Aristopia/Chapter 5
Resting at Jamestown only two days, Smith set out in his barge on the 24th of July, to finish his exploration. He took a party of twelve with him, the majority of whom had been on his first expedition. Ralph Morton disliked either to leave his gold in Jamestown or carry it on his person; but he had been so useful to Captain Smith that the latter was bent on having him of the company. So Ralph put the gold in his chest, which was strong and well-locked, and left it in charge of the young man he had chosen for his comrade. As no ship was expected in for several weeks, he knew he should not, by going with Smith, miss an opportunity of returning to England.
Descending the James River, the party was detained two or three days at Kecoughtan, an Indian village near the mouth of the river. After dark one evening Smith fired a few rockets. These missiles, rushing on their fiery course into the sky, greatly frightened the savages, who supposed the whites to be some sort of gods. They implored Smith to destroy the Massawomeks.
The explorers sailed directly up the bay until they saw it divide. They explored two of the branches on the western side without finding any river of importance. Then, in crossing, the party encountered a fleet of seven or eight canoes, full of Indians, who appeared to he preparing for fight. An epidemic had fallen on the explorers, so that only five of them could stand. The others lay under the shade of the tarpaulin. Smith set up their hats on sticks to look like men. He then fired two or three muskets so that the bullets went skipping over the water close to the canoes. The noise and the long range of the bullets frightened the Indians, who pulled their canoes in to the shore with all speed. They landed and awaited the approach of the barge, whose great size seemed to awe them somewhat. Smith made signs of friendship, and at last two of the Indians ventured to come on board the barge. Their fellows followed them within bow-shot, to assist them at need. Each of the two ambassadors was presented with a bell. They then returned and brought on board the whole Indian party, who gave the whites venison, bear-meat, and fish, in return for a few beads.
The Indians proved to be the renowned Massawomeks. They were of the same tribe which the French called the Iroquois and the English afterward knew in New York as the Five Nations. Although esteemed by the other Indian tribes as so bold and invincible that they "made war with all the world," they dared not encounter the English muskets. Their canoes were not dugouts, like those of the tidewater Indians, but were made of birchbark. As they did not understand the Powhatan language, the communication between the two parties was by signs. They signified that they had lately attacked the Tockwoghes, a tribe living in that neighborhood, and showed some fresh wounds they had received.
Smith purchased some of their hows, arrows, and targets, which were of a peculiar pattern. Night coming on, the Massawomeks retired to camp, and the whites saw them no more. They were evidently not fond of the company of such mysterious beings as the whites seemed to be.
Entering the river Tockwogh, the explorers encountered the tribe on which the party of Massawomeks had lately made an attack. One of this tribe could speak the language of Powhatan, and a friendly parley ensued. When the Tockwoghes saw the well-known and dreaded weapons of the Massawomeks in the hands of the English they supposed the weapons had been captured in battle, and their admiration of the whites was greatly increased. They welcomed the explorers with the greatest hospitality. Their town was palisaded with considerable skill as a defense against the attacks of the Massawomeks. Smith found among these Indians some articles which had evidently come from the French traders on the St. Lawrence, having passed from tribe to tribe in exchange.
Finding the mouth of the Susquehanna, the explorers ascended that river until they came to a place where the stream, although very broad, was too shallow to float the barge. On this river the explorers found a tribe of Indians called the Susquehannocks, whose great size astonished Smith. They were mild and friendly. They, too, had suffered much from the forays of the Massawomeks.
Sailing down the bay our party explored the Patuxent River and then entered the Rappahannock. At an Indian village near the mouth of the latter river the party found one who seemed to them like an old friend: an Indian named Mosco, whom they had first encountered far up the Patawomek, and who had been their guide to the mine of the substance which Smith supposed to be antimony. Learning that the party proposed to go up the Rappahannock, Mosco at first endeavored to dissuade them, by telling them of the fierce and implacable nature of the Indians far up the river, but afterward attached himself to the party, and accompanied them on all their explorations of this river. He was quite useful.
The explorers found that the Rappahannocks were indeed a fierce and treacherous tribe. Smith's party had several fights with these savages. The latter would ambush themselves on the margin of the river by holding before them branches of trees which they had broken off. In one of these encounters Ralph Morton, who had left the boat and gone out for a parley, received a severe arrow-wound in the fleshy part of the right arm.
Leaving the Rappahannock, the party went to explore the south end of the Chesapeake. While they were out on the broad bay at night a sudden storm arose, and the barge was driven before a terrible gale, the waves sweeping over her, and the crew having to bail with all their might to keep from foundering. The frequent flashes of lightning illumined the black night, and by this light they were finally enabled to run into shelter at Point Comfort.
The next day the indefatigable Smith set off to explore the little bays of Nandsemond and Norfolk. This done, he had demonstrated beyond a doubt that there was no passage out of the Chesapeake into the South Sea, which passage the London Company was very anxious to have found, and which discovery was the principal object of all these explorations. A hostile encounter with the Nandsemond Indians ended in the two parties becoming good friends, and Smith loaded his barge with corn, obtained from the Nandsemonds by barter, and set sail for Jamestown.
Captain Smith, although of a very grave and serious disposition, showed his love of a practical joke by decking out the barge with pieces of colored cloth (brought along for barter), in imitation of Spanish flags. These being seen far down the river, the colony at Jamestown supposed that a Spanish pirate was coming, and were greatly frightened. They had from the first settlement feared a visit from the Spaniards.
Thus on the seventh of September ended those remarkable explorations, in which a small party had made voyages aggregating three thousand miles, in an open boat, in an unusually stormy season, exposed without shelter to the fierce heat of the midday sun and the chill of the rainy night. At the end of his voyages Ralph Morton, at twenty years of age, felt himself a veteran.
During both of these voyages Ralph took observations from which he drew a map, a copy of which he gave to Captain Smith, who sent it to England. Long afterward Smith had much credit for the remarkable accuracy of the map, considering the circumstances of its production.
The party, on reaching Jamestown, found the colony doing somewhat better than before under the presidency of Scrivener, the wretched Ratcliffe having been deposed and imprisoned for his lawless excesses. On the tenth of September Smith was elected president, at the request of the Company, and things mended still more.
About this time Newport arrived from England with orders from the Company not to return without a lump of gold, the discovery of a passage to the South Sea, or finding one of the lost company sent out by Walter Raleigh, all of which conditions Captain Smith laughed to scorn. Newport brought a boat, built in sections, to be carried around the falls of the James, in the effort to discover a passage to the South Sea. He spent some time in a fruitless effort to explore the upper James, and still more in an expedition for the silly ceremony of crowning; Powhatan as a vassal king of King James. Smith, railing at the folly, was compelled by the Company to assist in it. Newport's evil influence was again felt so much that Smith was eager to load his ship and pack him off to England.
Under ordinary circumstances it would have been impossible for Ralph Morton to have obtained permission to go to England. Most of the colony would have gone in a body if Smith had allowed them. However, Ralph's wound became much worse. His system was in that condition popularly known as "the blood out of order," which is common to people the first year of their residence in a strange climate. His arm was much swollen and inflamed, but, though it had an alarming look, it was not very painful, and he made more ado about it than was necessary. He was unable to work, and spent most of his time with Namontock, learning the Powhatan language, of which he composed a vocabulary and grammar. Being very frugal and careful, he had some money left, with which he offered to pay his passage home, saying if he did not get better surgical treatment for his wound than he could get in Jamestown, it might kill him. On one account Smith was willing to let Ralph go. He knew that Ralph's brother-in-law was a member of the Company and a personal friend of the Treasurer. He desired to send a letter to the Treasurer, stating plainly the bad management of the colony. He meant to score Newport severely, and so he did not wish to intrust Newport with the letter. Knowing that Ralph quite agreed with him in his opinion of the way things were going, he resolved to make the young man his messenger.
So it was that one Indian-summer day, about eleven months after Ralph first set foot in Jamestown, he left it forever, with his little chest and its precious contents.
That winter voyage was a stormy one, although not a very long one, as the storms came from the west. On the tossing ship, amid the howling tempests, the young adventurer had no fears. His fancy saw a destiny for him too great to be swallowed up in a tempest. Caesar said to the frightened boatman in the storm: "Quid times? Cæsarem vehis et fortunas suas." Ralph Morton could say with equal confidence that the little ship carried greater fortunes than those of Caesar, for he was about to influence the world's history more than did Caesar. And it is doubtful if Caesar did change the current of history much beyond his lifetime. Gaul and Britain would have been conquered without him, and perhaps at the expense of the same lives and treasure which he squandered in his struggle with Pompey, and his partisans spent in their struggle with Brutus and Cassius.