On the 10th of September, by the election of the Council and therequest of the company, Captain Smith received the letters-patent,and became President. He stopped the building of Ratcliffe's"palace," repaired the church and the storehouse, got ready thebuildings for the supply expected from England, reduced the fort to a"five square form," set and trained the watch and exercised thecompany every Saturday on a plain called Smithfield, to the amazementof the on-looking Indians.

　　Captain Newport arrived with a new supply of seventy persons. Amongthem were Captain Francis West, brother to Lord Delaware, CaptainPeter Winne, and Captain Peter Waldo, appointed on the Council, eightDutchmen and Poles, and Mistress Forest and Anne Burrows her maid,the first white women in the colony.

　　Smith did not relish the arrival of Captain Newport nor theinstructions under which he returned. He came back commanded todiscover the country of Monacan (above the Falls) and to perform theceremony of coronation on the Emperor Powhatan.

　　How Newport got this private commission when he had returned toEngland without a lump of gold, nor any certainty of the South Sea,or one of the lost company sent out by Raleigh; and why he brought a"fine peeced barge" which must be carried over unknown mountainsbefore it reached the South Sea, he could not understand. "As forthe coronation of Powhatan and his presents of basin and ewer, bed,bedding, clothes, and such costly novelties, they had been muchbetter well spared than so ill spent, for we had his favor and betterfor a plain piece of copper, till this stately kind of solicitingmade him so much overvalue himself that he respected us as much asnothing at all." Smith evidently understood the situation muchbetter than the promoters in England; and we can quite excuse him inhis rage over the foolishness and greed of most of his companions.

　　There was little nonsense about Smith in action, though he need notturn his hand on any man of that age as a boaster.

　　To send out Poles and Dutchmen to make pitch, tar, and glass wouldhave been well enough if the colony had been firmly established andsupplied with necessaries; and they might have sent two hundredcolonists instead of seventy, if they had ordered them to go to workcollecting provisions of the Indians for the winter, instead ofattempting this strange discovery of the South Sea, and wasting theirtime on a more strange coronation. "Now was there no way," asksSmith, "to make us miserable," but by direction from England toperform this discovery and coronation, "to take that time, spend whatvictuals we had, tire and starve our men, having no means to carryvictuals, ammunition, the hurt or the sick, but on their own backs?"Smith seems to have protested against all this nonsense, but thoughhe was governor, the Council overruled him. Captain Newport decidedto take one hundred and twenty men, fearing to go with a less numberand journey to Werowocomoco to crown Powhatan. In order to save timeSmith offered to take a message to Powhatan, and induce him to cometo Jamestown and receive the honor and the presents. Accompanied byonly four men he crossed by land to Werowocomoco, passed thePamaunkee (York) River in a canoe, and sent for Powhatan, who wasthirty miles off. Meantime Pocahontas, who by his own account was amere child, and her women entertained Smith in the following manner:

　　"In a fayre plaine they made a fire, before which, sitting upon amat, suddenly amongst the woods was heard such a hydeous noise andshreeking that the English betook themselves to their armes, andseized upon two or three old men, by them supposing Powhatan with allhis power was come to surprise them. But presently Pocahontas came,willing him to kill her if any hurt were intended, and the beholders,which were men, women and children, satisfied the Captaine that therewas no such matter. Then presently they were presented with thisanticke: Thirty young women came naked out of the woods, only coveredbehind and before with a few greene leaves, their bodies all painted,some of one color, some of another, but all differing; their leaderhad a fayre payre of Bucks hornes on her head, and an Otters skinneat her girdle, and another at her arme, a quiver of arrows at herbacke, a bow and arrows in her hand; the next had in her hand asword, another a club, another a pot-sticke: all horned alike; therest every one with their several devises. These fiends with mosthellish shouts and cries, rushing from among the trees, castthemselves in a ring about the fire, singing and dancing with mostexcellent ill-varietie, oft falling into their infernal passions, andsolemnly again to sing and dance; having spent nearly an hour in thisMascarado, as they entered, in like manner they departed.

　　"Having reaccommodated themselves, they solemnly invited him to theirlodgings, where he was no sooner within the house, but all theseNymphs more tormented him than ever, with crowding, pressing, andhanging about him, most tediously crying, 'Love you not me? Love younot me?' This salutation ended, the feast was set, consisting of allthe Salvage dainties they could devise: some attending, otherssinging and dancing about them: which mirth being ended, with firebrands instead of torches they conducted him to his lodging."The next day Powhatan arrived. Smith delivered up the IndianNamontuck, who had just returned from a voyage to England--whither itwas suspected the Emperor wished him to go to spy out the weakness ofthe English tribe--and repeated Father Newport's request thatPowhatan would come to Jamestown to receive the presents and join inan expedition against his enemies, the Monacans.

　　Powhatan's reply was worthy of his imperial highness, and has beencopied ever since in the speeches of the lords of the soil to thepale faces: "If your king has sent me present, I also am a king, andthis is my land: eight days I will stay to receive them. Your fatheris to come to me, not I to him, nor yet to your fort, neither will Ibite at such a bait; as for the Monacans, I can revenge my owninjuries."This was the lofty potentate whom Smith, by his way of management,could have tickled out of his senses with a glass bead, and who wouldinfinitely have preferred a big shining copper kettle to themisplaced honor intended to be thrust upon him, but the offer ofwhich puffed him up beyond the reach of negotiation. Smith returnedwith his message. Newport despatched the presents round by water ahundred miles, and the Captains, with fifty soldiers, went over landto Werowocomoco, where occurred the ridiculous ceremony of thecoronation, which Smith describes with much humor. "The next day,"he says, "was appointed for the coronation. Then the presents werebrought him, his bason and ewer, bed and furniture set up, hisscarlet cloke and apparel, with much adoe put on him, being persuadedby Namontuck they would not hurt him. But a foule trouble there wasto make him kneel to receive his Crown; he not knowing the majestynor wearing of a Crown, nor bending of the knee, endured so manypersuasions, examples and instructions as tyred them all. At last bybearing hard on his shoulders, he a little stooped, and three havingthe crown in their hands put it on his head, when by the warning of apistoll the boats were prepared with such a volley of shot that theking start up in a horrible feare, till he saw all was well. Thenremembering himself to congratulate their kindness he gave his oldshoes and his mantell to Captain Newport!"The Monacan expedition the King discouraged, and refused to furnishfor it either guides or men. Besides his old shoes, the crownedmonarch charitably gave Newport a little heap of corn, only seven oreight bushels, and with this little result the absurd expeditionreturned to Jamestown.

　　Shortly after Captain Newport with a chosen company of one hundredand twenty men (leaving eighty with President Smith in the fort) andaccompanied by Captain Waldo, Lieutenant Percy, Captain Winne, Mr.

　　West, and Mr. Scrivener, who was eager for adventure, set off for thediscovery of Monacan. The expedition, as Smith predicted, wasfruitless: the Indians deceived them and refused to trade, and thecompany got back to Jamestown, half of them sick, all grumbling, andworn out with toil, famine, and discontent.

　　Smith at once set the whole colony to work, some to make glass, tar,pitch, and soap-ashes, and others he conducted five miles down theriver to learn to fell trees and make clapboards. In this companywere a couple of gallants, lately come over, Gabriel Beadle and JohnRussell, proper gentlemen, but unused to hardships, whom Smith hasimmortalized by his novel cure of their profanity. They took gaylyto the rough life, and entered into the attack on the forest sopleasantly that in a week they were masters of chopping: "making ittheir delight to hear the trees thunder as they fell, but the axes sooften blistered their tender fingers that many times every third blowhad a loud othe to drown the echo; for remedie of which sinne thePresident devised how to have every man's othes numbered, and atnight for every othe to have a Canne of water powred downe hissleeve, with which every offender was so washed (himself and all),that a man would scarce hear an othe in a weake." In the clearing ofour country since, this excellent plan has fallen into desuetude, forwant of any pious Captain Smith in the logging camps.

　　These gentlemen, says Smith, did not spend their time in wood-logginglike hirelings, but entered into it with such spirit that thirty ofthem would accomplish more than a hundred of the sort that had to bedriven to work; yet, he sagaciously adds, "twenty good workmen hadbeen better than them all."Returning to the fort, Smith, as usual, found the time consumed andno provisions got, and Newport's ship lying idle at a great charge.

　　With Percy he set out on an expedition for corn to the Chickahominy,which the insolent Indians, knowing their want, would not supply.

　　Perceiving that it was Powhatan's policy to starve them (as if it wasthe business of the Indians to support all the European vagabonds andadventurers who came to dispossess them of their country), Smith gaveout that he came not so much for corn as to revenge his imprisonmentand the death of his men murdered by the Indians, and proceeded tomake war. This high-handed treatment made the savages sue for peace,and furnish, although they complained of want themselves, owing to abad harvest, a hundred bushels of corn.

　　This supply contented the company, who feared nothing so much asstarving, and yet, says Smith, so envied him that they would ratherhazard starving than have him get reputation by his vigorous conduct.

　　There is no contemporary account of that period except this whichSmith indited. He says that Newport and Ratcliffe conspired not onlyto depose him but to keep him out of the fort; since being Presidentthey could not control his movements, but that their horns were muchtoo short to effect it.

　　At this time in the "old Taverne," as Smith calls the fort, everybodywho had money or goods made all he could by trade; soldiers, sailors,and savages were agreed to barter, and there was more care tomaintain their damnable and private trade than to provide the thingsnecessary for the colony. In a few weeks the whites had barteredaway nearly all the axes, chisels, hoes, and picks, and what powder,shot, and pikeheads they could steal, in exchange for furs, baskets,young beasts and such like commodities. Though the supply of furswas scanty in Virginia, one master confessed he had got in one voyageby this private trade what he sold in England for thirty pounds.

　　"These are the Saint-seeming Worthies of Virginia," indignantlyexclaims the President, "that have, notwithstanding all this, meate,drinke, and wages." But now they began to get weary of the country,their trade being prevented. "The loss, scorn, and misery was thepoor officers, gentlemen and careless governors, who were bought andsold." The adventurers were cheated, and all their actionsoverthrown by false information and unwise directions.

　　Master Scrivener was sent with the barges and pinnace toWerowocomoco, where by the aid of Namontuck he procured a littlecorn, though the savages were more ready to fight than to trade. Atlength Newport's ship was loaded with clapboards, pitch, tar, glass,frankincense (?) and soapashes, and despatched to England. About twohundred men were left in the colony. With Newport, Smith sent hisfamous letter to the Treasurer and Council in England. It is so gooda specimen of Smith's ability with the pen, reveals so well hissagacity and knowledge of what a colony needed, and exposes soclearly the ill-management of the London promoters, and the conditionof the colony, that we copy it entire. It appears by this letterthat Smith's "Map of Virginia," and his description of the countryand its people, which were not published till 1612, were sent by thisopportunity. Captain Newport sailed for England late in the autumnof 1608. The letter reads:

　　RIGHT HONORABLE, ETC.:

　　I received your letter wherein you write that our minds are so setupon faction, and idle conceits in dividing the country without yourconsents, and that we feed you but with ifs and ands, hopes and somefew proofes; as if we would keepe the mystery of the businesse toourselves: and that we must expressly follow your instructions sentby Captain Newport: the charge of whose voyage amounts to neare twothousand pounds, the which if we cannot defray by the ships returnewe are likely to remain as banished men. To these particulars Ihumbly intreat your pardons if I offend you with my rude answer.

　　For our factions, unless you would have me run away and leave thecountry, I cannot prevent them; because I do make many stay thatwould else fly away whither. For the Idle letter sent to my Lord ofSalisbury, by the President and his confederates, for dividing thecountry, &c., what it was I know not, for you saw no hand of mine toit; nor ever dream't I of any such matter. That we feed you withhopes, &c. Though I be no scholar, I am past a schoolboy; and Idesire but to know what either you and these here doe know, but thatI have learned to tell you by the continuall hazard of my life. Ihave not concealed from you anything I know; but I feare some causeyou to believe much more than is true.

　　Expressly to follow your directions by Captain Newport, though theybe performed, I was directly against it; but according to ourcommission, I was content to be overouled by the major part of theCouncill, I feare to the hazard of us all; which now is generallyconfessed when it is too late. Onely Captaine Winne and CaptaineWalclo I have sworne of the Councill, and crowned Powhattan accordingto your instructions.

　　For the charge of the voyage of two or three thousand pounds we havenot received the value of one hundred pounds, and for the quarteredboat to be borne by the souldiers over the falls. Newport had 120 ofthe best men he could chuse. If he had burnt her to ashes, one mighthave carried her in a bag, but as she is, five hundred cannot to anavigable place above the falls. And for him at that time to find inthe South Sea a mine of gold; or any of them sent by Sir WalterRaleigh; at our consultation I told them was as likely as the rest.

　　But during this great discovery of thirtie miles (which might as wellhave been done by one man, and much more, for the value of a pound ofcopper at a seasonable tyme), they had the pinnace and all the boatswith them but one that remained with me to serve the fort. In theirabsence I followed the new begun works of Pitch and Tarre, Glasse,Sope-ashes, Clapboord, whereof some small quantities we have sentyou. But if you rightly consider what an infinite toyle it is inRussia and Swethland, where the woods are proper for naught els, andthough there be the helpe both of man and beast in those ancientcommonwealths, which many an hundred years have used it, yetthousands of those poor people can scarce get necessaries to live,but from hand to mouth, and though your factors there can buy as muchin a week as will fraught you a ship, or as much as you please, youmust not expect from us any such matter, which are but as many ofignorant, miserable soules, that are scarce able to get wherewith tolive, and defend ourselves against the inconstant Salvages: findingbut here and there a tree fit for the purpose, and want all thingselse the Russi............