Frobisher brought home from sub-arctic islands what his clumsy assayers avouched to be "gold eure." Refining works were erected for this stuff at Deptford to no profit, and to this day the inquisitive student is not able to ascertain from the conflicting reports whether there was any gold in the ore or not. The main causes of the suffering at Jamestown during the first winter were the waste of time and the consumption of supplies while lading the ships with the glittering "dust mica" which is so abundant in the Virginia sands. The worthlessness of this cargo could not weaken the hopes of those alchemists who were able to produce gold merely by the use of arguments. The mines in Virginia moved farther west. It wanted only that explorers should reach the mountains. In spite of the sickness that wasted the colony in 1610, Lord De la Warr sent an expedition to dig gold on the upper James, but the warlike up-river tribes soon drove the prospectors back. In 1634, Sir John Harvey sent another body of men on the same fool's errand, though there had not been found in all the years preceding a particle of tangible evidence that gold existed in Virginia. But on the James, as on the Hudson, the glistering pigment with which the Indians besmeared their faces on occasions of display was believed to contain gold, and the places of its procurement were sought with ludicrous secrecy. [Sidenote: Fact and fable about America.] [Sidenote: Ingram's story.] [Sidenote: Note 8.] The unfaltering faith in the existence of abundant gold on the eastern coast of North America could not have subsisted on thin air so long if it had not been stimulated by the almost fabulous wealth drawn from South America by Spain. It had received encouragement also from the tales told by adventurers returned from America, who seem to have thought it necessary to bring back stories that would match in some degree the prevalent beliefs about the New World. The earliest but one of all the documents relating to America preserved among the British state papers is the statement of one David or Davy Ingram. With a hundred other luckless seamen he was put ashore in Mexico by Sir John Hawkins, because the ship lacked provisions. Ingram, traveling from tribe to tribe, achieved the notable feat of crossing the continent in a year. In 1569 he embarked on a French ship that he found near the mouth of the St. John River in what is now the province of New Brunswick. It was eleven years later that Davy Ingram, at home in England, made his statement, and the sailor's story had by that time gained much, perhaps, by frequent telling to wonder-loving listeners. Sometimes he relates facts with sobriety, speaking the truth by relapse, it may be; again, he seems to be repeating tales told him by the savages, who were habitual marvel-mongers, or weaving into the account of what he had seen legends common in the folklore about America that had grown up in Europe; or perchance he only falls into