game. But this plenty did not last long; for what
Smith carefully provided the colonists carelessly wasted. The idlers at
Jamestown, including some of the council, now began to mutter complaints
against Smith for not having discovered the source of the Chickahominy,
it being supposed that the South Sea or Pacific Ocean lay not far
distant, and that a communication with it would be found by some river
running from the northwest. The Chickahominy flowed in that direction,
and hence the solicitude of these Jamestown cosmographers to trace that
river to its head. To allay this dissatisfaction of the council, Smith
made another voyage up that river, and proceeded until it became
necessary, in order to pass, to cut away a large tree which had fallen
across the stream. When at last the barge could advance no farther, he
returned eight miles and moored her in a wide bay out of danger, and
leaving orders to his men not to venture on shore until his return,
accompanied by two of his men and two Indian guides, and leaving seven
men in the barge, he went still higher up in a canoe to the distance of
twenty miles. In a short time after he had parted from the barge the men
left in her went ashore, and one of them, George Cassen, was surprised
and killed. Smith, in the mean while, not suspecting this disaster,
reached the marshy ground toward the head of the river, "the slashes,"
and went out with his gun to provide food for the party, and took with
him one of the Indians. During his excursion his two men, Robinson and
Emry, were slain; and he himself was attacked by a numerous party of
Indians, two of whom he killed with a pistol. He protected himself from
their arrows by making a shield of his guide, binding him fast by the
arm with one of his garters. Many arrows pierced his clothes, and some
slightly wounded him. Endeavoring to reach the canoe, and walking
backward with his eye still fixed on his pursuers, he sunk to his waist
in an oozy creek, and his savage with him. Nevertheless the Indians were
afraid to approach, until, being now half-dead with cold, he threw away
his arms, when they drew him forth, and led him to the fire where his
two companions were lying dead. Here the Indians chafed his benumbed
limbs, and having restored the vital heat, Smith inquired for their
chief, and they pointed him to Opechancanough, the great chief of
Pamunkey. Smith presented him a mariner's compass; the vibrations of the
mysterious needle astoni