"For the coronation of Powhatan, by whose advice you sent him such presents I know not; but this give me leave to tell you, I fear they will be the confusion of us all ere we hear from you again. At your ship's arrival the salvages's harvest was newly gathered and we [were] going to buy it; our own not being half sufficient for so great a number. As for the two [shiploads] of corn [which] Newport promised to provide us from Powhatan,[69] he brought us but 14 bushels ... [while most of his men were] sick and near famished. From your ship we had not provision in victuals worth £20, and we are more than 200 to live upon this; the one half sick, the other little better.... Our diet is a little meal and water, and not sufficient of that. Though there be fish in the sea, fowls in the air, and beasts in the woods, their bounds are so large, they so wild, and we so weak and ignorant that we cannot much trouble them.
peculation and intrigue are rife.
"The soldiers say many of your officers maintain their families out of that you send us; and that Newport hath £100 a year for carrying news.... Captain Ratcliffe is now called Sickelmore, a poor counterfeited imposture. I have sent you him home, lest the company [here] should cut his throat. What he is now, every one can tell you. If he and Archer return again, they are sufficient to keep us always in factions.
Send us next time some useful workmen.
"When you send again I intreat you [to] send but 30 carpenters, husbandmen, gardeners, fishermen, blacksmiths, masons, and diggers up of trees' roots, well provided, [rather] than 1000 of such as we have; for except we be able both to lodge them and feed them, the most will consume with want of necessaries before they can be made good for anything.... And I humbly entreat you hereafter, let us know what we [are to] receive, and not stand to the sailors's courtesy to leave us what they please....
"These are the causes that have kept us in Virginia from laying such a foundation [as] ere this might have given much better content and satisfaction; but as yet you must not look for any profitable returns; so I humbly rest."[70]
A sensible letter.
It is to be hoped that the insinuation that some of the Company's officers were peculators was ill founded; as for the fling at Newport, it was evidently made in a little fit of petulance and is inconsistent with the esteem in which Smith really held that worthy mariner. These are slight blemishes in a temperate, courageous, and manly letter. It is full of hard common-sense and tells such plain truths as must have set the Company thinking. It was becoming evident to many persons in London that some new departure must be made. But before Newport's home-bound ship could cross the ocean, and before the Company could decide upon its new plan of operations, some months must needs elapse, and in the interim we will continue to follow the fortunes of the little colony, now left to itself in the wilderness for the third time.
Richard Hakluyt on the Indian character.