was in the right and who in the wrong in
these ancient quarrels, the recital of which fills the pages of Smith
and of other men, is hard now to be determined. But Jamestown became a
place of turbulence. Francis West was sent with a considerable number to
the Falls of the Far West to make there some kind of settlement. For a
like purpose Martin and Percy were dispatched to the Nansemond River.
All along the line there was bitter falling out. The Indians became
markedly hostile. Smith was up the river, quarreling with West and his
men. At last he called them "wrongheaded asses," flung himself into
his boat, and made down the river to Jamestown. Yet even so he found no
peace, for, while he was asleep in the boat, by some accident or other
a spark found its way to his powder pouch. The powder exploded. Terribly
hurt, he leaped overboard into the river, whence he was with difficulty
rescued.

Smith was now deposed by Ratcliffe, Archer, and Martin, because, "being
an ambityous, onworthy, and vayneglorious fellowe," say his detractors,
"he wolde rule all and ingrose all authority into his own hands." Be
this as it may, Smith was put on board one of the ships which were about
to sail for England. Wounded, and with none at Jamestown able to heal
his hurt, he was no unwilling passenger. Thus he departed, and Virginia
knew Captain John Smith no more. Some liked him and his ways, some liked
him not nor his ways either. He wrote of his own deeds and praised them
highly, and saw little good in other mankind, though here and there he
made an exception. Evident enough are faults of temper. But he had great
courage and energy and at times a lofty disinterestedness.

Again winter drew on at Jamestown, and with it misery on misery. George
Percy, now President, lay ill and unable to keep order. The multitude,
"unbridled and heedless," pulled this way and that. Before the cold had
well begun, what provision there was in the storehouse became exhausted.
That stream of corn from the Indians in which the colonists had put
dependence failed to flow. The Indians themselves began systematically
to spoil and murder. Ratcliffe and fourteen with him met death while
loading his barge with corn upon the Pamunkey. The cold grew worse.
By midwinter there was famine. The four hundred--already noticeably
dwindled--dwindled fast and faster. The cold was severe; the Indians
were in the woods; the weakened bodies of the white men pined and
shivered. They br