Yes, my name is Richard Mutton. Sounds rather queer, doesn't it? The
lads in London town used to vex me sorely by calling, "Baa, baa, black
sheep," whenever I passed them, and yet he who will may find the name
Richard Mutton written in the list of those who were sent to Virginia,
in the new world, by the London Company, on the nineteenth day of
December, in the year of Our Lord, 1606.
Whosoever may chance to read what I am here setting down, will, perhaps,
ask how it happened that a lad only ten years of age was allowed to sail
for that new world in company with such a band of adventurous men as
headed the enterprise.
Therefore it is that I must tell a certain portion of the story of my
life, for the better understanding of how I came to be in this fair,
wild, savage beset land of Virginia.
Yet I was not the only boy who sailed in the Susan Constant, as you may
see by turning to the list of names, which is under the care, even to
this day, of the London Company, for there you will find written
in clerkly hand the names Samuel Collier, Nathaniel Peacock, James
Brumfield, and Richard Mutton. Nathaniel Peacock has declared more than
once that my name comes last in the company at the very end of all,
because I was not a full grown mutton; but only large enough to be
called a sheep's tail, and therefore should be hung on behind, as is
shown by the list.
The reason of my being in this country of Virginia at so young an age,
is directly concerned with that brave soldier and wondrous adventurer,
Captain John Smith, of whom I make no doubt the people in this new
world, when the land has been covered with towns and villages, will come
to know right well, for of a truth he is a wonderful man. In the sixth
month of Grace, 1606, I Was living as best I might in that great city
of London, which is as much a wilderness of houses, as this country is
a wilderness of trees. My father was a soldier of fortune, which means
that he stood ready to do battle in behalf of whatsoever nation he
believed was in the right, or, perhaps, on the side of those people who
would pay him the most money for risking his life.
He had fought with the Dutch soldiers under command of one Captain
Miles Standish, an Englishman of renown among men of arms, and had been
killed. My mother died less than a week before the news was brought that
my father had been shot to death. Not then fully understanding how great
a disaster it is to a young lad when he loses father or mother, and how
yet more sad is his lot when he has lost both parents, I made shift to
live as best I might with a sore heart; but yet not so sore as if I had
known the full extent of the misfortune which had overtaken me.
At first it was an easy matter for me to get food at the home of
this lad, or of that, among my acquaintances, sleeping wherever night
overtook me; but, finally, when mayhap three months had gone by, my
welcome was worn threadbare, and I was told by more than one, that a
hulking lad of ten years should have more pride than to beg his way from
door to door.
It is with shame I here set down the fact, that many weeks passed before
I came to understand, in ever so slight a degree, what a milksop I must
be, thus eating the bread of idleness when I should have won the right,
by labor, to a livelihood in this world.
This last thought had just begun to take root in my heart when Nathaniel
Peacock, whose mother had been a good friend of mine during a certain
time after I was made an orphan, and I, heard that a remarkably brave
soldier was in the city of London, making ready to go into the new
world, with the intent to build there a town for the king.