not long before they again ran short of food. In his first narrative
Smith says there were some motions made for the President and Captain
Arthur to go over to England and procure a supply, but it was with much
ado concluded that the pinnace and the barge should go up the river to
Powhatan to trade for corn, and the lot fell to Smith to command the
expedition. In his "General Historie" a little different complexion is
put upon this. On his return, Smith says, he suppressed an attempt to
run away with the pinnace to England. He represents that what food "he
carefully provided the rest carelessly spent," and there is probably
much truth in his charges that the settlers were idle and improvident.
He says also that they were in continual broils at this time. It is in
the fall of 1607, just before his famous voyage up the Chickahominy,
on which he departed December 10th--that he writes: "The President and
Captain Arthur intended not long after to have abandoned the country,
which project was curbed and suppressed by Smith. The Spaniard never
more greedily desired gold than he victual, nor his soldiers more to
abandon the country than he to keep it. But finding plenty of corn in
the river of Chickahomania, where hundreds of salvages in divers places
stood with baskets expecting his coming, and now the winter approaching,
the rivers became covered with swans, geese, ducks, and cranes, that we
daily feasted with good bread, Virginia peas, pumpions, and putchamins,
fish, fowls, and divers sorts of wild beasts as fat as we could
eat them, so that none of our Tuftaffaty humorists desired to go to
England."

While the Chickahominy expedition was preparing, Smith made a voyage to
Popohanock or Quiyoughcohanock, as it is called on his map, a town
on the south side of the river, above Jamestown. Here the women and
children fled from their homes and the natives refused to trade. They
had plenty of corn, but Smith says he had no commission to spoil them.
On his return he called at Paspahegh, a town on the north side of the
James, and on the map placed higher than Popohanock, but evidently
nearer to Jamestown, as he visited it on his return. He obtained ten
bushels of corn of the churlish and treacherous natives, who closely
watched and dogged the expedition.

Everything was now ready for the journey to Powhatan. Smith had the
barge and eight men for trading and discovery, and the pinnace was
to follow to take the supplies at convenient