University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER VII

AFTER THE ARRIVAL OF THE FIRST SUPPLY

Only forty persons of the company of one hundred and four
whom Newport had left in good health in Virginia the preceding
spring, came down to the shore to greet him as he landed.
The council had been reduced to two active members, Ratcliffe
and Archer, for Gosnold had died in the epidemic, Kendall
had been hanged, Wingfield was stewing in prison, and Captain
Smith was under arrest awaiting the call of his executioners.
Newport released Smith at once—possibly with some expletives
in contempt of the hypocrisy of the trial under a Hebrew
law which only some learned priest had ever heard of, and
which no English court had ever dreamed of enforcing. The
door of Wingfield's jail was also thrown open, and he was
permitted to come out and go wherever he pleased, emitting
as he did so, quite probably, a number of feeble, petulant
ejaculations to the discredit of his enemies.

Archer, who had been performing the functions of recorder
—if there were any duties really attached to that office in the
Colony—had put forth the announcement that a parliament
was to be summoned to discuss all the crying public questions.
A ragged assembly that parliament would have appeared to
be had it ever convened; and it would hardly have been in a
mood to debate any subject except the advisability of abandoning
Jamestown at the first hour that the means of doing so
were made available. Newport put his resolute foot flatly
upon the fatuous proposal, and nothing more was heard of it.
He appointed Scrivener, who had been a companion of his
last voyage, to a seat in the council, and he also showed his
sense of the injustice with which Captain Smith had been

treated by his embittered colleagues, and also his high esteem
for the energy and sound judgment of that officer, by naming
him, too, to membership in the same body. Captain John
Martin was also advanced to the like position.

The supplies which Newport had brought over were landed
on the fourteenth of December, and three days subsequently,
the little town, built of clapboard and logs and thatched with
reeds, which had grown very dry under the rays of the hot
summer sky, took fire and was burnt to a heap of ashes. The
fort, the church, the dwelling houses, the stores reserved for
the provisions and the ammunition—all vanished in smoke;
and with them went the library of Rev. Robert Hunt, the faithful
pastor who had come out in the spring of 1607, and who,
by his cheerful spirit and unceasing ministrations under all
hardships and discouragements had been almost the only
moral support of that ever dwindling flock in the hour of their
extreme misery. Acutely as he felt the loss of his books, not
a word of complaint or regret crossed his lips. He continued
to move about among his unhappy parishioners like some
saint from Heaven, soothing the brow of sickness here, raising
the drooping spirit there, and giving the closing consolation to
the dying, or receiving their last words for communication to
their families in England. No other colony of the mother
country, long as has been the list of her settlements all over
the face of the globe, was ever blessed on the threshold of
its foundation with so great a disciple of Christ, or with so
shining an exemplar of all the virtues of the loftiest manhood.
And whilst he was the first, he was nevertheless not the last of
that splendid type of English clergymen to which he belonged
to establish himself oversea and perform the duties of his
sacred office with the intrepid piety of the noblest missionaries
of all time.

In February, 1608 (n. s.), Newport, again accompanied by
Captain Smith and others, went aboard the pinnace, and
rounding Point Comfort, sailed up the York—the Indian
Pamunkey—to Werowocomico to visit Powhatan for purposes

of friendship and trade, and also to inquire about the most
practicable route to the South Sea. That route, the old monarch
declared—perhaps, without any intention to mislead—
would take them to the falls of the Powhatan, and after the
portage there, the boat could go straight on to another portage,
and when that had been passed, there would be navigable
waters which would bear the boat to the great ocean which was
sought. The Gulf of Mexico was in his mind, as it had been
in the mind of the Indian who had drawn the sketch in the
sand.

Newport gave Powhatan a boy named Thomas Savage, who
was to learn the Indian language and serve as interpreter; and
he received in return a warrior who was to go back to England
with the ship, and observe the various features of that country
for the information of his master in Virginia. During this
visit, the woodland emperor bore himself with so much dignity
and discretion, in his untutored way, that the English who
saw him were filled with admiration for his natural gifts.
Advancing up the Pamunkey to the village of Opechancanough,
the strangers were welcomed with barbarous stateliness
and feasted with every delicacy that the country had to
offer; and they were also able to purchase a large cargo of
grain and peas.

When Newport set sail for England in April (1608), it was
on board of a ship that contained many tons of dirt supposed
to be rich in the precious metals. Smith had been constantly
in his company during his sojourn at Jamestown and in his
explorations, and had little patience with the confidence shown
by the commander in the quality of this dirt. His impression
was doubtless the one recorded by his associate, Todkill:
"There was no talke, no hope, no work, but dig gold, wash
gold, refine gold, load gold." Possibly if Smith and Todkill,
like Newport, had been called upon to make a report to an
English council, which valued the precious metals as the most
desirable asset for a new colony, they would have felt more in
sympathy with the old sea-captain's feverish wish to take

home the very thing that was most certain to assure him the
warmest welcome and to redound the most to the welfare of
the settlers themselves. But Smith and his friend did not
confine their criticism to the cargo of dirt. "Not having use,"
so they drily remark in Smith's History, "for parliaments,
places, petitions, admirals, recorders, interpreters, chronologers,
courts, justices of the peace, we sent Mr. Wingfield and
Captain Archer to England to seek some place of better employment."

Newport's ship had hardly sunk below the horizon, when
Smith and Scrivener directed their energies towards the
reconstruction of the destroyed town. The palisades were
repaired; the church was rebuilt; the storehouse was recovered;
the trees were cut away for the creation of new fields;
and the old ground was prepared for the planting of maize,
wheat, and vegetables. While these public works were in
progress, Captain Nelson, who had wintered in the West
Indies, arrived at Jamestown in the Phœnix; but he remained
there only a few weeks, and when he left, he took out a cargo of
cedar as recommended by Smith, and not of spangled dirt as
recommended by Captain John Martin.

Smith accompanied the vessel as far as Cape Henry. This
was in June, 1608. From the Cape, he sailed with his few companions
up the Chesapeake as far as the mouth of the Potomac,
and as he went along, he made a map of all the salient features
of the shores. He saw everywhere savannas watered by
copious brooks and deep woods frequented by wolves, deer, and
bears. Again and again was the surface of the Bay silvered
by the sunlight falling on the shoals of darting fish, or a sudden
tempest would spring up and raise great waves around
the boat. Smith bore always in mind that the rivers which
he passed—which, at their mouths, resembled wide gulfs—
might lead so far back into the land as to reach the South
Sea; and so when he came to the Potomac, he turned his
prow into its broad waters and sailed some distance up
between its shores. He repeated this exploration when he

Smith's Map of Virginia

reached the Rappahannock on his return, but his only reward
here was to be stung by a stingray so severely that, for a
time, his life seemed to be in danger. By the last day of July,
he had reached Jamestown again, where he found the settlers
who had come over with Newport in a state of extreme sickness
under the influence of the summer heat.

There were now residing in the Colony only two members
of the original council—Ratcliffe and himself. Wingfield and
Archer, as we have seen, had returned with Newport to England,
and Martin, with Nelson, of the Phœnix. The people at
Jamestown were dissatisfied with Ratcliffe in the office of
President, and they clamored for his deposition and the elevation
of Smith; but Smith cast his vote in favor of Matthew
Scrivener, whose usefulness in the position after election was
curtailed for some time by illness. Captain Smith now took
advantage of the peace to make a second voyage to the Potomac,
where the Indians implored him to become their leader
in the war which was then going on between them and the
warriors of Opechancanough. In the course of this exploration,
he again entered the mouths of the Rappahannock and
the Pyankitank, and he and his companions barely escaped
with their lives from the fury of a tempest which overtook
them in the estuary of the latter stream. On his arrival at
Jamestown in September, he found Ratcliffe in prison on the
charge of having instigated a mutiny. Scrivener had now
recovered his health.

The council in England, while regretting Newport's failure
to find gold on his second voyage to Virginia, were encouraged
by the reports which he obtained from the Indians of
the proximity of the South Sea. Once more they sent him
back with a large quantity of supplies for the colonists. He
also took out, as a part of his miscellaneous cargo, a set of
chamber furniture and a crown for Powhatan. Numerous
artisans too accompanied him. The Spanish ambassador still
regarded the settlement in Virginia with a sinister and distrustful
eye, and he continued to urge upon his King its extirpation
at once.

Captain John Smith