Under his
stern yet righteous rule the colony prospered.
At first only men settlers had come out, then one or two women
joined them, and now many more women came, so that the men, instead
of all living together, married and had homes of their own. Then,
too, at first all a man's labour went into the common stock, and
the men who worked little fared as well as those who worked a great
deal. So the lazy fellow did as little as he could. "Glad when he
could slip from his labour," says an old writer, "or slumber over
his task he cared not how."
Thus most of the work of the colony was left to the few who were
industrious and willing. Sir Thomas Dale changed that. In return
for a small yearly payment in corn he gave three acres of land to
every man who wished it, for his own use. So, suddenly, a little
community of farmers sprang up. Now that the land was really their
own, to make of it what they would, each man tilled it eagerly, and
soon such fine crops of grain were raised that the colony was no
longer in dread of starvation. The settlers, too, began to spread
and no longer kept within the palisade round Jamestown, "more
especially as Jamestown," says an old writer, "was scandalised for
an unhealthy aire." And here and there further up the river little
villages sprang up.
Since Smith had gone home the Indians had remained unfriendly, and
a constant danger to the colonists.
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