At the time of the census in 1625 Mathews' plantation had a single muster. It consisted of a minister, Rev. David Sands, himself and twenty-three men who were all listed as servants. The plantation apparently had no women in it. The scarcity of wives and children in this, as in most of the plantations here, would indicate a lack of settled conditions. Perhaps this was to be expected in an area which had not long been opened to actual settlement as seems to have been generally true of this section. HOG ISLAND (34) This low marshy area on the south side of the river at the wide bend of the James some five miles below Jamestown appears in the records as early as January, 1609. At that time Mathew Scrivener, a Councilor, and nine others "would needs visit the Ile of hogges." A mishap occurred and the entire party was drowned en route. Perhaps this was just before "the hogges [at Jamestown] were transported to Hog Ile, where also we built [in 1609] a blocke house with a garrison, to give us notice of any shipping; and for their exercise, they made clapboard, wainscott, and cutt downe trees against the ships comming." Evidently when the three sows in one year increased to 60 and odd "piggs" it proved too much for the fort and its environs at Jamestown. In 1610 there was another reference to the "Ile of Hogs" and then all is silence for a decade. The doubtful safety of the spot, its inconvenience, and its distance from Jamestown probably caused its abandonment as a suitable place for quartering the Colony's supply of hogs. In 1619 a request for a grant of 300 acres of marsh land in the area called "Hogg Iland" was made to the Company, yet precise assignment was not approved since the Court in England correctly stated that it did not know "who allredie may lay clayme thereunto or otherwise how necessary itt may be for the publique." On March 28, 1619, Governor Argall proclaimed "Hog Island" within the bounds of Jamestown and granted "inhabitants of Jamestown" the right to plant here as in other parts of the area as "members of the corporation and parish of the same." There is still, however, no record of a settlement here and no references to losses in the massacre.