With this multitude appeared once more in Virginia the three ancient
councilors--Ratcliffe, Archer, and Martin. Apparently here came fresh fuel
for factions. Who should rule, and who should be ruled? Here is an
extremely old and important question, settled in history only to be
unsettled again. Everywhere it rises, dust on Time's road, and is laid only
to rise again.

Smith was still President. Who was in the right and who in the wrong in
these ancient quarrels, the recital of which fills the pages of Smith and
of other men, is hard now to be determined. But Jamestown became a place of
turbulence. Francis West was sent with a considerable number to the Falls
of the Far West to make there some kind of settlement. For a like purpose
Martin and Percy were dispatched to the Nansemond River. All along the line
there was bitter falling out. The Indians became markedly hostile. Smith
was up the river, quarreling with West and his men. At last he called them
"wrongheaded asses," flung himself into his boat, and made down the river
to Jamestown. Yet even so he found no peace, for, while he was asleep in the
boat, by some accident or other a spark found its way to his powder pouch.
The powder exploded. Terribly hurt, he leaped overboard into the river,
whence he was with difficulty rescued.

Smith was now deposed by Ratcliffe, Archer, and Martin, because, "being an
ambityous, onworthy, and vayneglorious fellowe," say his detractors, "he
wolde rule all and ingrose all authority into his own hands." Be this as it
may, Smith was put on board one of the ships which were about to sail for
England. Wounded, and with none at Jamestown able to heal his hurt, he was
no unwilling passenger. Thus he departed, and Virginia knew Captain John
Smith no more. Some liked him and his ways, some liked him not nor his ways
either. He wrote of his own deeds and praised them highly, and saw little