52 Singing Valleys 



that he could about the country and what it had to offer. At 

 the same time his repeated injunction to the colonists was that 

 in order to succeed they must give up scanning the horizon 

 for supply ships from the mother country, and turn to the land 

 itself for their subsistence. 



It was not an easy task to persuade the first Virginians 

 against those flowery promises of Drayton's that they must 

 become planters, not adventurers; and that their survival de- 

 pended on their driving roots into the soil. "He that does not 

 work shall not eat" was Smith's retort to those who would 

 have thrust their hands into the baskets of corn he brought 

 from the Powhatan. Work, he explained, meant tree-chop- 

 ping, grubbing up roots, breaking the soil with the tools they 

 had brought from England, and which the lazy ones were only 

 too willing to trade with the Indians for fresh-killed venison, 

 or corn. Of the members of this First Supply, thirty-five were 

 listed as "Gentlemen." Not a few of these were younger sons 

 of the nobility. George Percy, who governed the colony twice 

 and badly was a brother of the Duke of Northumberland. 

 Of the other settlers, many were footmen. 



The Council's choice of a site was in direct disobedience to 

 Haklyut's admonitions. It was low and damp. The land was 

 uncleared, showing, had they been familiar with Indian ways, 

 that the natives considered it infertile, worthless for crops. It 

 is likely that had Smith not been a prisoner, he would have 

 saved them this initial mistake. 



They felled logs to build a fort and when, at the end of a 

 fortnight, this was built, they broke up the ground of the 

 clearing they had made and sowed among the stumps the 

 seeds of English wheat. Five weeks later, when Newport sailed 

 on June fifteenth, the grain had grown to the height of an 

 average man. Newport took back to the Company tales of the 

 exceeding fertility of Virginia soil, not knowing that this very 

 richness would prove the destruction of the first wheat crop. 



In all, the settlers cleared and planted in wheat and vege- 

 tables about four acres of ground. They had as well the stores 



