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The Adventures and Discourses of Captain Iohn Smith, Sometime President of Virginia
The Adventures and Discourses of Captain Iohn Smith Sometime President of Virginia Author:John Ashton General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1883 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER X. NOW the Phcenix brought us out many colonifts, amongft whom were thirty-three gentlemen adventurers, twenty-one labourers, fix tailors, one chirurgeon and two apothecaries, one jeweller, two refiners, two goldfmiths, one gunfmith, one blackfmith, one cooper, one tobacco-pipe maker, and one perfumer! This will mow you what the Council at home thought of our colony -- fending us out fo many gentlemen (as if we had not enough of them already, forfooth) and fo few labourers. Perhaps Richard Belfield, the perfumer (!) was fent out to compound fweet fcents for thefe fine gentlemen ; we could find no other reafon for his coming to us. But had he not turned his hand to other things, he would not have made a living by his trade. And, again, fee how the luft of finding gold, was apparent in their fending out refiners and goldfmiths, who never had occafion to exercife their craft; as alfo the jeweller, for there were no precious ftones nor jewels, fave only fuch few pearls as might be found in the oyfters, of which there were great plenty. Our weak-minded Prefident kept a fort of ftate, out of all proportion to our humble means, fo that Scrivener and I, finding our remonftrances of no avail, had to treat the matter in a rougher manner,Smith's Isles. 129 and we tied him, and his parafites, down to certain allowances; fomewhat according to the rules of proportion. But no fooner had I got ready to ftart on my expedition of difcovery, than the Prefident's authority fo overfwayed Mr. Scrivener's difcretion, that our ftore, our time, our ftrength and labours, were idly confumed to fulfil his fantafies. O...« less