改编自《美国简史(1908)爱德华·钱宁。

第一批殖民者于1606年12月乘船前往弗吉尼亚。他们在路上走了好几个月，遭受了可怕的苦难。最后他们到达切萨皮克湾，在詹姆斯号上的一个半岛上定居下来，离河口大约30英里。在连接这个半岛和大陆的小地峡上，他们建造了坚固的栅栏或栅栏，以防止印第安人靠近他们的小屋。他们把殖民地命名为詹姆斯敦。弗吉尼亚的早期殖民者不太适合做这样的工作。他们当中有些人是从未用手劳动过的绅士;另一些人是可怜的、无所事事的家伙，他们唯一的愿望就是什么也不做。他们当中有几个精力充沛的人，如拉特克利夫、阿切尔和史密斯。但他们大部分时间都在探索海湾和河流，寻找黄金，互相争吵。 With the summer came fevers, and soon fifty of the one-hundred-and-five original colonists were dead. Then followed a cold, hard winter, and many of those who had not died of fever in the summer died of cold. The colonists brought little food with them, they were too lazy to plant much corn, and they were able to get only small supplies from the Indians. Indeed, the early history of Virginia is given mainly to accounts of "starving times." Of the first thousand colonists not one hundred lived to tell the tale of those early days.