which was to be made towards the west in search of the South Sea. Newport felt, no doubt, as lively an interest in the discovery of a highway through Virginia to that sea as his present employers in England did, for he was a detached officer of the Russia Company, which, as we have seen, had gone to much expense to find a passage to the East Indies both by the northeast and by the northwest. If he had succeeded in discovering this passage along the line of the Powhatan, he would have entitled himself to the gratitude of both the Russia and the London Companies, and would have received a reward in proportion. He was instructed by the London Company on this occasion, as I have already pointed out, to remain in Virginia until he could bring back to England a lump of gold, or one of the lost colonists of Sir Walter Raleigh, or could report a certainty of the South Sea. Every influence, therefore, united to cause him at this time to subordinate the real interests of the settlement at Jamestown to the pursuit of the latter purposes, which the event was to prove to be so wholly impracticable.
As soon as the coronation of Powhatan had taken place,[1] Newport set out for the Monacan country, accompanied by one hundred and twenty picked men, only eighty or ninety men being left at Jamestown to prepare a cargo of clapboards for the ship on its homeward voyage. Whether or not there is good reason to think that Smith was
- ↑ The coronation of Powhatan took place in 1608, after the return of Newport to Virginia with the Second Supply, who brought over for the king a crown, bason and ewer, bed and furniture, and a “scarlet cloke and apparell.” “Foule trouble there was to make him kneele to receive his crowne . . . . At last by leaning hard on his shoulders, he a little stooped and three having the crowne in their hands put it on his head . . . to congratulate their kindness, he gave his old shoes and his mantell to Captaine Newport.” Powhatan was crowned at Werowocomoco, his place of residence on York River.
