natural wealth which Virginia possessed. He knew very well that the information which would be most acceptable to the persons who were interested in the enterprise was that there were unmistakable outcroppings of the precious metals in the country lying along the Powhatan. The supposed ore that Newport had brought into England must have been soon tested and found entirely lacking in value, for Dudley Carleton, in August of the same year, in a letter to Chamberlain, alluded to the settlement at Jamestown, from which place he stated that Newport had recently returned, and remarked that the “aire and the soil and commodities” of Virginia were highly commended by the colonists, “but gold and silver have they none.”[1]
Hope again triumphed over all discouragements. When Captain Newport set out for Virginia in charge of the First Supply, he was accompanied by two goldsmiths, two refiners, and one jeweller. The colonists, quickened in their thirst for gold and silver by the zeal of Newport and the English experts whom he had brought over, entered with the utmost ardor into the search for these metals; it was reported that at this time there were among the English in Virginia “no talk, no hope, no work, but dig gold, wash gold, refine gold, loade gold.”[2] When the ship sailed, she carried away a cargo of shining dirt, which, after its arrival in England, was shown to be wholly worthless. For a period of fourteen weeks, Captain Newport had lingered in the Colony at a heavy expense in victuals and wages in order that his seamen might have an opportunity to say that they had assisted the settlers at Jamestown in discovering gold. Not long after the departure of his vessel, the Phœnix, her consort in the outward voyage, came in, having been delayed by violent
