JAMESTOWN.
This cut follows a sketch made about 1857 by a travelling Englishwoman, Miss Catherine C. Hopley, and shows the condition of the ruined church at that time.
Differences among the colonists being somewhat allayed, labor was resumed, habitations were provided, a church was built, and, through the courage and energy of Smith, supplies of corn were obtained from the Indians. Leaving the settlement on the 10th of December, Smith again ascended the Chickahominy to get provisions from the savages, but incurring their hostility, two of his companions, Emry and Robinson, were killed, and Smith himself was taken captive. Being released after a few weeks, on the promise of a ransom of “two great guns and a grindstone,” he returned to Jamestown. On his arrival there he found the number of the colonists reduced to forty, and that Captain Gabriel Archer had been admitted to the Council during his absence. Archer caused him to be arrested and indicted, under the Levitical law, for allowing the death of his two men; but in the evening of the same day, Jan. 8, 1607-8, Newport returned from England with additional settlers (a portion of the first supply), and at once released both Smith and Wingfield from custody. Within five or six days the fort and many of the houses at Jamestown were destroyed by an accidental fire. Newport, accompanied by Matthew Scrivener (newly arrived and admitted to the Council), with Smith as interpreter and thirty or forty others, now visited Powhatan at his abode of Werowocomico. This was at Timberneck Bay, on the north side of York River. On the east bank of the bay still stands a quaint stone chimney,[232] subsequently built for Powhatan by German workmen among the colonists. Hostages were exchanged; Namontack, an Indian who was taken to England by Newport, being received from Powhatan for Thomas Savage, a youth aged thirteen, who for many years afterwards rendered important service to the colonists as interpreter. With supplies of food obtained from Powhatan and Opecancanough, the chief of the Pamunkey tribe, the party returned to Jamestown.
The ship being loaded with iron ore, sassafras, cedar posts, and walnut boards, Newport, with Archer[233] and Wingfield as passengers, sailed on the 10th of April from Jamestown, and on the 20th of May, 1608, arrived in England. The diet of the colonists was soon reduced to meal and water, and through hunger and exposure death diminished them one half. While they were engaged in re-building Jamestown and in planting, to their great joy Captain Nelson, who had left England with Newport, but from whom he had been separated by storm and detained in the West Indies, arrived in the ship “Phœnix,” with provisions and seventy settlers, being the remainder of the first supply of one hundred and twenty. He departed for England on the 2d of June with a cargo of cedar-wood, carrying Martin of the Council. Smith, in an open boat, with fourteen others,—seven gentlemen (including Dr. Walter Russell of the last arrival), and seven soldiers,—accompanied the “Phœnix” down the river, and parted from her at Cape Henry, with the bold purpose of exploring Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries, and establishing intercourse with the natives along their borders. To the islands lying off Cape Charles, Smith gave his own name. After a satisfactory cruise, having crossed the bay, visited its eastern shore, and explored the Potomac River some thirty miles, the party returned late in July to Jamestown for provisions. Smith again embarked on the 24th of July to complete his explorations, with a crew of twelve, similarly constituted as before, but with Anthony Bagnall as surgeon. At the head of Chesapeake Bay they were hospitably entertained by a tribe of Indians, supposed by Stith[234] to have been of the Iroquois, or Five Nations, and also by the Susquehannas, at a village on the Tockwogh (now Sassafras) River. The highest mountain to the northward observed by them was named Peregrine’s Mount, and Willoughby River was so called after the native town of Smith. The Indian tribes on the Patuxent, and the Moraughtacunds and the Wighcomoes on the Rappahannock, were visited. Richard Featherstone, a “gentleman” of the party, dying, was buried on the banks of the last-named river, which was explored to the falls, near where Fredericksburg now is. Here a skirmish took place with the Rappahannock tribe. The Pianketank, Elizabeth, and Nansemond rivers were in turn examined for a few miles. From the results of these discoveries Smith composed his Map of Virginia, a work so singularly exact that it has formed the basis of all like delineations since, and was adduced as authority as late as 1873 towards the settlement of the boundary dispute between the States of Virginia and Maryland. The drawing was sent to England by Newport before the close of the year, and in 1612 was published in the Oxford Tract. Returning to Jamestown, Sept. 7, 1608, Smith was elected President of the Council over Ratcliffe (who suffered from a wounded hand and was enfeebled by sickness), and now, for the first time, he had the “letters patent” of office placed in his hands.[235] Ever firm, courageous, and persevering, he at once instituted vigorous and salutary measures adapted to the wants and conducive to the discipline of the colonists. The church was repaired, the storehouse covered, and magazines erected. Soon after, Newport arrived for the third time from England, with the second supply of settlers, seventy in number. Among them were Captains Peter Wynne and Richard Waldo, Francis West (the brother of Lord Delaware), Raleigh Crashaw, Daniel Tucker, some German and Polish artisans for the manufacture of glass and other articles, Mrs. Thomas Forest, and her maid, Ann Burras. The last named of these—the first Englishwomen in the colony—became, before the close of the year, the wife of John Laydon. This was the first marriage celebrated in Virginia. Newport had left England under the silly pledge not to return without a lump of gold, or without tidings of the discovery of a passage to the North Sea, or without the rescue of one of the settlers of the lost company of Sir Walter Raleigh. The Company added the equally impossible condition that he should bring a freight in his vessel of equal value to the cost of the expedition, which was £2,000. In case of failure in these respects, the colonists were to be abandoned to their own resources. Much valuable time was consumed by Newport in an idle coronation of Powhatan (for whose household he had brought costly presents), and in futile efforts for the accomplishment of the visionary expectations of the Company. At last there was provided by those of the colonists who remained at their labors a part of a cargo of pitch, tar, glass, and iron ore, and Newport set sail, leaving at Jamestown about two hundred settlers. The iron ore which he carried was smelted in England, and seventeen tons of metal sold to the East India Company at £4 per ton. In the preservation of the colony until the next arrival, the genius and energy of Smith were strongly but successfully taxed,—for Captain Wynne dying, and Scrivener and Anthony Gosnold, with eight others, having been drowned, he alone of the Council remained. His measures were sagacious. Corn was planted, and blockhouses were built and garrisoned at Jamestown for defence, and an outpost was established at Hog Island, to give signal of the approach of shipping.
At the last place the hogs, which increased rapidly, were kept. But being subject to the treachery of the natives, the colonists were in continual danger of attack, and were too slothful to make due provision for their wants, so that the tenure of the settlement became like a brittle thread. The store of provisions having been spoiled by damp or eaten by vermin, their subsistence now depended precariously on fish, game, and roots. The prospects of the colony were so discouraging at the beginning of the year 1609, that, in the hope of improving them, the Company applied for a new charter with enlarged privileges. This was granted to them, on the 23d of May, under the corporate name of “The Treasurer and Company of Adventurers and Planters of the City of London for the first Colony in Virginia.” The new Association, which embraced representatives of every rank, trade, and profession, included twenty-one peers, and its list of names presents an imposing array of wealth and influence. By this charter Virginia was greatly enlarged, and made to comprise the coast-line and all islands within one hundred miles of it,—two hundred miles north and two hundred south of Point Comfort,—with all the territory within parallel lines thus distant and extending to the Pacific boundary; the Company was empowered to choose the Supreme Council in England, and, under the instructions and regulations of the last, the Governor was invested with absolute civil and military authority.
With the disastrous experience of the previous unstable system, a sterner discipline seems, under attending circumstances, to have been demanded to insure success. Thomas West (Lord Delaware), the descendant of a long line of noble ancestry, received the appointment of Governor and Captain-General of Virginia. The first expedition under the second charter, which was on a grander scale than any preceding it, and which consisted of nine vessels, sailed from Plymouth on the 1st of June, 1609.
Newport, the commander of the fleet, Sir Thomas Gates, Lieutenant-General, and Sir George Somers, Admiral of Virginia, were severally authorized, whichever of them might first arrive at Jamestown, to supersede the existing administration there until the arrival of Lord Delaware, who was to embark some months later; but not being able to settle the point of precedency among themselves, they embarked together in the same vessel, which carried also the wife and daughters of Gates. Among the five hundred colonists, were the returning Captains Ratcliffe, Archer, and Martin, divers other captains and gentlemen, and, by the suggestion of Hakluyt, a number of old soldiers[236] who had been trained in the Netherlands. On the 23d of July the fleet was caught in a hurricane; a small vessel was lost, others damaged, and the “Sea Venture,” which carried Gates, Somers, and Newport, with about one hundred and fifty settlers, was cast ashore on the Bermudas. Captain Samuel Argall (a relative of Sir Thomas Smith) arrived at Jamestown in July, with a shipload of wine and provisions, to trade on private account, contrary to the regulations of the Company. As the settlers were suffering for food, they seized his supplies. Many of them at this time had gone to live among the Indians, and eighty had formed a settlement twenty miles distant from the fort. Early in August the “Blessing,” Captain Archer, and three other vessels of the delayed fleet sailed up James River, and soon after the “Diamond,” Captain Ratcliffe, appeared, without her mainmast, and she was followed in a few days by the “Swallow,” in like condition.