George Bancroft, History of the Colonization of the United States, Vol. 1, 17th edition.

[125] opened, which appeared to the emigrants to ‘claim

Chap IV.} 1607

the prerogative over the most pleasant places in the world.’ Hope revived for a season, as they advanced. ‘Heaven and earth seemed never to have agreed better to frame a place for man's commodious and delightful habitation.’¹ A noble river was soon entered, which was named from the monarch; and, after a search of seventeen days, during which they encountered the hostility of one little savage tribe, and at Hampton smoked the calumet of peace with another, the peninsula of Jamestown, about fifty miles above

May 13.

the mouth of the stream, was selected for the site of the colony.

Thus admirable was the country. The emigrants themselves were weakened by divisions, and degraded by jealousy. So soon as the members of the council were duly constituted, they proceeded to choose Wingfield president; and then, as by their instructions they had power to do, they excluded Smith from their body, on a charge of sedition. But as his only offence consisted in the possession of enviable qualities, the attempt at his trial was abandoned,² and by ‘the good doctrine and exhortation’ of the sincere Hunt, the man without whose aid the vices of the colony would have caused its immediate ruin, was soon restored to his station.³

While the men were busy in felling timber and providing freight for the ships, Newport and Smith and twenty others ascended the James River to the falls. They visited the native chieftain Powhatan, who has been styled ‘the emperor of the country,’ at his principal seat, just below the falls of the river at Richmond.