Dale's administration was strongest on its military side. There was no danger that the Indians would reduce the colony to any straits while he was in charge. He gave his first attention to fortification, and he even begged for two thousand convicts out of English jails to form a line of posts from Hampton to a point a hundred miles above Jamestown. He sent Argall all the way to Mount Desert to plunder a Jesuit settlement and make prize of a French ship--an undertaking congenial to Dale's military temper and the Viking tastes of Argall. As his experience increased, Dale came to understand that other than military measures were needed to found a colony, though he never more than half comprehended the elements of the problem. In his later time he cleared more corn ground, and he could boast at his departure that Virginia contained six horses, a hundred and forty-nine neat cattle, two hundred and sixteen goats, and hogs without number. Dale set off a private garden of three acres of land to each of the old planters, on the condition that they should provide food for themselves while still giving nearly all of their time to the service of the common stock. Even this slave's-patch of private interest given to only a fraction of the colonists put some life into Virginia; but two thirds of the people were retained in the old intolerable bondage, and not even the most favored secured personal ownership of land. Dale's administration was remembered as "the five years of slavery." XII. [Sidenote: Dale's return.] [Sidenote: Note 10.] [Sidenote: Note 11.] The rough-handed soldier from the Low Countries had indeed brought the Virginia chaos into order, but it was an order almost as deadly as the preceding anarchy. Dale confessed that the government of Virginia was "the hardest task he had ever undertaken," and he got himself out of it after five years by making a theatrical return to England in 1616 with a train of Indians, including the "Princess" Pocahontas, converted, baptized with a Christian name as Rebecca, and wedded to an Englishman. He added glowing reports of the country, and proved all by exhibiting "at least sixteen several sorts of staple commodities to be raised in this plantation." For greater effect, samples of twelve of these products of the colony were sold by public auction in the open court of the company. Though Dale could show many commodities, some of which have never flourished in Virginia since his time, he left behind him not an established community, but a mere camp of unhappy men retained in the country by the sheer impossibility of getting away. After nine years of suffering, Virginia consisted of some three hundred and twenty-six men, twenty-five women and children, and graves outnumbering many times over all the living souls. [Sidenote: Note 12.]