of delivering Powhatan's present and placing
an idle crown upon that Indian's head who, among his own people, was
already sufficiently supreme, might be and was performed. And Newport
with a large party went again to the Falls of the Far West and miles
deep into the country beyond. Here they found Indians outside the
Powhatan Confederacy, but no South Sea, nor mines of gold and silver,
nor any news of the lost colony of Roanoke. In December Newport left
Virginia in the Mary and Margaret, and with him sailed Ratcliffe. Smith
succeeded to the presidency.

About this time John Laydon, a laborer, and Anne Burras, that maid of
Mistress Forest's, fell in love and would marry. So came about the first
English wedding in Virginia.

Winter followed with snow and ice, nigh two hundred people to feed, and
not overmuch in the larder with which to do it. Smith with George
Percy and Francis West and others went again to the Indians for
corn. Christmas found them weather-bound at Kecoughtan. "Wherever an
Englishman may be, and in whatever part of the world, he must keep
Christmas with feasting and merriment! And, indeed, we were never more
merrie, nor fedde on more plentie of good oysters, fish, flesh, wild
fowle and good bread; nor never had better fires in England than in the
drie, smokie houses of Kecoughtan!"

But despite this Christmas fare, there soon began quarrels, many and
intricate, with Powhatan and his brother Opechancanough.

CHAPTER V. THE "SEA ADVENTURE"

Experience is a great teacher. That London Company with Virginia to
colonize had now come to see how inadequate to the attempt were its
means and strength. Evidently it might be long before either gold mines
or the South Sea could be found. The company's ships were too slight and
few; colonists were going by the single handful when they should go by
the double. Something was at fault in the management of the enterprise.
The quarrels in Virginia were too constant, the disasters too frequent.
More money, more persons interested with purse and mind, a great
company instead of a small, a national cast to the enterprise these were
imperative needs. In the press of such demands the London Company passed
away. In 1609 under new letters patent was born the Virginia Company.

The members and shareholders in this corporation touch through and
through the body of England at that day. First names upon the roll come
Robert Cecil, Thomas Howard, Henry Wriothesley, William H