Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 2.djvu/539

 supported by crotchets, while the top was composed of rafts, sedge, and earth. The walls were made of the same rude materials. The houses were also of similar composition and afforded only a frail protection against the wind and rain. Water was procured from a well which had been dug in one of the forts. The whole town was defended by twenty-four pieces of ordnance mounted on platforms and commanding an unobstructed view. In the early part of 1609, twenty additional houses were built at Jamestown. When Smith withdrew from Virginia in the fall of 1609, the town contained sixty houses.

On Delaware&#8217;s arrival in the Colony in the following year he found the dwellings in the extreme of decay. The town was described as having the appearance of a fortification which the action of time had overthrown. The palisades were prostrate on the ground, the gates were fallen from their hinges, and the church was sunk in ruin. The buildings, it would seem, had been very unsubstantial in their construction, or the dampness of the climate had rotted the material of which they were made. Both influences were doubtless at work to produce the transformation, a transformation, we may remark, which was again frequently noted in the character of the town in its subsequent history. The structures put up in one year were in a state of decay before barely twelve months had elapsed, and in a few years were in a condition of complete ruin. This was illustrated in the most marked degree in the early history of Jamestown, but continued to be true of the place until the site of the town was abandoned. One of the first steps taken by Delaware on assuming