On one of the islets below the Falls, Captain Newport set up a cross with the inscription “Jacobus, Rex, 1607,” and his own name beneath, and James was proclaimed King with a great shout.  Powhatan was displeased with their importunity to go further up the river, and departed with all the Indians, except the friendly Navirans, who had accompanied them from Arahatic.  Navirans greatly admired the cross, but Newport hit upon an explanation of its meaning that should dispel the suspicions of Powhatan.  He told him that the two arms of the cross signified King Powhatan and himself, the fastening of it in the middle was their united league, and the shout was the reverence he did to Powhatan.  This explanation being made to Powhatan greatly contented him, and he came on board and gave them the kindest farewell when they dropped down the river.  At Arahatic they found the King had provided victuals for them, but, says Newport, “the King told us that he was very sick and not able to sit up long with us.”  The inability of the noble red man to sit up was no doubt due to too much Christian sack and aquavite, for on “Monday he came to the water side, and we went ashore with him again.  He told us that our hot drinks, he thought, caused him grief, but that he was well again, and we were very welcome.”

It seems, therefore, that to Captain Newport, who was a good sailor in his day, and has left his name in Virginia in Newport News, must be given the distinction of first planting the cross in Virginia, with a lie, and watering it, with aquavite.

They dropped down the river to a place called Mulberry Shade, where the King killed a deer and prepared for them another feast, at which they had rolls and cakes made of wheat.  “This the women make and are very cleanly about it.  We had parched meal, excellent good, sodd [cooked] beans, which eat as sweet as filbert kernels, in a manner, strawberries; and mulberries were shaken off the tree, dropping on our heads as we sat.  He made ready a land turtle, which we ate; and showed that he was heartily rejoiced in our company.”  Such was the amiable disposition of the natives before they discovered the purpose of the whites to dispossess them of their territory.  That night they stayed at a place called “Kynd Woman’s Care,” where the people offered them abundant victual and craved nothing in return.

Next day they went ashore at a place Newport calls Queen Apumatuc’s Bower.  This Queen, who owed allegiance to Powhatan, had much land under cultivation, and dwelt in state on a pretty hill.  This ancient representative of woman’s rights in Virginia did honor to her sex.  She came to meet the strangers in a show as majestical as that of Powhatan himself:  “She had an usher before her, who brought her to the matt prepared under a faire mulberry-tree; where she sat down by herself, with a stayed countenance.  She would permitt none to stand or sitt neare her.  She is a fatt, lustie, manly woman.  She had much