The Young Planters

We found ourselves, in the year 1614, the owners of an hundred acres of land which Nathaniel and I had chosen some distance back from the river, so that we might stand in no danger of the shaking sickness, and built ourselves a house like unto the one we had helped make for Captain Smith.

With the coming of Lord De la Warr all things were changed. The governing of the people was done as my old master, who never saw Virginia again, I grieve to say, would have had it. We became a law-abiding people, save when a few hot-heads stirred up trouble and got the worst of it.

When Nathaniel Peacock and I settled down as planters on our own account, there were eleven villages in the land of Virginia, and, living in them, more than four thousand men, women, and children.

It was no longer a country over which the savages ruled without check, though sad to relate, the brown men of the land shed the blood of white men like water, ere they were driven out from among us.

It is well I set down here at the end, that but for Captain John Smith and Master Hunt, Nathaniel Peacock and I might have remained in London to become worthless vagabonds, whereas we stand to-day free men, planters who are fairly well respected among our fellows; and I hope, as well as believe, that no man within this land of Virginia can say that he was ever wronged or made sorrowful by Nathaniel Peacock or Richard of Jamestown.