ness! The second expedition transported more gentlemen and several goldsmiths, who filled the settlement with clamor about riches until, as John Smith, who was on the spot exclaimed, "there was now no talk, no hope, no work, but dig gold, wash gold, refine gold, load gold." The third and fourth voyages brought more gentlemen, tradesmen, soldiers, and fortune hunters. Finally the exasperated Captain Smith blurted out the bitter truth to the Company: "When you send again, I entreat you rather send but thirty carpenters, husbandmen, gardeners, fishermen, blacksmiths, masons, and diggers up of trees' roots, well provided, than a thousand such as we have."
Indeed, among the early bands of emigrants only one member, this Captain Smith, seems to have grasped the true nature of colonial economy. Though most of his charming tales, including the story of his rescue by Pocahontas, an Indian maid, are now discredited, and though he is set down among the great romancers like Casanova and Sancho Panza, Smith was keenly alive to the realities of the struggle in Virginia. "Nothing," he wrote, "is to be expected thence, but by labor."
Standing on that principle, Smith kept up a constant demand for emigrants not afraid of soiling their hands, and saved the day more than once by enforcing the rule that those who would not work should not eat. Boastful and unpopular as he was, Smith was personally brave in warfare and fertile in practical plans for defending the settlement and producing the means of livelihood. He led in exploring and developing Virginia; when an explosion of gunpowder severely wounded him and sent him back to England for surgical attention, disease and famine almost wiped out the colony. Nothing but the arrival of outside relief saved the survivors from utter ruin. The Company demanded gold of Smith; he gave it something more valuable, a map of the region, a sketch of its resources, and sound advice as to the kind of emigrants suitable for colonization.
In fashioning its land policy, the Virginia Company was
