CHAPTER IV.

A CALL OF STATE

The three small ships with their one hundred and five men sailed up the James River, until they had reached a point some fifty miles from its mouth, when their interest was drawn to a low peninsula, which put out from the northern shore. It was a bad site for a settlement, because it was half covered with water at high tide. Since those days it has become an island; but it looked so pleasing to the men who had been tossed on the stormy ocean for so many months, that it was taken as their new home. Anchor was dropped, the smaller boats began taking the emigrants and their belongings to shore, and there, on May 13th, 1607, was founded Jamestown, which, as I have already stated, was the first lasting settlement planted by the English in the New World.

Sad to say, nearly three quarters of a century later, when the colony was torn by civil strife, Jamestown was burned to the ground, and never rebuilt. All that remains are the ruins of an old church tower and a few mouldering tombstones. These are rapidly crumbling; the waves dash mournfully against the shore; the sea-fowl flit past; and ere many years come and go all traces of the famous town will have disappeared.

As the English went ashore they pitched their tents, but the season was so mild that they found it more agreeable to make their homes for the time under the verdant foliage of the trees while building their cabins. These were put up on the neck of the peninsula, and before long the place took on the appearance of a community. It is a pleasure to recall that these people were good churchmen, and from the hour of their landing gave strict attention to the duties of religion. The first place of public worship in America was a ragged tent. An awning was stretched among the trunks of trees, and a bar, fastened between two of these, served as a reading desk. At this Mr. Hunt read the Service morning and evening, preached twice each Sunday, and, at intervals of three months, celebrated the Holy Communion. When he was prevented through illness or other causes, Captain John Smith or some of his associates read the service.

As soon as the hurry of work was over, a structure was put up. Of course, it was of modest size and build, but when Lord Delaware arrived three years later, he records that this first religious edifice built by Englishmen in America was sixty feet long and twenty four feet wide.

It would seem that the best of beginnings had been made, for trees were felled, cabins built, and a church erected; but a woeful mistake lay in the character of the men themselves. Very few had the least fitness for pioneer work. When the box was opened in which King James had sealed the names of the first seven Councillors, all but two of those selected proved grossly unfit. These two were Bartholomew Gosnold and John Smith. Gosnold soon died, and Smith had not been freed from arrest on the charge of plotting against the colony. Edward Maria Wingfield was chosen first president, but he was lazy, self-indulgent, and seemed to be able to think of nothing except Smith and his plots for placing himself at the head of affairs. The other Councillors were no better than he, and the prospect of Jamestown was dark.

This sad unfitness was not confined to the rulers. More than half the men were ranked as “gentlemen,” which in those times meant persons who did not do manual labor. The wild rumors of the abundance of gold in the New World drew them across the ocean. They believed that it would take only a short time to load the three vessels with the yellow metal, when they would return to England and live in luxury for the rest of their days. You naturally find that most of those who toiled for a living were jewelers and gold-refiners.

Sturdy, rugged, honest John Smith saw all this with anger and disgust. He knew what was surely coming, and calmly waited for it to come. Although shut out from the Council, he did not sulk, though he felt the injustice. “By and by they will ask for me,” he thought, as he went vigorously to work. He impressed upon his friends the necessity of keeping on good terms with the Indians. The season was far advanced, but corn was planted with the certainty that it would ripen fast in that favoring climate and soil. But the food brought over the ocean would not last more than two or three months, when it would be necessary to obtain supplies from the Indians. If they chose to withhold it, it would go ill with the white men.

Now if you will look at your map again, you will note the situation of Jamestown on the northern shore. Tracing the course of the James River towards its source, you will observe the city of Richmond, the capital of Virginia, on the same side of the river, but well up in Henrico county. Below the site of Richmond, in the direction of Jamestown, was the principal residence of Powhatan, chief of thirty tribes, his own immediate tribe being scattered inland and along the river to the south and east. It was a two-day’s journey between the village of Powhatan and Jamestown.

Distrustful of the old chief’s temper towards them, Captain Smith and a party of his men took the first chance to sail up the river and pay a formal visit to the Emperor of the country. The name of the town itself was Powhatan, from which fact the same title has been given to the famous chieftain, whose Indian name was different. The aboriginal capital stood on a small hill, and numbered twelve houses, in front of which were three small islands in the river. The “palace” was a large, native structure of bark and skins, with a sort of bedstead at one side, on which Powhatan sat. With his majestic mien, his robe of raccoon skins, and the feathers in his grizzly hair, he suggested a king upon his throne.

When Smith and two of his companions were brought into the presence of this Emperor the scene was striking. Along each wall of the dwelling stood two rows of young women at the rear, and two rows of men in front of them. The faces and shoulders of all the females were stained with the red juice of the puccoon, and a number wore chains of white beads about their necks. Almost any man would have been embarrassed when introduced into the presence of royalty of this character. Smith’s companions were mute, but he was too much a man of the world to betray any fear. He doffed his hat, made a sweeping bow, and addressed the old chieftain with as much outward respect as if he had been, indeed, the King of England.

One of the most marked proofs of the ability of Captain John Smith was that during his brief stay in Virginia he had been able to pick up enough knowledge of the Powhatan tongue to make himself fairly well understood, being helped thereto by his gestures, of which he was master. There had been Indian visitors from the first at Jamestown. All were treated so well that several spent much of their time at the settlement, studying the white men and their ways with never-ending interest. Smith became a hard student, and was thus able to tell Powhatan that he and the other pale-faces had come across the Great Water with feelings only of love for him and his people. They had no wish to take away their hunting-grounds, not to kill their game, nor to do them harm in any way. He hinted that the whites might prove to be of great help to Powhatan, for they brought strange and deadly weapons with them, which they would be glad to use in aiding him to conquer other tribes of Indians.

Captain Smith was a man of rare tact, but he blundered when he made this offer to the old Emperor. It said, in truth, that Powhatan was not able to do his own conquering of rebellious tribes. Such was the power and self-confidence of this sachem, that any hint that he could need help in carrying out his own will was an insult to him.

Smith was quick to see his mistake, and did what he could to correct it, but he did not succeed. Powhatan was sour, and nothing was clearer than that he felt no good will toward those who had dared to make their homes in his country. He pretended not to understand the broken sentences of his visitor, until after one of his warriors had helped to interpret them. Having met with no success, Smith and his friends withdrew and set sail down the river for Jamestown.

During the interview both he and his companions used their eyes in searching for the youth and the girl who had met them when first on their way up the James. But neither Nantaquas nor Pocahontas was present, a fact which proved they were absent from the town, for, were it not so, nothing would have kept them from the “palace” on such and an interesting occasion.

The boat in which the Englishmen had sailed up the river had to lie by for one cloudy night while on the way, and now the explorers found themselves overtaken by darkness, when hardly half the return voyage was made. But the sky was clear, and again they were favored with a bright moon, which so lit up the stream that they kept on their course, with the prospect of reaching home quite early the next day.

While one of the men held the old-fashioned tiller, with nothing to do but to keep the boat well away from shore, Smith sat at the bow, thoughtfully smoking a long-stemmed pipe which he had bought from one of the friendly Indians who often visited Jamestown. The others of his associates were doing the same at a little distance, for most of the English were quick to learn the habit from the red men. The night was so still that a single sail hardly felt the touch of the gentle breeze, and only now and then did the faint ripple at the bow show that the boat was making any progress toward Jamestown.

Captain Smith had many things to vex and trouble him. He was angry when he thought of the injustice under which he suffered, and the worthlessness of those named to rule the colony. With the coming of the hot, sultry southern summer all prudence seemed to leave the settlers. They drank deeply of the unwholesome water, and the mists that brooded over the neighboring swamps were heavy with malaria, which had already laid a number on their backs, with more than one fatal issue threatened.

Those who kept healthy thought it too uncomfortable to toil when the hot sun was overhead, and as twilight and night drew near, the day was too far gone to make it worth while to labour. They would not be roused early enough in the day to do anything of account, though most of them did make a pretense of hoeing the corn, of which several acres were growing. Wingfield, the president, set the example of indolence, and instead of being moderate in eating, acted as if there never could come an end to the food that had been brought across the sea, and which was already nearly exhausted. What the colony needed above everything else was a stern, rigorous, wise head, and it is no reproach to Captain Smith that he said to himself: “_I_ am the only man for the time; but they have tied my hands, though they shall not be tied long.”

While the future looked so dark, he was more disturbed by the present, or what might be called the near future. He saw in the glum, resentful manner of Powhatan something more than displeasure with the presence of the white men. Holding such great power as did the chieftain, he was not likely to remain quiet much longer. He could not but know of the growing weakness of the colonists, who were short of food, with much sickness among them, and the certainty that before long they would be at the mercy of the Indians.

Smith wondered why an attack had not been made upon the settlement long before. With the vast body of warriors that Powhatan could summon at his will, they would have been able to crush the little band of white men, despite the dreaded firearms at their command. The pioneer had no idea that the postponement of such an assault was due to Pocahontas, nor did he learn the truth until years afterward.

He looked at the dark, frowning shores on either hand, stretching in the distance many miles beyond the farthest extent of vision when the sun was shining, and thought of the thousands of warriors who roamed and hunted through those solitudes, fighting one another, when, had they been wise enough to unite their strength, they could bid defiance to any armed fleet that England might send across the ocean.

Suddenly a star-like gleam showed on the southern shore. That it had been kindled by the Indians was not to be doubted. Watching it for a minute or so, without seeing anything more than a glowing point, Smith turned his face toward the northern bank. At the moment of doing so he observed an answering signal, and was not surprised, for it was natural that such a reply should be made.

“They are speaking to one another about our boat, but that is of no concern to me, for I do not think we have anything to fear from them.”

He scanned the two shores in the expectation of seeing other signal fires, but none showed. Meanwhile the boat made little headway against the tide, for the gentle breeze hardly fanned one’s face. Smith rose to his feet, and with pipe between his lips, gazed out on the moonlit expanse of river, not expecting to discover anything unusual, and yet something of that nature quickly appeared.

A peculiar flickering toward the northern shore caught his eye, and while trying to learn what it meant he saw that the object was an Indian canoe, in which he soon made out two persons, with the nearer one swaying a paddle, while his companion sat quietly at the stern.

The Captain recalled the sight which greeted the ships when first coming up the James. There was the small craft, driven in the same manner, and with the same number of persons. Standing erect at the gunwale, he watched it closely, and a minute or two later was certain that the two were Nantaquas and Pocahontas. He had learned of their identity from the friendly Indians who came to Jamestown, the plume worn by the girl being a badge of royalty.

The canoe was passing the bow of the ship, a hundred yards away, making no attempt to come nearer. Desiring a talk, Smith called in his resonant voice:

“Nantaquas! Will you not come aboard?”

The youth appeared to say a few words to his sister, after which he headed his craft in the direction of the larger one. A few minutes would have brought him alongside, when he was checked by a startling interruption. Through the stillness sounded a low booming sound, which rolled up the stream and was heard faintly to echo between the shores.

There could be no mistaking its meaning: it was the report of one of the small cannon on the _Sarah Constant_, and it meant danger to Jamestown.