Read from the letter written by indentured servant Richard Frethorne to his parents. “I your child am in a most heavy case by reason of the country, [which] is such that it causes much sickness ... And when we are sick there is nothing to comfort us; for since I came out of the ship I never ate anything but peas, and loblollie (that is, water gruel) ... nor is there nothing to be gotten here but sickness and death.”

– Richard Frethorne, 1623

Frethorne says the country causes