Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/159

 seasoned, as it was called, that these changes could be borne without any injurious impression upon its functions. In the August of 1607, three months after landing on Jamestown Island, the colonists began to die, and until the fifth of September hardly a day was unmarked by a death. Percy informs us that although many perished from the effects of fluxes, fevers, and swellings, yet the majority died from famine. Famine was undoubtedly a powerful agency in the destruction of these unfortunate men, but it is open to question whether the unwholesomeness of the air diffused over the whole locality from the marshes in the vicinity, was not the primary cause of the debility to which so many succumbed. It was observed at an early date that the country above salt water was much more healthy in its climate than the country below, the endemical disorders of September and October being in the former much less severe and dangerous than they were in the latter. Of the one hundred persons or more who were seated at the Falls under the care of Captain West in 1607, not a single one perished, and this was also true of the same number of men who were stationed on the Nansemond, under Captain Martin, although the deaths at Jamestown during the same period were thought to have been a hundred at least. The food of each of the three companies was equally unwholesome, and their lodgings were equally exposed to the weather. In the summer of 1609 Lord Delaware arrived at Jamestown, and in a very short time his followers, owing to the excessive heat, were