Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/161

 seemed to have been swept away soon after they reached Virginia; this was the case with William Rowsley and his wife, and the ten persons accompanying them, who came over in 1621, and the same fate must have overtaken many others at this time who were similarly placed. This mortality was attributed by some careful observers to several causes in addition to the change of air, the evil effect of which was generally acknowledged. The sudden substitution of Indian corn for wheat bread is said to have produced relaxation in the digestive organs, often ending in fatal fevers among inexperienced colonists; the change from malt liquors, which had constituted their principal drink in England, to the unadulterated water of Virginia, exercised a similar influence upon their bodies. Much of the mortality was also due to the crowded condition of the ships in which the ocean voyages were made; pestilences were frequently produced in this way, leading to terrible epidemics, as for instance in the year following the great Indian massacre of 1622, at which time not less than six hundred people died.

The mortality on shipboard was often frightful.