A full account has been transmitted to us of the character of the climate of aboriginal Virginia. The heat of summer did not exceed the heat of the summers in Spain, while the temperature in winter was as cold as the temperature of the winters in England and France. Following the round of the year, we find that the spring opened nearly four weeks earlier than in the mother country. Rain fell in great quantities, especially in April. In May and June the heat, which had now increased very much, was mitigated by gentle breezes, beginning to blow about nine o’clock in the morning, and gradually dying away as the sun declined towards the horizon; in July and August these breezes ceased altogether, the air became stagnant, and the heat grew heavy and oppressive. In September the weather broke very suddenly, and copious rains came to drench the ground. The abruptness of the change always caused this to be the most unhealthy part of the year to the English colonists. The autumn, extending in point of temperature to the second week in December, was a period of singular beauty. Winter began about the fifteenth of December, and continued until about the fifteenth of March. The atmosphere at times was extremely sharp, but this condition rarely lasted longer than a few days.[1] In the course of the
- ↑ See, as the authorities for these details, Works of Capt. John Smith, pp. 47, 48; Clayton’s Virginia, p. 6, Force’s Historical Tracts, vol. III. John Hammond, in Leah and Rachel, declares that the heat in Virginia was allayed throughout the summer by a “continual breaze of Winde which never failes to cool and refresh the labourer and traveller.” “The Cold,” he remarks further, “seldom approaches Sencibly untill about Christmas . . . and when Winter comes, which is such and no worse than is in England, it continues two months, seldom longer, often so long.” Hammond’s Leah and Rachel, p. 12, Force’s Historical Tracts, vol. III.
from the beginning, their dangerous powers had not been displayed (Works of Capt. John Smith, p. 60).
