Before many months were passed,
all came to know that but for him the white people in Jamestown
would have come to their deaths.
WE WHO WERE LEFT BEHIND
It was on the fifteenth day of June when the ships sailed out of
the Chesapeake Bay, leaving on the banks of the river we called
the James, a hundred men and boys, all told, to hold their lives
and their liberty against thousands upon thousands of naked savages,
who had already shown that they desired to be enemies rather than
friends. Even in the eyes of a boy, it was an odd company to battle
with the savages and the wilderness, for the greater number were
those who called themselves gentlemen, and who believed it beneath
their station to do any labor whatsoever, therefore did it seem to
me that this new town would be burdened sorely with so many drones.
Master Hunt, the preacher, could in good truth call himself a
gentleman, and yet I myself saw him, within two hours after we were
landed, nailing a piece of timber between two trees that he might
stretch a square of sailcloth over it, thus making what served
as the first church in the country of Virginia.
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