food for themselves, and Smith, though he had known since July they were coming, was in no position to provide for them all, either out of the colony's stores, nature's providing or the Indian trade. The supplies were short, growing shorter, and all agreed on the need to disperse.

This example of the Indians and experience had taught Smith to spread colonists out with winter's approach, so that they need not all depend on the resources of a single area. Then West loaded a ship with munitions, food, and supplies, took one hundred and twenty men to the falls of the James, which is the site of modern Richmond, and set them to building a fort near the river's edge. On a hill nearby was an Indian village commanded by a werowance, which the English called Little Powhatan.

West's settlers somehow got it into their heads that the river was the way to the South Sea, as the Pacific was called. They apparently then decided that a fort by the stream would command the route to riches and make them wealthy gatekeepers. The Indians objected and killed the men who strayed from the compound. At the end of the month Smith, who figured the Pacific lay beyond the Potomac, took five soldiers up the Jamestown river to check on matters, met West coming down, and arrived at the falls to declare the ground of West's Fort flood prone. Smith was more than likely right in his thinking, but he was little credited.

Smith ended up arresting six or seven of West's men, put the rest in the village, and named the place Nonesuch, and made good the losses on either side, including the munitions and food he had captured and taken away himself. As Smith prepared to depart, however, Captain West reappeared, took command, and moved his men back to West's Fort by the river. Smith, by his account, threw up his hands and left for Jamestown.

While on his travels asleep in the boat, Smith said, he was horribly burned when a spark fell from a match and touched off a gunpowder bag he wore at his waist. He jumped into the river to extinguish the flames and was then recovered half drowned. Unfortunately, Smith was accidentally injured by the gunpowder