of the colony shows a serious purpose of settlement,
since the trades were mostly represented, but there were too many
gentlemen to make it a working colony. And, indeed, the gentlemen, like
the promoters of the enterprise in London, were probably more solicitous
of discovering a passage to the South Sea, as the way to increase
riches, than of making a state. They were instructed to explore every
navigable river they might find, and to follow the main branches, which
would probably lead them in one direction to the East Indies or South
Sea, and in the other to the Northwest Passage. And they were forcibly
reminded that the way to prosper was to be of one mind, for their own
and their country's good.

This last advice did not last the expedition out of sight of land. They
sailed from Blackwell, December 19, 1606, but were kept six weeks on the
coast of England by contrary winds. A crew of saints cabined in those
little caravels and tossed about on that coast for six weeks would
scarcely keep in good humor. Besides, the position of the captains and
leaders was not yet defined. Factious quarrels broke out immediately,
and the expedition would likely have broken up but for the wise conduct
and pious exhortations of Mr. Robert Hunt, the preacher. This faithful
man was so ill and weak that it was thought he could not recover, yet
notwithstanding the stormy weather, the factions on board, and although
his home was almost in sight, only twelve miles across the Downs, he
refused to quit the ship. He was unmoved, says Smith, either by the
weather or by "the scandalous imputations (of some few little better
than atheists, of the greatest rank amongst us)." With "the water of his
patience" and "his godly exhortations" he quenched the flames of envy
and dissension.

They took the old route by the West Indies. George Percy notes that on
the 12th of February they saw a blazing star, and presently a storm.
They watered at the Canaries, traded with savages at San Domingo, and
spent three weeks refreshing themselves among the islands. The quarrels
revived before they reached the Canaries, and there Captain Smith was
seized and put in close confinement for thirteen weeks.

We get little light from contemporary writers on this quarrel. Smith
does not mention the arrest in his "True Relation," but in his "General
Historie," writing of the time when they had been six weeks in Virginia,
he says: "Now Captain Smith who all this time from the