After the arrival of Lord De la Warre in Virginia, in 1610, the colony enjoyed a long period of prosperity. The mouth of the river, named after its first governor, was discovered by the Captain Argall already mentioned, in one of many exploring expeditions up the coast; while inland, the huts of the colonists gradually replaced the wigwams of the natives on the Potomac, the Ohio, the Shenandoah, the Rappahannock, etc. In 1619 took place two events, pregnant in results, not only to Virginia, but to the whole of the future Republic of America――the first cargo of slaves was landed at Jamestown, and the first Legislative Assembly met in the same town. In 1622, the growth of the colony was suddenly checked by a terrible disaster, in the shape of a general massacre of the whites at the instigation of the chief Opechancanough, who had then succeeded his brother Powhatan as the leader of the dusky tribes whose homes had been appropriated by the English intruders. No suspicion of the awful fate awaiting them appears to have dawned upon the unlucky colonists, who, scattered up and down in their farms, were engaged in their usual peaceful avocations, when, on the morning of the 22d March, 1622, the house of every white man was visited by a few armed savages, who, having put to death with horrible tortures all its inmates, sparing neither age nor sex, passed on to aid their brethren in the same terrible work elsewhere. One alone of the many Indians who had been apparently converted to Christianity was true to his adopted creed, and, instead of murdering, warned his master in time for him to make his own escape, and carry the tidings of the approach of the red men to Jamestown. In a little open boat the two sped down the river, arriving at the capital of the colony in time to avert much bloodshed. Messages were sent to the outlying settlements; and the Indians, finding themselves outwitted, would have retired to their woods, had not the whites cut off their retreat, and in their turn slain without mercy all who fell into their hands. Throughout the length and breadth of the land desolation now replaced the former plenty, and it soon became evident to the natives that in their wild rising they had sounded their own death-knell. Taught by experience not to trust in the promises of the Indians, the Virginians now gathered more closely together, building large towns, in which the first owners of the soil were only admitted as servants, until at last the fact that they had ever been any thing else passed from the memory of their oppressors.