h arrested the ringleader of the malecontents, and ordered that
whoever failed to provide daily as much food as he should consume,
should be banished from Jamestown as a drone. Of the two hundred
settlers, many were billeted among the Indians, and thus became familiar
with their habits and manner of life.

Sicklemore, who had been dispatched to Chowanock, returned, after a
fruitless search for Sir Walter Raleigh's people. He found the Chowan
River not large; the country generally overgrown with pines; pemminaw,
or silk-grass growing here and there. Two other messengers, sent to the
country of the Mangoags in quest of the lost settlers, learned that they
were all dead. Guides had been supplied by the hospitable chief of the
Quiyoughcohannocks to convoy the messengers. This chief was of all
others most friendly to the whites; although a superstitious worshipper
of his own gods, yet he acknowledged that they were as inferior to the
English God in power as the bow and arrow were inferior to the English
gun; and he often sent presents to Smith, begging him "to pray to the
English God for rain, else his corn would perish, for his gods were
angry."

The Virginia Company in England, mainly intent on pecuniary gain and
quick returns, were discouraged by the disasters that had befallen the
colony, and disappointed in their visionary hopes of the discovery of
gold mines, and of a passage to the South Sea. They therefore took
measures to procure from King James a new charter, abrogating the
existing one, and investing them with ampler powers. Having associated
with themselves a numerous body of additional stockholders, or
adventurers, as they were then styled, including many persons of rank,
and wealth, and influence, they succeeded in obtaining from the king a
new charter, dated May 23d, 1609, transferring to the Company several
important powers before reserved to the crown. By this charter the
extent of Virginia was much enlarged, the eastern boundary being a line
extending two hundred miles north of Point Comfort, and two hundred
miles south of it, the northern and southern boundaries being parallels
drawn through the extremities of the eastern boundary back to the South
Sea or Pacific--the western boundary being the Pacific.

By the provisions of the new charter the Virginia Company became indeed
apparently more independent and republican, but under the new system the
governor of the colony was indued with arbitrary power, an