Most of the company clambered up the banks and burrowed in the earth among the cliffs. The ground was so sprinkled with gleaming spangles as to seem "halfe pin dust." Smith refrained from this made scramble and proceeded in a more organized way.
With Japazaws, King of Patowmeke, as guide, he ascended one of the tributaries of the river, called Quiyough, as far as the depth of water would allow. Here Captain Smith left the barge, taking with him six men. He was surrounded by Indians. Some of these he decorated with chains and told them that if they conducted him safely to the mine they could keep the ornaments.
When they arrived at the place of the treasure, nine or ten miles inland, the Englishmen saw that the Indians had been digging there with their shells and hatchets for a long time.
To their great disappointment the mine was not gold but antimony. The Indians, who had been in the habit of digging there, washed the element of its dross "in a fayre brooke of christel-like water" which "runneth hard by it" and put it in little bags and sold it all over the country. It was used to paint their idols and themselves. Smith noted that it made them look like "blackmoores dusted over with silver."
No minerals were discovered in this search either. They were rewarded in a slight degree by some furs of mink, beaver, otter, bear and marten, which they obtained mostly from the Indians of Cascarawaoke. This was a merchant tribe that did much of the manufacturing and trading of this country. The Potomac must have been used as a highway for trade as the word Patowmeke is said to mean "to bring again," or, in a freer rendering, "traveling traders, or pedlars."
Smith's party found "plentie" of fish, "lying so thicke, with their heads above the water, as for want of nets (our barge driving amongst them) we attempted to catch them with a frying pan; but we found it a bad instrument to catch fish with."
Smith now continued toward the mouth of the Potomac and the Chesapeake. He had little of tangible value to show for the trip up the river but he had added greatly to his store of knowledge and could now add the Potomac to his map of the Chesapeake and surrounding country.
He notes that the Potomac was "inhabited on both sides. First on the South side at the very entrance is Wighcocomoco (Little Wicomico) and hath some 130 men, beyond them Sekacawone (Coan) with 30. The Onawmanient with 100. And the Patawomekes more than 200."