JAMESTOWN LEGISLATOR.
In 1624, King James, fearing that the infant colony would go Democratic, appointed a rump governor.
The oppression of the English parliament now began to be felt. The colonists were obliged to ship their products to England and to use only English vessels. The Assembly, largely royalists, refused to go out when their terms of office expired, paid themselves at the rate of about thirty-six dollars per day as money is now, and, in fact, acted like members of the Legislature generally.
In 1676, one hundred years before the Colonies declared themselves free and independent, a rebellion, under the management of a bright young attorney named Bacon, visited Jamestown and burned the American metropolis, after which Governor Berkeley was driven out. Bacon died just as his rebellion was beginning to pay, and the people dispersed. Berkeley then took control, and killed so many rebels that Mrs. Berkeley had to do her own work, and Berkeley, who had no one left to help him but his friends, had to stack his own grain that fall and do the chores at the barn.
Jamestown is now no more. It was succeeded in 1885 by Jamestown, North Dakota, now called Jimtown, a prosperous place in the rich farming-lands of that State.
Jamestown the first, the scene of so many sorrows and little jealousies, so many midnight Indian attacks and bilious attacks by day, became a solemn ruin, and a few shattered tombstones, over which the jimson-weed and the wild vines clamber, show to the curious traveller the place where civilization first sought to establish itself on the James River, U.S.A.
The author wishes to refer with great gratitude to information contained in the foregoing chapter and obtained from the following works:
The Indian and other Animalcula. By N. K. Boswell, Laramie City, Wyoming.
How to Jolly the Red Man out of his Lands. By Ernest Smith.
The Female Red Man and her Pure Life. By Johnson Sides, Reno, Nevada (P.M. please forward if out on war-path).
The Crow Indian and His Caws. By Me.
Massacre Etiquette. By Wad. McSwalloper, 82 McDougall St., New York.
Where is my Indian to night? By a half-bred lady of Winnipeg.
IRISHMAN WHO, WHEN POOR, WAS DOWN ON RICH PEOPLE.