he cared to celebrate. If he went to Ireland he
probably got in straits there, for that was his usual luck.
Whatever is the truth about Mr. Wingfield's inefficiency and
embezzlement of corn meal, Communion sack, and penny whittles, his
enemies had no respect for each other or concord among themselves. It is
Wingfield's testimony that Ratcliffe said he would not have been
deposed if he had visited Ratcliffe during his sickness. Smith said
that Wingfield would not have been deposed except for Archer; that the
charges against him were frivolous. Yet, says Wingfield, "I do believe
him the first and only practiser in these practices," and he attributed
Smith's hostility to the fact that "his name was mentioned in the
intended and confessed mutiny by Galthrop." Noother reference is made to
this mutiny. Galthrop was one of those who died in the previous August.
One of the best re-enforcements of the first supply was Matthew
Scrivener, who was appointed one of the Council. He was a sensible man,
and he and Smith worked together in harmony for some time. They were
intent upon building up the colony. Everybody else in the camp was crazy
about the prospect of gold: there was, says Smith, "no talk, no hope, no
work, but dig gold, wash gold, refine gold, load gold, such a bruit of
gold that one mad fellow desired to be buried in the sands, lest they
should by their art make gold of his bones." He charges that Newport
delayed his return to England on account of this gold fever, in order to
load his vessel (which remained fourteen weeks when it might have sailed
in fourteen days) with gold-dust. Captain Martin seconded Newport in
this; Smith protested against it; he thought Newport was no refiner, and
it did torment him "to see all necessary business neglected, to fraught
such a drunken ship with so much gilded durt." This was the famous load
of gold that proved to be iron pyrites.
In speaking of the exploration of the James River as far as the Falls by
Newport, Smith, and Percy, we have followed the statements of Percy
and the writer of Newport's discovery that they saw the great Powhatan.
There is much doubt of this. Smith in his "True Relation" does not say
so; in his voyage up the Chickahominy he seems to have seen Powhatan for
the first time; and Wingfield speaks of Powhatan, on Smith's return
from that voyage, as one "of whom before we had no knowledge." It is
conjectured that the one seen at Powhatan's seat near the Falls w
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