IT WAS NOT EASY If you are thinking you have a bit more trouble than a most other people in your daily life, think for a moment about those people – your forebears – who started all of it.
When those self-styled settlers who intended to start a colony in the New World in the early years of the 1600's, and start a new colony early in the sixteen hundreds did not anticipate most of the difficult conditions they either created, met with, or discovered. What they had chosen to do was not easy.
They did not know what faced them, and when they had gathered at Southeastern ports, they set forth into the channel between France and England they found poor weather conditions existed. It was a delay of six months, and many, at that time, felt it was was all over and longed to return go England. Seasickness prevailed on the choppy channel waters and many settlers wanted to give up. The sole minister present the Rev. Robert Hunt convinced them go stay the course. Some say he convinced them by pointing out there was no sense in being sick a second time if they made another try. In time they came to ”the Fortunate Islands” - words which must have sounded very welcome – a and which later was changed to “The Canary Islands.” There they took on supplies of water, fruits and vegetables but there is no indication they were even aware of the harsh fact hat they had used six months of their essential survival supplies which could not be replaced.
The three ships spent several weeks visiting eight or ten of the islands and took their time entering the bay area by way of the James between two capes they named Henry and Charles. There was dissent ion and disagreement among the settlers and records plainly indicate that the one man who was destined to lead the strange group in so many unheard of conditions - a five-foot-two inch man (at best) ,a bull-necked, swarthy twenty-year-old man named John Smith – officially named by a parchment opened at this time to be one of three councilors who had been named to lead the colony was confined to a prisoner's cell charged with ”treason”. Once the official word from the founding London Company had been read, nothing more was heard of any such charges.
The colony at Jamestown started off with plenty of deep troubles in desperate need of solutions, it seems. We do it the other way around today, perhaps when we, allow our executive-types to become what we did not expect them to before accusing them of any wrongdoing. Jamestown's troubles were plentiful and complex. Don't ever get the infantile idea that they did not face worries and cares equal to, and even exceeding those we face today.
The first permanent Colony in the western hemisphere was, from the very start, beset with hard times, worries and cares. Let's all start thinking of such hard times headaches in this way:
If they licked it - so can we!
A.L.M. August 9, 2005 [c523wds]
