wander, in which he had in view the depredations of wolves as well as of Indians.[1]
It is an indication of the energy of Dale that on the third day after he reached Jamestown, he visited the former site of the Paspaheigh village, situated a short distance away,[2] his object being to discover whether the soil there was adapted to the production of hemp and flax, as he inferred would be the case from the fact that it was reported to be excellent ground for grain.[3] It would seem that Dale was anxious to cultivate flax and hemp in a considerable quantity, as it had already been determined to lay off a garden for this purpose, and probably he hoped to find a site for this garden at Paspaheigh preferable to any that was to be observed in the vicinity of Jamestown. The fields which had been abandoned by the tribes residing there when the country was first settled were discovered to be overgrown by shrubs and bushes, and it was too late in the season to remove them and then prepare the
- ↑ The authority for these details will be found in the letter of Dale to the Virginia Council in England, Brown’s Genesis of the United States, pp. 480-493, and Neill’s Virginia Vetusta, pp. 77-83. For the proportion of cattle destroyed by the Indians, see Works of Capt. John Smith, p. 579.
- ↑ The variation in the testimony as to the distance between Jamestown and Paspaheigh is worthy of notice in the account given by Anas Todkill in the Works of Capt. John Smith, p. 107, it is stated to be “neere 7 miles.” Rolfe, Ibid., p. 542, places old Paspaheigh “a little more than a mile” off. Percy speaks of the distance to the Indian village as four miles, p. lxvii. The Paspaheigh, seven miles away, was probably what was known as Argoll’s town. In the “lawes of 1619,” there is a reference to the “inhabitants of Paspaheigh, alias Martin’s Hundred People. See Colonial Records of Virginia, State Senate Doct., Extra, 1874, p. 30.
- ↑ Fifteen years after this, a petition was offered in the General Court by the colonists residing at Paspaheigh, in which complaint was made of the barrenness of the soil there, and for that reason permission to move elsewhere was earnestly sought. General Court Entry, Feb. 9, 1626, Robinson Transcripts, pp. 58, 59.
