agers in 1606, Drayton expressed the hope that success would continue “to entice them to get the pearl and gold.”[1] The order in council framed for the guidance of the colonists after they reached Virginia directed that Newport and Gosnold, who were specially detailed to explore the river upon which the settlement was to be made, should, as soon as they observed hills, send out a band of twenty men for the purpose of using pickaxes to discover the presence of the precious metals.[2] The adventurers easily cheated themselves with the belief that the high ground seen along the upper stretches of the Powhatan gave indications of gold. In the letter which the President and Council at Jamestown despatched to England by Newport on his return in 1607, the Company was urged to forward a supply with the utmost expedition, “least the all-devouring Spaniard lay his ravenous hands upon these gold-showing mountains, which if we be so enhabled, he shall never dare to think on.”[3] When Captain Newport arrived at Plymouth, he made haste to write to Salisbury that Virginia “was very rich in gold and copper.” He had brought over with him specimens of auriferous ore. I will not deliver the expectance and assurance we have of great wealth,” he declared in the letter already quoted, “but will leave it to your Lordship’s censure when you see the probabilities,” adding, “I wish I might have come in person to have brought these glad tidings.”[4] Newport had nothing to say as to the commonplace elements of
- ↑
"Cheerefully at sea
Successe you still entice
To get the pearle and gold."Drayton’s Poems, 1619–20. - ↑ Works of Capt. John Smith, p. xxxv. Drayton’s Poems, 1619-20.
- ↑ Brown’s Genesis of the United States, p. 108. It is also printed in Neill’s Virginia and Virginiola, pp. 10, 11. See also Royal Hist. MSS. Commission, Third Report, p. 53.
- ↑ Royal Hist, MSS. Commission, Third Report, p. 54.
