een for the most part arbitrary;
the political rights of the colonists must, for a time, have lain in
abeyance. Their civil rights were protected in criminal causes by the
trial by jury, and lands were to be held by a free tenure.

At length three vessels were fitted out for the expedition, one of
twenty tons, one of forty, the third of one hundred tons, and they were
put under the command of Captain Christopher Newport, a navigator
experienced in voyages to the New World. Orders being put on board
inclosed in a sealed box, not to be opened until their arrival in
Virginia, they set sail from Blackwall on the 19th of December, 1606.
For six weeks they were detained by headwinds and stormy weather in the
Downs, within view of the English coast, and during this interval,
disorder, threatening a mutiny, prevailed among the adventurers.
However, it was suppressed by the interposition of the clergyman, Robert
Hunt. The winds at length proving favorable, the little fleet proceeded
along the old route by the Canaries, which they reached about the
twenty-first of April, and on the twenty-sixth sailed for the West
Indies, upon arriving at which it appears that Captain Smith was
actually in command of the expedition, for,[38:A] writing afterwards in
1629, he says: "Because I have ranged and lived among those islands,
what my authors cannot tell me, I think it no great error in helping
them to tell it myself. In this little Isle of Mevis, more than twenty
years ago, I have remained a good time together, to wood and water, and
refresh _my men_." This isle was, on this occasion, the scene of a
remarkable incident in his life, and one which appears to have escaped
the notice of our historians. "Such factions here we had as commonly
attend such voyages, that a pair of gallows was made; but Captain Smith,
for whom they were intended, could not be persuaded to use them. But not
any of the inventors but their lives by justice fell into his power to
determine of at his pleasure, whom, with much mercy, he favored, that
most basely and unjustly would have betrayed him."

After passing three weeks in the West Indies they sailed in quest of
Roanoke Island, and having exceeded their reckoning three days without
finding land, the crew grew impatient, and Ratcliffe, captain of the
pinnace, proposed to steer back for England.

At this conjuncture a violent storm, compelling them to scud all night
under bare poles, providentially drove them into