Page:The Life of George Washington, Volume 1.djvu/63

 INTRODUCTION. 3$ and about one hundred persons, the only English chap, ii. then on the continent of America. 1607. Thus, about one hundred and ten years after this continent had been discovered by Cabot; and twenty-two years after a colony had been conducted to Roanoke, by sir Richard Gren- ville ; the English possessions in America, de- signed soon to become a mighty empire, were limited to a peninsula of a few thousand acres of land; held by a small body of men, who with difficulty maintained themselves against the paltry tribes which surrounded them ; and de- pended, in a great measure, on supplies from the other side of the Atlantic, for the bread on which they were to subsist. The provisions designed for the use of the Distress of 1 ° m the colonists, colonists had been very improvidently laid in. They were not only entirely inadequate to their wants, but had sustained great damage in the holds of the vessels, during their long passage. On the departure of Newport (during whose stay they managed to partake of the superfluity of the sailors) they were reduced to the neces- sity of subsisting on the distributions from the public stores. These were both scanty and unwholesome. The allowance to each man for a day was only a pint of worm-eaten wheat, and barley, boiled in a common kettle. This wretched food increased the malignity of the diseases generated by a hot, and, at that time a damp climate, among men exposed from VOL. I. F