George Percy

“And now famine beginning to look ghastly and pale in every face, that nothing was spared to maintain life and to do those things which seem incredible, as to dig up dead corpses out of graves and to eat them.”

“Then having fed upon our horses and other beasts as long as they lasted, we were glad to make shift with vermin as dogs, cats, rats and mice.”

“So great was our famine, that a savage we slew and buried, the poorer sort took him up again and ate him, and so did diverse one another boiled and stewed with roots and herbs.”

“Our men were destroyed with cruel diseases, as swellings, fluxes, burning fevers, and by wars, and some departed suddenly, but for the most part they died of mere famine.”

“This was that time, which still to this day we called the starving time; it were too vile to say, and scarce to be believed, what we endured.”

“Now all of us at James Town beginning to feel that sharp prick of hunger, which no man truly describe but he which has tasted the bitterness thereof.”

“And some have licked up the blood which has fallen from their weak fellows.”

“There were never Englishmen left in a foreign Country in such misery as we were in this new discovered Virginia.”

“A world of miseries ensued as the sequel will express unto you, in so much that some to satisfy their hunger have robbed the store for the which I caused them to be executed.”