This was doubtless due to their President's excellent humour and judgment. Had he played the martinet with his volunteers, he might have had their axes about his ears. Doubtless he was highly pleased with his "Gallants and proper Gentlemen," but he afterwards confessed that "twentie good wor men had been better than them all." The haze of the Indian summer (when "the sun looks back with regret") was hanging over river and forest, and softening the outlines of the hills. Smoke from many fires in the woods mingled with the purple haze. These fires were under the kettles of the Dutchmen who were making potash by evaporating the lye obtained from leaching wood ashes. Alkalis were in great demand in England, hence the quantity of soap ashes with which the early ships were freighted. Soap itself was a forbidden article of domestic use. There was a severe penalty against throwing soap suds in the open street. The dreadful Oriental plague had appeared in London, and it was thought then that "not only soap-boilers and vendors of soap, but all the washerwomen and all they whose business it was to use soap--nay they who only wore shirts washed with soap--presently died of the Plague."[49] All hands were called from the forest and the kettles early in December to attend the first English marriage in Virginia. Of course pretty Ann Burras found many admirers in a colony of two hundred men, and equally, of course, she could accept but one. Her bridegroom, John Laydon, Carpenter, was twenty-seven. They were all young men. Captain Smith and George Percy were not yet thirty, and they were among the elders. The ceremony was performed, doubtless, in the church, and by good Master Hunt, who was soon to be called to the reward of a noble Christian life. It is altogether probable that Pocahontas was present. "She came as freely to the fort as to her father's house, bringing corn and game and whatever she could get for Captain Smith." She was known by all as the "Deare & Darling Pocahontas," and when a wedding was to the fore we may be sure she was apprised of it. Little Ann Burras brought good fortune to her honest carpenter. More than once they were given land in Virginia, at one time as much as five hundred acres. She bore many children. There was a Catharine, an Alice, and a Margaret; but the first child was named "Virginia." The family lived long, and survived all the hard times--the starvation, the sickness, and the great massacre of 1622. How different was the fate of Ellinor Dare, and her hapless little Virginia! One is tempted to linger in the sweet Indian summer time, and listen to the wedding bells and cheery talk of the woodsmen in the forest--for these were the last "good times" these hapless colonists were to know for many a long day. Just at the moment they were happily unconscious that war, pestilence, and famine stood hand in hand at their door.