Accuracy of Smith's descriptions.
Todkill's complaint.
The wood-nymphs who thus entertained their guests are in one account mentioned simply as "Powhatan's women," in another they are spoken of as "Pocahontas and her women;" which seems to give us a realistic sketch of the little maid with her stag-horn headdress and skin all stained with puccoon leading her companions in their grotesque capers. Truly, it was into a strange world and among a strange people that our colonists had come. Their quaint descriptions of manners and customs utterly new and unintelligible to them, though familiar enough to modern students of barbaric life, have always the ring of truth. Nowhere in the later experiences of white men with Indians do we find quite so powerful a charm as in the early years of the seventeenth century. No other such narratives are quite so delightful as those of Champlain and his friends in Canada, and those of Smith and his comrades in Virginia. There is a freshness about this first contact with the wilderness and its uncouth life that makes every incident vivid. There is a fascination too, not unmixed with sadness, in watching the early dreams of El Dorado fade away as the stern reality of a New World to be conquered comes to make itself known and felt. Naturally the old delusions persisted at home in England long after the colonists had been taught by costly experiences to discard them, and we smile at the well-meant blundering of the ruling powers in London in their efforts to hasten the success of their enterprise. In vain did the faithful Newport seek to perform the mandates of the London Company. No nuggets of gold were to be found, nor traces of poor Eleanor Dare and her friends, and The Powhatan told the simple truth when he declared that there were difficult mountains westward and it would be useless to search for a salt sea behind them. Newport tried, nevertheless, but came back exhausted long before he had reached the Blue Ridge; for what foe is so pertinacious as a strange and savage continent? In pithy terms does Anas Todkill, one of the first colonists, express himself about these wild projects: "Now was there no way to make us miserable but to neglect that time to make our provision whilst it was to be had; the which was done to perfourme this strange discovery, but more strange coronation. To lose that time, spend that victuall we had, tire and starue our men, having no means to carry victuall, munition, the hurt or sicke, but their own backes: how or by whom they were invented I know not." How eloquent in grief and indignation are these rugged phrases! A modern writer, an accomplished Oxford scholar, expresses the opinion that the coronation of The Powhatan, although "an idle piece of formality," "had at least the merit of winning and retaining the loyalty of the savage."[64] Master Todkill thought differently: "as for the coronation of Powhatan and his presents of bason, ewer, bed, clothes, and such costly nouelties; they had bin much better well spared than so ill spent; for we had his favour much better onlie for a poore peece of copper, till this stately kinde of soliciting made him so much overvalue himselfe, that he respected vs as much as nothing at all."[65]
Smith's map of Virginia.
When Newport sailed for England, he took with him Ratcliffe, the deposed president, a man of doubtful character of whom it was said that he had reasons for using an alias, his real name being Sickelmore. Deposed presidents were liable to serve as tale-bearers and mischief-makers. Wingfield had gone home on the previous voyage, and Newport had brought back to Virginia complaints from the Company about the way in which things had been managed. Now Smith sent to London by Newport his new map of Virginia embodying the results of his recent voyages of exploration, a map of remarkable accuracy and witness to an amount of original labour that is marvellous to think of. That map is a living refutation of John Smith's detractors; none but a man of heroic mould could have done the geographical work involved in making it.
With the map Smith sent what he naïvely calls his "Rude Answer" to the London Company, a paper bristling with common-sense and not timid when it comes to calling a spade a spade. With some topics suggested by this "Rude Answer" we shall concern ourselves in the next chapter.
CHAPTER IV.
THE STARVING TIME.