On the 16th of June they discovered the River Patowomek (Potomac),
seven miles broad at the mouth, up which they sailed thirty miles
before they encountered any inhabitants. Four savages at length
appeared and conducted them up a creek where were three or four
thousand in ambush, "so strangely painted, grimed, and disguised,
shouting, yelling, and crying as so many spirits from hell could not
have showed more terrible." But the discharge of the firearms and
the echo in the forest so appeased their fury that they threw down
their bows, exchanged hostages, and kindly used the strangers. The
Indians told him that Powhatan had commanded them to betray them, and
the serious charge is added that Powhatan, "so directed from the
discontents at Jamestown because our Captain did cause them to stay
in their country against their wills." This reveals the suspicion
and thoroughly bad feeling existing among the colonists.

The expedition went up the river to a village called Patowomek, and
thence rowed up a little River Quiyough (Acquia Creek?) in search of
a mountain of antimony, which they found. The savages put this
antimony up in little bags and sold it all over the country to paint
their bodies and faces, which made them look like Blackamoors dusted
over with silver. Some bags of this they carried away, and also
collected a good amount of furs of otters, bears, martens, and minks.
Fish were abundant, "lying so thick with their heads above water, as
for want of nets (our barge driving among them) we attempted to catch
them with a frying-pan; but we found it a bad instrument to catch
fish with; neither better fish, more plenty, nor more variety for
small fish, had any of us ever seen in any place, so swimming in the
water, but they are not to be caught with frying-pans."

In all his encounters and quarrels with the treacherous savages Smith
lost not a man; it was his habit when he encountered a body of them
to demand their bows, arrows, swords, and furs, and a child or two as
hostages.

Having finished his discovery he returned. Passing the mouth of the
Rappahannock, by some called the Tappahannock, where in shoal water
were many fish lurking in the weeds, Smith had his first experience
of the Stingray. It chanced that the Captain took one of these fish
from his sword, "not knowing her condition, being much the fashion of
a Thornbeck, but a long tayle like a riding rodde whereon the middest
is a most poysonne sting of two or