Page:Aristopia (1895).pdf/56

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

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.