On the sixteenth of April, 1607, land was sighted, and the adventurers soon entered Chesapeake Bay, naming the outlying capes, Henry and Charles, after the king's sons, and the river, which they soon ascended, the James, in honor of the monarch himself. Fifty miles above the mouth of the river is "a low peninsula half buried in the tide at high water," which they unfortunately selected as the site of a town; and landing there on the thirteenth of May, they called the place Jamestown. Wingfield, one of the patentees, was chosen president of the resident council, exploring parties were sent out, fortifications were begun, and a few log-huts reared. The colonists had been instructed by the English council to search for water passages running through to the Pacific. A party soon set out, under Newport and Smith; but on reaching the falls of the James turned back. At first they were troubled by Indians; but peace had been made with the neighboring chief before Newport left for England, the twenty-second of June. Sidenote: A dismal summer. The marshes were rank, the water was bad, and food scanty at Jamestown. The colonists were for the most part a shiftless set, lacking the habit of industry. The heat was so intense during the first summer that few houses were built, and the tents were rotten and leaky. The natives, being ill-treated, soon broke out again into hostilities. When autumn came, fifty of the colonists had died. "Some departed suddenly," wrote a chronicler, "but for the most part they died of mere famine. There were never Englishmen left in a foreign country in such misery as we were in this new discovered Virginia.... It would make ... hearts bleed to hear the pitiful murmurings and outcries." The only men in office who had not in some degree succumbed to the miseries of the situation were Gosnold, a man of really superior ability, and Smith himself, the latter having now attained to supreme control by common consent. Smith compelled his people to labor,--"he that will not work shall not eat," was his dictum,--maintained trade with the Indians, among whom he became popular, drilled the little garrison, kept up the fortifications, explored and mapped the country and the coast, wrote appeals for assistance to London, and was the life and soul of the colony for two years. Sidenote: Smith the savior of the colony.