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or you can get all of History Daily plus other fantastic history podcasts at into History.com. It's September 10th, 2008 in the small English colony of Jamestown, Virginia.

29 year old John Smith trudges through the muddy streets of the

tiny settlement. Jamestown is perched on the edge of a wide river. Laid out in the shape of a

triangle with a gun position at each corner is handful of hastily built

thatched huts and houses squat behind high wood walls. John has just spent seven weeks out in the

wilderness that lies beyond these walls.

He set out looking for gold and a passageway to the Pacific Ocean, but he found neither.

And if that wasn't disappointment enough, what he discovered in Jamestown on his return has him shocked and

horrified. John is one of just over a hundred colonists who left England almost two years ago.

Most of the first settlers have since died,

though, but newcomers from home have bolstered their numbers,

and John still hopes the colony can be a success,

but only if changes are made.

Right now the streets are almost empty.

Men peer out of the dark and cramped houses as John passes, their faces pinched with hunger.

There's an unmistakable smell of death and disease in the air.

So John strides into the largest building in the settlement. In this low-ceilinged room, choked

with smoke from an open fire, a group of exhausted pale men sit around a table.

This is James Town's council, and it needs a new leader.

...