Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/55

 , which seems to have been shared by Englishmen (if that age in general, appears remarkable when it is recalled that Sir Francis Drake had, many years before, in his circumnavigation of the globe, sailed along the western coast of North America. It can only be adequately explained on the ground that the knowledge of longitudes at that time was grossly defective. Interrupted in their voyage by the Falls, the members of the expedition returned to Jamestown. Newport, on his arrival in England, having no certain report to make as to the proximity of Virginia to the South Sea, contented himself, as we have seen, with announcing the discovery of gold in the Colony.

The unfavorable issue of the voyage to the Falls did not seriously diminish the hope which the Company had of finding a route to the East through Virginia. This hope was afterwards sustained by further information received from the Indians. Captain Smith, who, at a later period, deprecated so earnestly and so properly the subordination of the practical interests of the Colony to the advancement of schemes looking to the discovery of the South Sea, was, in the beginning, one of the chief instruments in giving substantial ground to these sanguine expectations. During his captivity, which occurred only a few months after the