says the people are witty
and ingenious and allows them many good qualities, but makes this
exception: "The people steal anything comes near them; yea, are so
practiced in this art, that looking in our face, they would with
their foot, between their toes, convey a chisel, knife, percer, or
any indifferent light thing, which having once conveyed, they hold it
an injury to take the same from them. They are naturally given to
treachery; howbeit we could not find it in our travel up the river,
but rather a most kind and loving people."

VI

QUARRELS AND HARDSHIPS

On Sunday, June 21st, they took the communion lovingly together.
That evening Captain Newport gave a farewell supper on board his
vessel. The 22d he sailed in the Susan Constant for England,
carrying specimens of the woods and minerals, and made the short
passage of five weeks. Dudley Carleton, in a letter to John
Chamberlain dated Aug. 18, 1607, writes "that Captain Newport has
arrived without gold or silver, and that the adventurers, cumbered by
the presence of the natives, have fortified themselves at a place
called Jamestown." The colony left numbered one hundred and four.

The good harmony of the colony did not last. There were other
reasons why the settlement was unprosperous. The supply of wholesome
provisions was inadequate. The situation of the town near the
Chickahominy swamps was not conducive to health, and although
Powhatan had sent to make peace with them, and they also made a
league of amity with the chiefs Paspahegh and Tapahanagh, they
evidently had little freedom of movement beyond sight of their guns.
Percy says they were very bare and scant of victuals, and in wars and
dangers with the savages.

Smith says in his "True Relation," which was written on the spot, and
is much less embittered than his "General Historie," that they were
in good health and content when Newport departed, but this did not
long continue, for President Wingfield and Captain Gosnold, with the
most of the Council, were so discontented with each other that
nothing was done with discretion, and no business transacted with
wisdom. This he charges upon the "hard-dealing of the President,"
the rest of the Council being diversely affected through his
audacious command. "Captain Martin, though honest, was weak and
sick; Smith was in disgrace through the malice of others; and God
sent famine and sickness, so that the living were scarce able to bury
the dead. Our want