Aristopia/Chapter 4
On the second of June, 1608, the Phœnix left Jamestown for England, taking with her John Smith and a party of fourteen men (among them Ralph Morton), who went to explore the Chesapeake by order of the Company, who hoped to find a passage to the South Sea.
At the capes of the Chesapeake Captain Smith's party left the Phœnix and set out on their voyage in an open barge of three tons, rigged with a mast and sail. They sailed up the eastern side of the bay, first visiting the Indian village of Accomac, where they were very kindly treated. While exploring some little islands in the bay they were caught in a violent storm of thunder and lightning, with such gusts of wind that they were well-nigh shipwrecked.
Returning to the eastern shore of the bay, they put into a little river called Wighcocomoco to obtain fresh water. As they came near the shore the savages gathered on the banks with demonstrations of furious hostility, but in a little while became very friendly. The water found there was muddy, warm, and brackish, and far from refreshing. However, the party filled their water-vessels with it and set off to visit some small islands in the bay.
Again a violent storm burst upon them with such a gust of wind that their sail was rent and their mast carried overboard. Managing with difficulty to land on one of the little islands, hardly more than a mud bank, they were forced by a remarkable succession of storms to remain two days. Smith called the little group of islands "Limbo," as being something between purgatory and the infernal regions. Such a name applied by an old campaigner inured to all hardships is very suggestive of what the party endured during those two days. They utilized the time to some extent by patching up their sail with such parts of their shirts as they could spare with least inconvenience.
Sailing back to the mainland on the eastern shore of the bay, the party entered the little river Cuskarawaok. There they found the natives so persistently hostile that Captain Smith ordered his men to give them a volley. Some of the savages were apparently wounded, and their consternation was great. They tumbled into the grass and wriggled away like snakes.
Going ashore, Captain Smith and his party entered some of the houses of the natives and left there some small pieces of copper, some beads, and two or three little bells. This combination of bullets and presents seemed to have a mollifying effect on the savages, as the next day they were very friendly, crowding around Smith and his men, and offering them all sorts of services. All the Indians encountered on this voyage told the whites about the Massawomeks, a fierce and powerful tribe who dwelt beyond the mountains to the west, but made numerous forays upon the Indians of the tidewater region, carrying off many women as captives. They importuned Smith to assist them in driving off the Massawomeks, and Smith promised to do so after he had attended to some other matters. The natives of the low country about the Wighcocomoco were small and low of stature.
The water was so poor on the eastern side of the bay that Captain Smith determined to cross over to the western side, the bold shores of which could be dimly seen through the haze of distance, low upon the horizon. They found the western shore rough and barren, but with plenty of good water. Sailing up this shore, they came to a broad estuary, the mouth of a navigable river, which Smith called the Bolus, from the resemblance of the earth on its banks to a drug then in use for making a bolus. This river was afterward called the Patapsco.
The explorers were detained here three days by bad weather and strong north winds. Their bread had been wet during storms they had encountered, when their boat was at times nearly tilled with water. They had no luck in killing game, and had neglected to bring along any kind of apparatus for catching fish. The bad and scanty food and the exposure to the storms in their little open boat caused several of the men to fall sick. Nearly all of them importuned Captain Smith to return to Jamestown. Ralph Morton, still well, cheerful, and courageous, was almost alone in sustaining the captain in the resolution to push on and complete their explorations of the bay. Smith strongly objected to returning. He reminded his men how the company of Ralph Lane, in their explorations of the Roanoke River, had urged their leader to go forward, saying that they had still a dog, which, boiled with sassafras leaves for sauce, would richly feed them until they could finish their journey, although they had not a mouthful of bread.
"But we have no dog," said one of the men.
"But we have plenty of bread," returned the Captain, "albeit somewhat mouldy. I charge you, gentlemen, to remember that, in setting out, you were suspicious of my tenderness, thinking I would be for turning back, while you would be all for going on. I have shared with you the worst thus far. It is unlikely worse is to come. This is my second summer in Virginia, and I never saw such a continuance of storms as we have weathered. You may expect a long period of fair weather now. For what is to come, whether it be weather, or diet, or whatsoever, I am contented to take the worst. Do you lack shelter at night? Take my blanket. Is the bread bad? Take the best and leave the mouldiest for me. As for your fears that I will lose myself in these great, unknown waters, or that we shall be swallowed in some stormy gust, abandon them; they are childish. I have found and fought my way through the wildernesses of all four quarters of the globe, and am now hale and sound. It would be a shame for you to force me to return now, when we are scarce able to say where we have been, and have not yet heard of that we were sent to seek. Regain, therefore, your old spirits with which you set out, for return I will not until I have seen the Massawomeks, found Patawomek, or the head of this water which you conceit to be endless."
But the pitiful complaints of the sick men finally prevailed on Smith to turn the head of the barge southward when they left Bolus harbor. At their first landing to pass the night they killed a deer, which greatly bettered their fare and revived their spirits. The weather was now very pleasant.
Proceeding southward, the party soon came to the mouth of a river or estuary, seven miles broad, which the Indians called Patawomek. By this time the sick men were better and the others had recovered their spirits and were willing to explore this great river, so they sailed up it for days, finding no current to impede them. They found the Indians on its banks uniformly friendly. Though not of the tribe of Powhatan, they had been subjugated by that chief. Their native language was not the Powhatan language, but as in every village were persons who in their youth had lived as hostages with the great chief and learned the language of his tribe, Smith and Morton easily communicated with them.
At last, after passing a considerable branch coming in on the northeastern side, they found the river quite narrow, and soon came to some rapids over which they could not get their barge. Passing the night at the mouth of a creek about a mile below the foot of the rapids and the head of tidewater, Smith set out on foot in the morning with eight men to explore the river for some distance above the rapids. Ralph Morton was among the six left with the boat. Smith instructed them not to wander away from the boat. However, as Ralph had developed considerable skill in marksmanship, and had shown himself careful and trustworthy, Smith gave him permission to go out a short distance for a hunt, cautioning him to look out for Indians.
Ralph shouldered his musket and strolled off up the creek, with eyes and ears alert for game or Indians. He was strong and nimble of foot, and he went much farther than he intended. As he ascended the creek the region became picturesquely hilly, and in some places cliffs of dark rock towered up far above the rippling waters. He saw no game worth shooting at within good range. At last he heard the cry of a wild turkey-gobbler (which he had learned to distinguish) up on the hill away from the creek. Cautiously going toward the sound, he soon came in sight of a fine gobbler, strutting up and down a fallen log in a little open space within fair range. Ralph took careful aim and fired, putting a hall through the base of the turkey's neck.
Picking up his game, he turned back toward the creek, but as he was rather tired he concluded to rest a little, and sat down on a dike of quartz which barely projected above the thin soil. The sun was getting high, and a beam came down through a rift in the foliage high above, falling upon the dike near Ralph. He gazed idly at the bright spot on the ground. At last he became aware of a tiny sparkle between the white fragments of quartz. He soon became curious about it, and on examination found it came from a scratch on a lump of something the upper surface of which was visible above the earth. With the point of his knife he pried out the lump, which was of the bulk of an orange, but of irregular shape. Ralph was surprised at its weight. He scratched it with his knife. There was no further doubt. Its luster and weight proclaimed it solid gold. For a few moments Ralph was almost stupefied with his emotions. Then he fell eagerly at work scraping away with his hands and the blade of his large sheath-knife the thin earth that covered the quartz ledge. In doing so he came upon several other lumps of gold, one a little larger and the others smaller than the first one. He cut a stout sapling, and sharpened the end of the stick to make a crowbar, with which he pried away a few pieces of the quartz, which was much fissured. After a while he exposed the top of a piece of gold that was four or five inches across, but it was immovable, and he could not tell to what depth it extended.
Being very weary, he stopped work, and as he rested he reflected. His first impulse was to rush away and inform his companions of his incredible discovery. But after a while he thought he would keep it secret. If he could form some scheme to get control of all this wealth, how much more good he could, and he thought he would, do with it than would that dissolute and worthless crowd at Jamestown, or that company of selfish merchants in London. He found that the lumps he had already procured weighed fifteen pounds or more, and he reflected that such an amount was about all he could carry with him and keep concealed on his person, and even that amount would be very burdensome. He quickly calculated the probable value of fifteen pounds of gold, and found it was enough, if he could get back to England with it, to charter a hark and come over and get the rest of the gold, however much there might be.
It required no small resolution to leave that glittering mass of untold value there in the earth and go back to Jamestown, but at last Ralph carefully replaced the loose earth upon the golden mass, gathered some stones and placed over it, scraped up some dead leaves from some distance away, and scattered them over the rocks, hoping to conceal the gold from any straggling Indian who might pass the spot. Then, stowing away his nuggets in his clothes as best he could, he set out on his return to the boat, which was about three miles away. With a pocket compass lie carefully took the bearings of his mine from the creek. On a largre tree near the bank of the creek he cut some marks and took some mental notes of the surroundings, which he reduced to writing at the first opportunity.
He did not care to look for game, but when within about half a mile of the boat another turkey offered so fair a mark that he shot it. Tying the necks of the two birds together, he slung them over his shoulder and was soon among his companions, who were becoming uneasy at his long absence. Having some needles and thread with him, with a strip of tanned deerskin which he had procured from the Indians he made him a belt with pockets to contain his gold. As soon as he could do so without being observed, he put his gold in the belt and fastened it about his waist under his clothes.
Smith and his companions returned toward evening and reported that above the rapids the river ran through a rather narrow valley, and was in some places skirted by high cliffs, and that it was not navigable. In that region there was much mica in the rocks and earth, in small, glittering particles. It looked so much like silver that even the cautious Smith was half deceived and had gathered some of it to send to England for assay. Morton pronounced it mica, and Smith said with a sigh: "Well, it may be. I would we had some with us who knew a mine from spar."
As the tide was beginning to ebb, the party, to take advantage of it, started down the river that evening. Smith saw some Indians painted with some substance which, as he said, "made them look like blackamoors dusted over with silver." They told him where they got it, and he went to find the "mine." About thirty miles below the rapids a small but navigable river which the Indians called the Quijough empties into the Patawomek. The party rowed as far as they could get the boat up this river. Then Smith with six men set out on foot, leaving Ralph Morton with the other men in charge of the boat. The deposit of matchqueon, as the Indians called the mineral, was seven or eight miles from where Smith left the boat. In due time he returned with a considerable quantity of the stuff, which he thought was antimony, but Ralph believed it to be plumbago.
Proceeding down the river and bay to the mouth of the Rappahannock, Smith intended to explore that river, but as the tide ebbed, their barge grounded on a bar. While waiting for the tide to come in, Smith amused himself by spearing with his sword the fish lying in the shallow water among the reeds. He caught many fish, among them a stingaree, which gave him a wound which made him so extremely sick that his party expected him to die. In a few hours he felt better, but was so far from well that he concluded to goto Jamestown. The party arrived there on the 21st of July. They found many of the colonists sick, and as their chronicler wrote: "All unable to doe any thing but complaine of the pride and unreasonable needlesse crueltie of the silly President, that had riotously consumed the store; and to fullfill his follies about building him an unnecessary pallace for his pleasure in the woods had brought them all to that misery."