he
private store, 2 glasses with sallet oyle which I brought with me out of
England for my private stoare, and willed him to bury it in the ground,
for that I feared the great heate would spoile it. Whatsoever was more,
I did never consent unto or know of it, and as truly was it protested
unto me, that all the remaynder before mencioned of the oyle, wyne, &c.,
which the President receyved of me when I was deposed they themselves
poored into their owne bellyes.
"To the President's and Counsell's objections I saie that I doe knowe
curtesey and civility became a governor. No penny whittle was asked me,
but a knife, whereof I have none to spare The Indyans had long before
stoallen my knife. Of chickins I never did eat but one, and that in my
sicknes. Mr. Ratcliff had before that time tasted Of 4 or 5. I had by
my owne huswiferie bred above 37, and the most part of them my owne
poultrye; of all which, at my comyng awaie, I did not see three living.
I never denyed him (or any other) beare, when I had it. The corne was of
the same which we all lived upon.
"Mr. Smyth, in the time of our hungar, had spread a rumor in the
Collony, that I did feast myself and my servants out of the comon
stoare, with entent (as I gathered) to have stirred the discontented
company against me. I told him privately, in Mr. Gosnold's tent, that
indeede I had caused half a pint of pease to be sodden with a peese
of pork, of my own provision, for a poore old man, which in a sicknes
(whereof he died) he much desired; and said, that if out of his malice
he had given it out otherwise, that hee did tell a leye. It was proved
to his face, that he begged in Ireland like a rogue, without a lycence.
To such I would not my nam should be a companyon."
The explanation about the Bible as a part of his baggage is a little
far-fetched, and it is evident that that book was not his daily
companion. Whether John Smith habitually carried one about with him we
are not informed. The whole passage quoted gives us a curious picture
of the mind and of the habits of the time. This allusion to John Smith's
begging is the only reference we can find to his having been in Ireland.
If he was there it must have been in that interim in his own narrative
between his return from Morocco and his going to Virginia. He was
likely enough to seek adventure there, as the hangers-on of the court in
Raleigh's day occasionally did, and perhaps nothing occurred during
his visit there that
|