# Aristopia/Chapter 1

On a blustering December day in 1607 a ship was working its way up the James River in Virginia. It was the English ship Sea Gull, Captain Christopher Newport, bringing what was called the "First Supply" to the infant colony at Jamestown, planted seven months before.
Seventy new colonists swarmed the decks of the vessel, their gaze eagerly bent forward to discover their goal, the little cluster of cabins over which floated the red cross flag of England, now visible far away up the river.
A strong northerly wind was blowing, hurrying the broken cloud-rack across the sky. It was the remains of a gale which had swept the coast the day before, when the Sea Gull and her consort, the Phœnix, were striving to ​get between the capes of the Chesapeake. The Sea Gull succeeded, but the Phœnix was ill built to work to windward, the wind being somewhat westerly, and she was driven back and had to bear off to sea to escape the dangerous coast which stretches far southward from Cape Henry. But now the wind had veered to a few points east of north and the Sea Gull was making fair headway. Soon her passengers could see every detail of the little village: the twenty-five or thirty log cabins thatched with reeds; the stockade inclosing the village; the dark, leafless forest behind; the bare spots on the river bank white with snow (for it was an unprecedentedly severe winter), and the throng of people on the bank eagerly awaiting the arrival of the ship with every demonstration of joy.
Arrived in front of the village, the sails were reefed and the anchor was dropped. The ship swung in almost against the bank, so much deeper was the water then than now, when the mud from the plowed fields has been washing in for nearly three centuries. So near she lay that with her boats and some planks a bridge was formed from the ship to the shore and lines were run out from stem and ​stern, and fastened to trees on the bank as moorings for the vessel.
Captain Newport went ashore and was immediately shaking hands with his friends and members of the council. Before he set foot on the shore he became aware that some evil cloud was overshadowing the little colony which he had left in fair circumstances six months before. Although the men were shouting and tossing their hats with joy, it was rather the joy of prison-worn captives at the opening of their dungeon doors than anything else he could think of. Then, too, there were not half so many as he expected. He hoped the rest were away at work in the woods, but he feared not.
As soon as possible he sought out one of the council, a stalwart man with a rough, heavy beard and a face browned and seamed by a life of exposure and warfare in all four quarters of the globe—in short, Captain John Smith—to learn what had passed in the colony since his departure. Newport and Smith were both members of the council, and as such had never agreed; but, although Newport was vain and incompetent and jealous of Smith, he knew the latter was honest and competent and would tell ​him truly how things had gone in his absence. And the story came straight and blunt from the mouth of the old soldier:
When the ships had departed for England the colonists had been reduced to live on boiled wheat and barley, mouldy and wormy from "frying twenty-six weeks in the ship's hold," as Smith said; for the voyage out—of a piece with the folly of the whole enterprise—had been made by way of the Canaries and the West Indies, and they had loitered months in the tropical waters of those islands. No well had been dug, and the water of the river was warm, brackish, and impure with vegetable matter. The site of the settlement was a low bank, the highest part no more than twelve feet above the river, and surrounded with marshes, so that in warm weather the night air was always laden with deadly malaria. One of the council, Bartholomew Gosnold (the first English seacaptain who had sense enough to sail straight across the Atlantic from England to Virginia), had strongly opposed the chosen site, well knowing the danger of malaria, of which he was among the first to perish. He had favored a location on a high bank twenty miles below Jamestown. Smith, being under arrest at the ​time, could not aid Gosnold in his protest. Their president, the vain, foolish, cowardly, jealous, greedy, selfish, and otherwise contemptible Wingfield, had weighed like an incubus on the colony for months, as Smith then said and afterward wrote, "ingrossing to his private, Oatmeale, Sacke, Oyle, Aquavitæ, Beefe, Egges, or what not," leaving the others to starve. At last the endurance of the colonists was worn out, and they deposed Wingfield and elected John Ratcliffe president; but the latter was little better than King Log. They lived on fish and crabs until September, when they managed to get some corn from the Indians. Instead of arriving in time to clear fields and plant crops in the spring and raise some provisions as they had expected, by ill luck and folly combined they were five months upon the voyage, consuming their provisions. Nearly all the men were unused to labor, and the necessary work in building their houses and planting their stockade in such a burning sun as they had never seen in England had broken them down. Then chills and fever from malaria and bowel complaints from bad food and water seized upon them and carried off more than half their number. Death had been more certain ​because many of them had for years lived dissipated and reckless lives. From the incompetence of the rest of the council Smith had to bear the brunt of everything. When he was at the settlement he was constantly urging the lazy fellows, who had never before done a day's manual labor, to the rude toil, always taking the heavy end of every task himself. Much of the time he was away, striving to get corn from the Indians. Returning from one of these expeditions, he found Wingfield and Kendall, another of the council, with some others, about to desert with the pinnace, a little vessel of twenty tons which had been left for the use of the colonists. Smith promptly fired upon them with cannon and muskets, killing Kendall and forcing the others to return or be sunk in the river. With the approach of winter the rivers were swarming with wild geese and ducks, which, with the Indian corn, gave the colonists good fare. Not satisfied, the council began to tax Smith with being slow to discover the head of the Chickahominy River. What they wanted with the head of that river it is hard to tell; but Smith, to satisfy them, set out to find it. Venturing too far alone, he was captured by the Indians and ​held prisoner six or seven weeks. By his courage and address he not only saved his life, but was enabled to obtain his freedom and greatly enhance his reputation and influence among the savages, much to the advantage of the colony. He had just returned from this captivity when the ship returned from England. On his return he found that things had gone very badly in his absence.
"And now, Captain Newport," said Smith in conclusion, "what sort of fellows have you brought us this time? Good, stout, honest laborers and mechanics, or, like the first lot, jail-birds and gentlemen, most of the latter little more honest and a good deal more lazy than the former?"
"Not what I could wish, I must confess," said Newport. "I fear too many of them are unruly gallants packed off by their relatives to escape ill destinies at home."
And so, to the misfortune of the colony, they were.
Among the seventy passengers streaming across that improvised bridge from the ship to the shore, eager to press foot upon the soil of the new world, was one who will soon become the central figure of this narrative. His name ​was Ralph Morton. He was hardly twenty years old, of medium size but strongly built and, unlike too many of those immigrants, with a constitution not undermined by any vice.
He was the fourth son of a Kentish gentleman who had been killed in the war with Spain about the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign. His home was near the mouth of the Thames. Having in early childhood shown a great aptitude for learning, it was intended that he should be a physician. He had learned all that could be taught in the village school and from such tutors as could be obtained in his native village. His father's death left his mother in such straitened circumstances that she could not send him to college, so he was sent to London to live with his brother-in-law and pick up what learning he could from the libraries to which he had access and from such occasional tutoring as he could get. This brother-in-law, a native of Ralph's village, had married Ralph's only sister (several years older than Ralph) before he had determined to convert his country property into money and abandon the dull and unprofitable life of a country gentleman for the career of a London merchant, although in that ​age a gentleman was considered as losing caste by "going into trade."
Ralph learned Latin quickly, but he had little taste for Greek and spent little time upon it. The education of that time in England consisted almost altogether of the languages and theology. To the latter Ralph had a great aversion, and avoided it entirely. Most of the books of that age in the English language were devoted to theological controversy. The bulk of what Ralph considered worth knowing was in Latin, French, and Italian. There were also many valuable books of travel in the Spanish language which Ralph desired to read. With a good knowledge of Latin, enough French, Spanish, and Italian to enable him to read fluently was quickly learned. He could find about London enough Huguenot refugees and Spanish sailors from whom to learn the spoken French and Spanish. Thus equipped, he read everything he could find in the way of history, travels and natural science The sciences, even mathematics, were then at a very low ebb in England, and little taught. Even the great Bacon was ignorant of geometry. But Ralph found a Genoese tutor in London, and made good progress in mathematics and astronomy.
​Finally, being overcome with that irresistible desire for adventure which often seizes upon even the most studious of youths, he had become an emigrant to Virginia.