Smith put him off about showing his God, but said he had heard
that he had seen the King. This the Indian denied, James probably not
coming up to his idea of a king, till by circumstances he was convinced
he had seen him. Then he replied very sadly: "You gave Powhatan a white
dog, which Powhatan fed as himself, but your king gave me nothing, and I
am better than your white dog."
Sir Thomas Dale was on the whole the most efficient and discreet Governor
the colony had had. One element of his success was no doubt the change
in the charter. By the first charter everything had been held in common
by the company, and there had been no division of property or allotment
of land among the colonists. Under the new regime land was held in
severalty, and the spur of individual interest began at once to improve
the condition of the settlement. The character of the colonists was also
gradually improving. They had not been of a sort to fulfill the earnest
desire of the London promoter's to spread vital piety in the New World.
A zealous defense of Virginia and Maryland, against "scandalous
imputation," entitled "Leah and Rachel; or, The Two Fruitful Sisters," by
Mr John Hammond, London, considers the charges that Virginia "is an
unhealthy place, a nest of rogues, abandoned women, dissolute and rookery
persons; a place of intolerable labour, bad usage and hard diet"; and
admits that "at the first settling, and for many years after, it deserved
most of these aspersions, nor were they then aspersions but truths.
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