In December 1606, three ships carrying 144 passengers and crew sailed from London for the New World. In May of the following year, a little more than 100 men disembarked on a peninsula in a river they called the James. Eight months later, only 38 were still alive in the fort they named Jamestown. This volume collects contemporary accounts of the first successful colony in America. The earliest text dates from two years before the first landing; the last describes events up to 1614, when Pocahontas married John Rolfe. Most accounts were written by the colonists themselves. The narratives take the reader from the London stage to Powhatan's lodge, from the halls of royal power to the derelict hovels of the Starving time.