, lay waight and threatened to kill and eat them; one amonge the rest slue his wife as she slept in his bosome, cutt her in peeces, powdered her & fedd uppon her till he had clean devoured all partes saveinge her heade, & was for soe barbarouse a fact and cruelty justly executed. Some adventuringe to seeke releife in the woods, dyed as they fought it, & weare eaten by others who found them dead. Many putt themselves into the Indians' handes, though our enemies, and were by them slaine. In this extremitye of famine continued the Collony till the twenteth of Maye, when unexpected, yet happely, arrived Sir Thomas Gates & Sir George Somers in two small Barques[FF] which they had built in the Sommer Islands after the wreake of the Sea adventure wherin they sett forth from Englande, with them one hundred persons barely provided of vittel for themselves. They founde the Collony consistinge then of but sixty persons most famished and at point of death, of whom many soone after died; the lamentable outcries of theirs soe moved the hartes of those worthies, not being in any sorte able long to releive their wantes they soone resolved to imbarque themselves & this poore remainder of the Collonye, in those two pinnaces & two other small Barques then in the