Tale-bearers and complaints.
Smith's "Rude Answer."
One strong motive which drew many of these gentlemen to the New World, like the Castilian hidalgos of a century before, was doubtless the mere love of wild adventure. Another motive was the quest of the pearls and gold about gold that which the poet Drayton had written. In the spring of 1608, while Newport was on the scene with his First Supply, somebody discovered a bank of bright yellow dirt, and its colour was thought to be due to particles of gold. Then there was clatter and bustle; "there was no thought, no discourse, no hope, and no work but to dig gold, wash gold, refine gold, and load gold." In the list of the First Supply we find the names of two goldsmiths, two refiners, and one jeweller;[67] but such skill as these artisans had was of little avail, for Newport carried a shipload of the yellow stuff to London, and found, to his chagrin, that all is not gold that glitters. On that same voyage he carried home a coop of plump turkeys, the first that ever graced an English bill of fare. Smith seems early to have recovered from the gold fever, and to have tried his hand at various industries. If precious metals could not be found, there was plenty of excellent timber at hand. The production of tar and soap was also attempted, as well as the manufacture of glass, to assist in which eight Germans and Poles were brought over in the Second Supply. It was hardly to be expected that such industries should attain remunerative proportions in the hands of a little company of settlers who were still confronted with the primitive difficulty of getting food enough to keep themselves alive. The arrival of reinforcements was far from being an unmixed benefit. Each new supply brought many new mouths to be filled, while by the time the ship was ready to sail for England, leaving all the provisions it could safely spare, the remnant was so small that the gaunt spectre of threatening famine was never quite out of sight. Moreover the new-comers from the civilized world arrived with their heads full of such wild notions as the older settlers were beginning to recover from under the sharp lessons of experience; thus was confusion again and again renewed. While the bitter tale was being enacted in the wilderness, people in London were wondering why the symptoms of millennial happiness were so slow in coming from this Virginian paradise. From the golden skewers and dripping-pans adorning the kitchens of barbaric potentates,[68] or the priceless pearls that children strolling on the beach could fill their aprons with, the descent to a few shiploads of ignoble rough boards and sassafras was truly humiliating. No wonder that the Company should have been loth to allow tales of personal peril in Virginia to find their way into print. No wonder that its directors should have looked with rueful faces at the long columns of outgoes compared with the scant and petty entries on the credit side of the ledger. No wonder if they should have arrived at a state of impatience like that of the urchin who has planted a bed full of seed and cannot be restrained from digging them up to see what they are coming to. At such times there is sure to be plenty of fault-finding; disappointment seeks a vent in scolding. We have observed that Wingfield, the deposed president, had returned to England early in 1608; with him went Captain Gabriel Archer, formerly a student of law at Gray's Inn, and one of the earliest members of the legal profession in English America. His name is commemorated in the little promontory near Jamestown called Archer's Hope. He was a mischief-maker of whom Wingfield in his "Discourse of Virginia" speaks far more bitterly than of Smith. To the latter Archer was an implacable enemy. On the return of Smith from his brief captivity with the Indians, this crooked Archer exhibited his legal ingenuity in seeking to revive a provision in the laws of Moses that a captain who leads his men into a fatal situation is responsible for their death. By such logic Smith would be responsible for the deaths of his followers slain, by Opekankano's Indians; therefore, said Archer, he ought to be executed for murder! President Ratcliffe, alias Sickelmore, appears to have been a mere tool in Archer's hands, and Smith's life may really have been in some danger when Newport's arrival discomfited his adversaries. One can see what kind of tales such an unscrupulous enemy would be likely to tell in London, and it was to be expected that Newport, on arriving with his Second Supply, would bring some message that Smith would regard as unjust. The nature of the message is reflected in the reply which Smith sent home by Newport in November, 1608. The wrath of the much-enduring man was thoroughly aroused; in his "Rude Answer," as he calls it, he strikes out from the shoulder, and does not even spare his friend Newport for bringing such messages. Thus does he address the Royal Council of Virginia, sitting in London: "Right Honourable Lords and Gentlemen: I received your letter wherein you write that our minds are so set upon faction and idle conceits, ... and that we feed you but with ifs and ands, hopes, and some few proofes; as if we would keep the mystery of the businesse to ourselues; and that we must expresly follow your instructions sent by Captain Newport, the charge of whose voyage amounts to neare £2000 the which if we cannot defray by the ship's returne, we are like to remain as banished men. To these particulars I humbly intreat your pardons if I offend you with my rude answer.
I cannot prevent quarrels.
"For our factions, vnlesse you would haue me run away and leaue the country, I cannot prevent them: ... I do make many stay that would els fly anywhither.... [As to feeding] you with hopes, etc., though I be no scholar, I am past a school-boy; and I desire but to know what either you [or] these here do know but I have learned to tell you by the continual hazard of my life. I have not concealed from you anything I know; but I feare some cause you to believe much more than is true.
Your instructions were not wise.
"Expressly to follow your directions by Captain Newport, though they be performed, I was directly against it; but according to our Commission, I was content to be ruled by the major part of the council, I fear to the hazard of us all; which now is generally confessed when it is too late.... I have crowned Powhatan according to your instructions. For the charge of this voyage of £2000 we have not received the value of £100.... For him at that time to find ... the South Sea, [or] a mine of gold, or any of them sent by Sir Walter Raleigh: at our consultation I told them was as likely as the rest. But during this great discovery of thirty miles (which might as well have been done by one man, and much more, for the value of a pound of copper at a seasonable time) they had the pinnace and all the boats with them [save] one that remained with me to serve the fort.
From our infant industries you must not expect too much.
"In their absence I followed the new begun works of pitch and tar, glass, soap ashes, and clapboard; whereof some small quantities we have sent you. But if you rightly consider what an infinite toil it is in Russia and Swedeland, where the woods are proper for naught else, and though there be the help both of man and beast in those ancient commonweals which many an hundred years have [been] used [to] it; yet thousands of those poor people can scarce get necessaries to live but from hand to mouth. And though your factors there can buy as much in a week as will fraught you a ship ...; you must not expect from us any such matter, which are but a many of ignorant miserable souls, that are scarce able to get wherewith to live and defend ourselves against the inconstant salvages; finding but here and there a tree fit for the purpose, and want[ing] all things else [which] the Russians have.
While we suffer for want of food,