To their notion they must lie at least half-way
across the breadth of America. Misled by Indian stories, they believed and
wrote that five or six days' march from the Falls of the Farre West, even
through the thick forest, would bring them to the South Sea. The Falls of
the Farre West, where at Richmond the James goes with a roaring sound
around tree-crowned islet--it is strange to think that they once marked our
frontier! How that frontier has been pushed westward is a romance indeed.
And still, today, it is but a five or six days' journey to that South Sea
sought by those early Virginians. The only condition for us is that we
shall board a train. Tomorrow, with the airship, the South Sea may come
nearer yet!
The Indians of this part of the earth were of the great Algonquin family,
and the tribes with which the colonists had now to do were drawn, probably
by a polity based on blood ties, into a loose confederation within the
larger mass. Newport was "told that the name of the river was Powhatan,
the name of the chief Powhatan, and the name of the people Powhatans." But
it seemed that the chief Powhatan was not at this village but at another
and a larger place named Werowocomoco, on a second great river in the back
country to the north and east of Jamestown. Newport and his men were "well
entreated" by the Indians. "But yet," says Percy, "the Savages murmured at
our planting in the Countrie."
The party did not tarry up the river. Back came their boat through the
bright weather, between the verdurous banks, all green and flower-tinted
save where might be seen the brown of Indian clearings with bark-covered
huts and thin, up-curling blue smoke.
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