the rest carelessly spent,” and there is probably much truth in his charges that the settlers were idle and improvident.  He says also that they were in continual broils at this time.  It is in the fall of 1607, just before his famous voyage up the Chickahominy, on which he departed December 10th—­that he writes:  “The President and Captain Arthur intended not long after to have abandoned the country, which project was curbed and suppressed by Smith.  The Spaniard never more greedily desired gold than he victual, nor his soldiers more to abandon the country than he to keep it.  But finding plenty of corn in the river of Chickahomania, where hundreds of salvages in divers places stood with baskets expecting his coming, and now the winter approaching, the rivers became covered with swans, geese, ducks, and cranes, that we daily feasted with good bread, Virginia peas, pumpions, and putchamins, fish, fowls, and divers sorts of wild beasts as fat as we could eat them, so that none of our Tuftaffaty humorists desired to go to England.”

While the Chickahominy expedition was preparing, Smith made a voyage to Popohanock or Quiyoughcohanock, as it is called on his map, a town on the south side of the river, above Jamestown.  Here the women and children fled from their homes and the natives refused to trade.  They had plenty of corn, but Smith says he had no commission to spoil them.  On his return he called at Paspahegh, a town on the north side of the James, and on the map placed higher than Popohanock, but evidently nearer to Jamestown, as he visited it on his return.  He obtained ten bushels of corn of the churlish and treacherous natives, who closely watched and dogged the expedition.

Everything was now ready for the journey to Powhatan.  Smith had the barge and eight men for trading and discovery, and the pinnace was to follow to take the supplies at convenient landings.  On the 9th of November he set out in the barge to explore the Chickahominy, which is described as emptying into the James at Paspahegh, eight miles above the fort.  The pinnace was to ascend the river twenty miles to Point Weanock, and to await Smith there.  All the month of November Smith toiled up and down the Chickahominy, discovering and visiting many villages, finding the natives kindly disposed and eager to trade, and possessing abundance of corn.  Notwithstanding this abundance, many were still mutinous.  At this time occurred the President’s quarrel with the blacksmith, who, for assaulting the President, was condemned to death, and released on disclosing a conspiracy of which Captain Kendall was principal; and the latter was executed in his place.  Smith returned from a third voyage to the Chickahominy with more supplies, only to find the matter of sending the pinnace to England still debated.

This project, by the help of Captain Martin, he again quieted and at last set forward on his famous voyage into the country of Powhatan and Pocahontas.