An Unexpected Meeting

It was not yet noon when Governor Calvert and Father Altham came on board the Dove  again, and we set off farther up the river to a village of the Piscataway Indians, regarding which those on shore had told the priest.

It was yet early in the afternoon when we came around a bend in the stream, beyond which we could see the village, and there, lying at anchor, were two small pinnaces, much after the same make as was the Dove.

That there were white people on the river above us no one had believed, although we received information of a settlement of Englishmen on Kent Island, some distance farther up the bay, of which I shall tell you later, and we craned our necks in vain to see English crews aboard the pinnaces. In this, however, we were disappointed, for a dozen or more dark-skinned men were seen aboard these craft, but never a white face.

On the shore were gathered no less than five hundred Indians, so John said, all armed and seemingly ready to prevent us from making a landing.

To see the pinnaces, which were certainly of English make, frightened me as I gazed at them, for I said to myself that these brown-skinned men must have captured, and perhaps eaten, the crews who sailed them, and that we should be treated in the same manner unless we made valiant battle.

I soon came to learn how groundless were my fears, for when Governor Calvert and Father Altham went on shore alone, as before, making signs of friendship, a white man stepped out from amid the throng, and Captain Lowe shouted in a joyous tone

"Henry Fleet! By all that's good! What do you here?"

"Trading, as I have done many a month, and with license from those of Virginia," the man on shore replied in a not over-friendly tone, and asked almost immediately, "Why do you come? Are you of Baltimore's party who claim all the rights in this bay of Chesapeake?"

Then it was that Governor Calvert spoke him fairly, and the two went apart a little way from the others, talking in low tones, until I saw this Henry Fleet strike his hand heartily into that of our governor's, as if to say they were friends, and from that moment I had no fear of those dark-skinned men who were seemingly opposed to our coming.