inhabit them, as you may see at large. Also two
barrels of stones, and such as I take to be good.
Iron ore at the least; so divided, as by their notes
you may see in what places I found them. The
souldiers say many of your officers maintaine their
families out of that you sent us, and that Newport
hath an hundred pounds a year for carrying newes.
For every master you have yet sent can find the way
as well as he, so that an hundred pounds might be
spared, which is more than we have all, that helps
to pay him wages. Cap. Ratliffe is now called
Sicklemore, a poore counterfeited Imposture.
I have sent you him home least the Company should
cut his throat. What he is, now every one can
tell you: if he and Archer returne againe, they
are sufficient to keep us always in factions.
When you send againe I entreat you rather send but
thirty carpenters, husbandmen, gardiners, fishermen,
blacksmiths, masons, and diggers up of trees roots,
well provided, then a thousand of such as we have;
for except wee be able both to lodge them, and feed
them, the most will consume with want of necessaries
before they can be made good for anything. Thus
if you please to consider this account, and the unnecessary
wages to Captaine Newport, or his ships so long lingering
and staying here (for notwithstanding his boasting
to leave us victuals for 12 months, though we had
89 by this discovery lame and sicke, and but a pinte
of corne a day for a man, we were constrained to give
him three hogsheads of that to victuall him homeward),
or yet to send into Germany or Poleland for glassemen
and the rest, till we be able to sustaine ourselves,
and releeve them when they come. It were better
to give five hundred pound a ton for those grosse
Commodities in Denmarke, then send for them hither,
till more necessary things be provided. For in
over-toyling our weake and unskilfull bodies, to satisfy
this desire of present profit, we can scarce ever
recover ourselves from one supply to another.
And I humbly intreat you hereafter, let us have what
we should receive, and not stand to the Saylers courtesie
to leave us what they please, els you may charge us
what you will, but we not you with anything. These
are the causes that have kept us in Virginia from laying
such a foundation that ere this might have given much
better content and satisfaction, but as yet you must
not look for any profitable returning. So I humbly
rest.
After the departure of Newport, Smith, with his accustomed
resolution, set to work to gather supplies for the
winter. Corn had to be extorted from the Indians
by force. In one expedition to Nansemond, when
the Indians refused to trade, Smith fired upon them,
and then landed and burned one of their houses; whereupon
they submitted and loaded his three boats with corn.
The ground was covered with ice and snow, and the
nights were bitterly cold. The device for sleeping
warm in the open air was to sweep the snow away from
the ground and build a fire; the fire was then raked
off from the heated earth and a mat spread, upon which
the whites lay warm, sheltered by a mat hung up on
the windward side, until the ground got cold, when
they builded a fire on another place. Many a cold
winter night did the explorers endure this hardship,
yet grew fat and lusty under it.