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Captain John Smith

by Charles Dudley Warner · English · Gutenberg #3130 · 452,059 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Captain John Smith

Author: Charles Dudley Warner


        
Release date: October 10, 2004 [eBook #3130]
                Most recently updated: January 8, 2021

Language: English

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Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH ***



Produced by David Widger





CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH

By Charles Dudley Warner




PREFACE

When I consented to prepare this volume for a series, which should
deal with the notables of American history with some familiarity and
disregard of historic gravity, I did not anticipate the seriousness of
the task. But investigation of the subject showed me that while Captain
John Smith would lend himself easily enough to the purely facetious
treatment, there were historic problems worthy of a different handling,
and that if the life of Smith was to be written, an effort should be
made to state the truth, and to disentangle the career of the adventurer
from the fables and misrepresentations that have clustered about it.

The extant biographies of Smith, and the portions of the history of
Virginia that relate to him, all follow his own narrative, and accept
his estimate of himself, and are little more than paraphrases of his
story as told by himself. But within the last twenty years some new
contemporary evidence has come to light, and special scholars have
expended much critical research upon different portions of his career.
The result of this modern investigation has been to discredit much of
the romance gathered about Smith and Pocahontas, and a good deal to
reduce his heroic proportions. A vague report of--these scholarly
studies has gone abroad, but no effort has been made to tell the real
story of Smith as a connected whole in the light of the new researches.

This volume is an effort to put in popular form the truth about Smith's
adventures, and to estimate his exploits and character. For this purpose
I have depended almost entirely upon original contemporary material,
illumined as it now is by the labors of special editors. I believe that
I have read everything that is attributed to his pen, and have compared
his own accounts with other contemporary narratives, and I think I have
omitted the perusal of little that could throw any light upon his
life or character. For the early part of his career--before he came to
Virginia--there is absolutely no authority except Smith himself; but
when he emerges from romance into history, he can be followed and
checked by contemporary evidence. If he was always and uniformly
untrustworthy it would be less perplexing to follow him, but his
liability to tell the truth when vanity or prejudice does not interfere
is annoying to the careful student.

As far as possible I have endeavored to let the actors in these pages
tell their own story, and I have quoted freely from Capt. Smith himself,
because it is as a writer that he is to be judged no less than as an
actor. His development of the Pocahontas legend has been carefully
traced, and all the known facts about that Indian--or Indese, as some
of the old chroniclers call the female North Americans--have been
consecutively set forth in separate chapters. The book is not a history
of early Virginia, nor of the times of Smith, but merely a study of his
life and writings. If my estimate of the character of Smith is not that
which his biographers have entertained, and differs from his own candid
opinion, I can only plead that contemporary evidence and a collation of
his own stories show that he was mistaken. I am not aware that there has
been before any systematic effort to collate his different accounts
of his exploits. If he had ever undertaken the task, he might have
disturbed that serene opinion of himself which marks him as a man who
realized his own ideals.

The works used in this study are, first, the writings of Smith, which
are as follows:

“A True Relation,” etc., London, 1608.

“A Map of Virginia, Description and Appendix,” Oxford, 1612.

“A Description of New England,” etc., London, 1616.

“New England's Trials,” etc., London, 1620. Second edition, enlarged,
1622.

“The Generall Historie,” etc., London, 1624. Reissued, with date of
title-page altered, in 1626, 1627, and twice in 1632.

“An Accidence: or, The Pathway to Experience,” etc., London, 1626.

“A Sea Grammar,” etc., London, 1627. Also editions in 1653 and 1699.

“The True Travels,” etc., London, 1630.

“Advertisements for the Unexperienced Planters of New England,” etc.,
London, 1631.


Other authorities are:

“The Historie of Travaile into Virginia,” etc., by William Strachey,
Secretary of the colony 1609 to 1612. First printed for the Hakluyt
Society, London, 1849.

“Newport's Relatyon,” 1607. Am. Ant. Soc., Vol. 4.

“Wingfield's Discourse,” etc., 1607. Am. Ant. Soc., Vol. 4.

“Purchas his Pilgrimage,” London, 1613.

“Purchas his Pilgrimes,” London, 1625-6.

“Ralph Hamor's True Discourse,” etc., London, 1615.

“Relation of Virginia,” by Henry Spelman, 1609. First printed by J. F.
Hunnewell, London, 1872.

“History of the Virginia Company in London,” by Edward D. Neill, Albany,
1869.

“William Stith's History of Virginia,” 1753, has been consulted for the
charters and letters-patent. The Pocahontas discussion has been followed
in many magazine papers. I am greatly indebted to the scholarly labors
of Charles Deane, LL.D., the accomplished editor of the “True Relation,”
 and other Virginia monographs. I wish also to acknowledge the courtesy
of the librarians of the Astor, the Lenox, the New York Historical,
Yale, and Cornell libraries, and of Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull, the
custodian of the Brinley collection, and the kindness of Mr. S. L. M.
Barlow of New York, who is ever ready to give students access to his
rich “Americana.”

C. D. W. HARTFORD, June, 1881





CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH




I. BIRTH AND TRAINING

Fortunate is the hero who links his name romantically with that of a
woman. A tender interest in his fame is assured. Still more fortunate
is he if he is able to record his own achievements and give to them
that form and color and importance which they assume in his own gallant
consciousness. Captain John Smith, the first of an honored name, had
this double good fortune.

We are indebted to him for the glowing picture of a knight-errant of the
sixteenth century, moving with the port of a swash-buckler across the
field of vision, wherever cities were to be taken and heads cracked in
Europe, Asia, and Africa, and, in the language of one of his laureates--

     “To see bright honor sparkled all in gore.”

But we are specially his debtor for adventures on our own continent,
narrated with naivete and vigor by a pen as direct and clear-cutting as
the sword with which he shaved off the heads of the Turks, and for one
of the few romances that illumine our early history.

Captain John Smith understood his good fortune in being the recorder of
his own deeds, and he preceded Lord Beaconsfield (in “Endymion”) in his
appreciation of the value of the influence of women upon the career of a
hero. In the dedication of his “General Historie” to Frances, Duchess of
Richmond, he says:

“I have deeply hazarded myself in doing and suffering, and why should I
sticke to hazard my reputation in recording? He that acteth two parts is
the more borne withall if he come short, or fayle in one of them. Where
shall we looke to finde a Julius Caesar whose atchievments shine as
cleare in his owne Commentaries, as they did in the field? I confesse,
my hand though able to wield a weapon among the Barbarous, yet well may
tremble in handling a Pen among so many judicious; especially when I am
so bold as to call so piercing and so glorious an Eye, as your Grace,
to view these poore ragged lines. Yet my comfort is that heretofore
honorable and vertuous Ladies, and comparable but amongst themselves,
have offered me rescue and protection in my greatest dangers: even in
forraine parts, I have felt reliefe from that sex. The beauteous Lady
Tragabigzanda, when I was a slave to the Turks, did all she could to
secure me. When I overcame the Bashaw of Nalbrits in Tartaria, the
charitable Lady Callamata supplyed my necessities. In the utmost of
my extremities, that blessed Pokahontas, the great King's daughter of
Virginia, oft saved my life. When I escaped the cruelties of Pirats
and most furious stormes, a long time alone in a small Boat at Sea, and
driven ashore in France, the good Lady Chanoyes bountifully assisted
me.”


It is stated in his “True Travels” that John Smith was born in
Willoughby, in Lincolnshire. The year of his birth is not given, but
it was probably in 1579, as it appears by the portrait prefixed to that
work that he was aged 37 years in 1616. We are able to add also that the
rector of the Willoughby Rectory, Alford, finds in the register an entry
of the baptism of John, son of George Smith, under date of Jan. 9, 1579.
His biographers, following his account, represent him as of ancient
lineage: “His father actually descended from the ancient Smiths of
Crudley in Lancashire, his mother from the Rickands at great Heck in
Yorkshire;” but the circumstances of his boyhood would indicate that
like many other men who have made themselves a name, his origin was
humble. If it had been otherwise he would scarcely have been bound as an
apprentice, nor had so much difficulty in his advancement. But the
boy was born with a merry disposition, and in his earliest years was
impatient for adventure. The desire to rove was doubtless increased by
the nature of his native shire, which offered every inducement to the
lad of spirit to leave it.

Lincolnshire is the most uninteresting part of all England. It is
frequently water-logged till late in the summer: invisible a part of
the year, when it emerges it is mostly a dreary flat. Willoughby is a
considerable village in this shire, situated about three miles and a
half southeastward from Alford. It stands just on the edge of the
chalk hills whose drives gently slope down to the German Ocean, and the
scenery around offers an unvarying expanse of flats. All the villages in
this part of Lincolnshire exhibit the same character. The name ends in
by, the Danish word for hamlet or small village, and we can measure the
progress of the Danish invasion of England by the number of towns
which have the terminal by, distinguished from the Saxon thorpe, which
generally ends the name of villages in Yorkshire. The population may be
said to be Danish light-haired and blue-eyed. Such was John Smith. The
sea was the natural element of his neighbors, and John when a boy must
have heard many stories of the sea and enticing adventures told by the
sturdy mariners who were recruited from the neighborhood of Willoughby,
and whose oars had often cloven the Baltic Sea.

Willoughby boasts some antiquity. Its church is a spacious structure,
with a nave, north and south aisles, and a chancel, and a tower at the
west end. In the floor is a stone with a Latin inscription, in black
letter, round the verge, to the memory of one Gilbert West, who died in
1404. The church is dedicated to St. Helen. In the village the Wesleyan
Methodists also have a place of worship. According to the parliamentary
returns of 1825, the parish including the hamlet of Sloothby contained
108 houses and 514 inhabitants. All the churches in Lincolnshire
indicate the existence of a much larger population who were in the habit
of attending service than exists at present. Many of these now empty
are of size sufficient to accommodate the entire population of several
villages. Such a one is Willoughby, which unites in its church the
adjacent village of Sloothby.

The stories of the sailors and the contiguity of the salt water had more
influence on the boy's mind than the free, schools of Alford and Louth
which he attended, and when he was about thirteen he sold his books and
satchel and intended to run away to sea: but the death of his father
stayed him. Both his parents being now dead, he was left with, he
says, competent means; but his guardians regarding his estate more than
himself, gave him full liberty and no money, so that he was forced to
stay at home.

At the age of fifteen he was bound apprentice to Mr. Thomas S. Tendall
of Lynn. The articles, however, did not bind him very fast, for as his
master refused to send him to sea, John took leave of his master and did
not see him again for eight years. These details exhibit in the boy the
headstrong independence of the man.

At length he found means to attach himself to a young son of the great
soldier, Lord Willoughby, who was going into France. The narrative is
not clear, but it appears that upon reaching Orleans, in a month or so
the services of John were found to be of no value, and he was sent back
to his friends, who on his return generously gave him ten shillings (out
of his own estate) to be rid of him. He is next heard of enjoying his
liberty at Paris and making the acquaintance of a Scotchman named
David Hume, who used his purse--ten shillings went a long ways in those
days--and in return gave him letters of commendation to prefer him to
King James. But the boy had a disinclination to go where he was sent.
Reaching Rouen, and being nearly out of money, he dropped down the river
to Havre de Grace, and began to learn to be a soldier.

Smith says not a word of the great war of the Leaguers and Henry IV.,
nor on which side he fought, nor is it probable that he cared. But
he was doubtless on the side of Henry, as Havre was at this time in
possession of that soldier. Our adventurer not only makes no reference
to the great religious war, nor to the League, nor to Henry, but he does
not tell who held Paris when he visited it. Apparently state affairs did
not interest him. His reference to a “peace” helps us to fix the date
of his first adventure in France. Henry published the Edict of Nantes
at Paris, April 13, 1598, and on the 2d of May following, concluded the
treaty of France with Philip II. at Vervins, which closed the Spanish
pretensions in France. The Duc de Mercoeur (of whom we shall hear later
as Smith's “Duke of Mercury” in Hungary), Duke of Lorraine, was allied
with the Guises in the League, and had the design of holding Bretagne
under Spanish protection. However, fortune was against him and he
submitted to Henry in February, 1598, with no good grace. Looking about
for an opportunity to distinguish himself, he offered his services to
the Emperor Rudolph to fight the Turks, and it is said led an army of
his French followers, numbering 15,000, in 1601, to Hungary, to raise
the siege of Coniza, which was beleaguered by Ibrahim Pasha with 60,000
men.

Chance of fighting and pay failing in France by reason of the peace,
he enrolled himself under the banner of one of the roving and fighting
captains of the time, who sold their swords in the best market, and
went over into the Low Countries, where he hacked and hewed away at his
fellow-men, all in the way of business, for three or four years. At
the end of that time he bethought himself that he had not delivered his
letters to Scotland. He embarked at Aucusan for Leith, and seems to
have been shipwrecked, and detained by illness in the “holy isle” in
Northumberland, near Barwick. On his recovery he delivered his letters,
and received kind treatment from the Scots; but as he had no money,
which was needed to make his way as a courtier, he returned to
Willoughby.

The family of Smith is so “ancient” that the historians of the county
of Lincoln do not allude to it, and only devote a brief paragraph to the
great John himself. Willoughby must have been a dull place to him after
his adventures, but he says he was glutted with company, and retired
into a woody pasture, surrounded by forests, a good ways from any town,
and there built himself a pavilion of boughs--less substantial than the
cabin of Thoreau at Walden Pond--and there he heroically slept in his
clothes, studied Machiavelli's “Art of War,” read “Marcus Aurelius,” and
exercised on his horse with lance and ring. This solitary conduct got
him the name of a hermit, whose food was thought to be more of
venison than anything else, but in fact his men kept him supplied with
provisions. When John had indulged in this ostentatious seclusion for a
time, he allowed himself to be drawn out of it by the charming discourse
of a noble Italian named Theodore Palaloga, who just then was Rider to
Henry, Earl of Lincoln, and went to stay with him at Tattershall. This
was an ancient town, with a castle, which belonged to the Earls of
Lincoln, and was situated on the River Bane, only fourteen miles from
Boston, a name that at once establishes a connection between Smith's
native county and our own country, for it is nearly as certain that St.
Botolph founded a monastery at Boston, Lincoln, in the year 654, as it
is that he founded a club afterwards in Boston, Massachusetts.

Whatever were the pleasures of Tattershall, they could not long content
the restless Smith, who soon set out again for the Netherlands in search
of adventures.

The life of Smith, as it is related by himself, reads like that of a
belligerent tramp, but it was not uncommon in his day, nor is it in
ours, whenever America produces soldiers of fortune who are ready, for
a compensation, to take up the quarrels of Egyptians or Chinese, or go
wherever there is fighting and booty. Smith could now handle arms and
ride a horse, and longed to go against the Turks, whose anti-Christian
contests filled his soul with lamentations; and besides he was tired of
seeing Christians slaughter each other. Like most heroes, he had a vivid
imagination that made him credulous, and in the Netherlands he fell into
the toils of three French gallants, one of whom pretended to be a great
lord, attended by his gentlemen, who persuaded him to accompany them to
the “Duchess of Mercury,” whose lord was then a general of Rodolphus
of Hungary, whose favor they could command. Embarking with these arrant
cheats, the vessel reached the coast of Picardy, where his comrades
contrived to take ashore their own baggage and Smith's trunk, containing
his money and goodly apparel, leaving him on board. When the captain,
who was in the plot, was enabled to land Smith the next day, the noble
lords had disappeared with the luggage, and Smith, who had only a single
piece of gold in his pocket, was obliged to sell his cloak to pay his
passage.

Thus stripped, he roamed about Normandy in a forlorn condition,
occasionally entertained by honorable persons who had heard of his
misfortunes, and seeking always means of continuing his travels,
wandering from port to port on the chance of embarking on a man-of-war.
Once he was found in a forest near dead with grief and cold, and rescued
by a rich farmer; shortly afterwards, in a grove in Brittany, he chanced
upon one of the gallants who had robbed him, and the two out swords and
fell to cutting. Smith had the satisfaction of wounding the rascal, and
the inhabitants of a ruined tower near by, who witnessed the combat,
were quite satisfied with the event.

Our hero then sought out the Earl of Ployer, who had been brought up in
England during the French wars, by whom he was refurnished better than
ever. After this streak of luck, he roamed about France, viewing the
castles and strongholds, and at length embarked at Marseilles on a ship
for Italy. Rough weather coming on, the vessel anchored under the lee of
the little isle St. Mary, off Nice, in Savoy.

The passengers on board, among whom were many pilgrims bound for Rome,
regarded Smith as a Jonah, cursed him for a Huguenot, swore that his
nation were all pirates, railed against Queen Elizabeth, and declared
that they never should have fair weather so long as he was on board. To
end the dispute, they threw him into the sea. But God got him ashore on
the little island, whose only inhabitants were goats and a few kine. The
next day a couple of trading vessels anchored near, and he was taken
off and so kindly used that he decided to cast in his fortune with them.
Smith's discourse of his adventures so entertained the master of one
of the vessels, who is described as “this noble Britaine, his neighbor,
Captaine la Roche, of Saint Malo,” that the much-tossed wanderer was
accepted as a friend. They sailed to the Gulf of Turin, to Alessandria,
where they discharged freight, then up to Scanderoon, and coasting
for some time among the Grecian islands, evidently in search of more
freight, they at length came round to Cephalonia, and lay to for
some days betwixt the isle of Corfu and the Cape of Otranto. Here it
presently appeared what sort of freight the noble Britaine, Captain la
Roche, was looking for.

An argosy of Venice hove in sight, and Captaine la Roche desired
to speak to her. The reply was so “untoward” that a man was slain,
whereupon the Britaine gave the argosy a broadside, and then his stem,
and then other broadsides. A lively fight ensued, in which the Britaine
lost fifteen men, and the argosy twenty, and then surrendered to save
herself from sinking. The noble Britaine and John Smith then proceeded
to rifle her. He says that “the Silkes, Velvets, Cloth of Gold, and
Tissue, Pyasters, Chiqueenes, and Suitanies, which is gold and silver,
they unloaded in four-and-twenty hours was wonderful, whereof having
sufficient, and tired with toils, they cast her off with her company,
with as much good merchandise as would have freighted another Britaine,
that was but two hundred Tunnes, she four or five hundred.” Smith's
share of this booty was modest. When the ship returned he was set
ashore at “the Road of Antibo in Piamon,” “with five hundred chiqueenes
[sequins] and a little box God sent him worth neere as much more.” He
always devoutly acknowledged his dependence upon divine Providence, and
took willingly what God sent him.




II. FIGHTING IN HUNGARY

Smith being thus “refurnished,” made the tour of Italy, satisfied
himself with the rarities of Rome, where he saw Pope Clement the Eighth
and many cardinals creep up the holy stairs, and with the fair city of
Naples and the kingdom's nobility; and passing through the north he came
into Styria, to the Court of Archduke Ferdinand; and, introduced by an
Englishman and an Irish Jesuit to the notice of Baron Kisell, general
of artillery, he obtained employment, and went to Vienna with Colonel
Voldo, Earl of Meldritch, with whose regiment he was to serve.

He was now on the threshold of his long-desired campaign against the
Turks. The arrival on the scene of this young man, who was scarcely
out of his teens, was a shadow of disaster to the Turks. They had been
carrying all before them. Rudolph II., Emperor of Germany, was a weak
and irresolute character, and no match for the enterprising Sultan,
Mahomet III., who was then conducting the invasion of Europe. The
Emperor's brother, the Archduke Mathias, who was to succeed him, and
Ferdinand, Duke of Styria, also to become Emperor of Germany, were much
abler men, and maintained a good front against the Moslems in Lower
Hungary, but the Turks all the time steadily advanced. They had long
occupied Buda (Pesth), and had been in possession of the stronghold
of Alba Regalis for some sixty years. Before Smith's advent they had
captured the important city of Caniza, and just as he reached the ground
they had besieged the town of Olumpagh, with two thousand men. But the
addition to the armies of Germany, France, Styria, and Hungary of John
Smith, “this English gentleman,” as he styles himself, put a new face
on the war, and proved the ruin of the Turkish cause. The Bashaw of Buda
was soon to feel the effect of this re-enforcement.

Caniza is a town in Lower Hungary, north of the River Drave, and just
west of the Platen Sea, or Lake Balatin, as it is also called. Due north
of Caniza a few miles, on a bend of the little River Raab (which empties
into the Danube), and south of the town of Kerment, lay Smith's town
of Olumpagh, which we are able to identify on a map of the period as
Olimacum or Oberlymback. In this strong town the Turks had shut up the
garrison under command of Governor Ebersbraught so closely that it was
without intelligence or hope of succor.

In this strait, the ingenious John Smith, who was present in the
reconnoitering army in the regiment of the Earl of Meldritch, came
to the aid of Baron Kisell, the general of artillery, with a plan of
communication with the besieged garrison. Fortunately Smith had made
the acquaintance of Lord Ebersbraught at Gratza, in Styria, and had (he
says) communicated to him a system of signaling a message by the use
of torches. Smith seems to have elaborated this method of signals,
and providentially explained it to Lord Ebersbraught, as if he had a
presentiment of the latter's use of it. He divided the alphabet into
two parts, from A to L and from M to Z. Letters were indicated and
words spelled by the means of torches: “The first part, from A to L, is
signified by showing and holding one linke so oft as there is letters
from A to that letter you name; the other part, from M to Z, is
mentioned by two lights in like manner. The end of a word is signifien
by showing of three lights.”

General Kisell, inflamed by this strange invention, which Smith
made plain to him, furnished him guides, who conducted him to a high
mountain, seven miles distant from the town, where he flashed his
torches and got a reply from the governor. Smith signaled that they
would charge on the east of the town in the night, and at the alarum
Ebersbraught was to sally forth. General Kisell doubted that he should
be able to relieve the town by this means, as he had only ten thousand
men; but Smith, whose fertile brain was now in full action, and who
seems to have assumed charge of the campaign, hit upon a stratagem for
the diversion and confusion of the Turks.

On the side of the town opposite the proposed point of attack lay the
plain of Hysnaburg (Eisnaburg on Ortelius's map). Smith fastened two
or three charred pieces of match to divers small lines of an hundred
fathoms in length, armed with powder. Each line was tied to a stake at
each end. After dusk these lines were set up on the plain, and being
fired at the instant the alarm was given, they seemed to the Turks like
so many rows of musketeers. While the Turks therefore prepared to repel
a great army from that side, Kisell attacked with his ten thousand men,
Ebersbraught sallied out and fell upon the Turks in the trenches, all
the enemy on that side were slain or drowned, or put to flight.
And while the Turks were busy routing Smith's sham musketeers, the
Christians threw a couple of thousand troops into the town. Whereupon
the Turks broke up the siege and retired to Caniza. For this exploit
General Kisell received great honor at Kerment, and Smith was rewarded
with the rank of captain, and the command of two hundred and fifty
horsemen. From this time our hero must figure as Captain John Smith. The
rank is not high, but he has made the title great, just as he has made
the name of John Smith unique.

After this there were rumors of peace for these tormented countries; but
the Turks, who did not yet appreciate the nature of this force, called
John Smith, that had come into the world against them, did not intend
peace, but went on levying soldiers and launching them into Hungary.
To oppose these fresh invasions, Rudolph II., aided by the Christian
princes, organized three armies: one led by the Archduke Mathias and
his lieutenant, Duke Mercury, to defend Low Hungary; the second led
by Ferdinand, the Archduke of Styria, and the Duke of Mantua, his
lieutenant, to regain Caniza; the third by Gonzago, Governor of High
Hungary, to join with Georgio Busca, to make an absolute conquest of
Transylvania.

In pursuance of this plan, Duke Mercury, with an army of thirty
thousand, whereof nearly ten thousand were French, besieged
Stowell-Weisenberg, otherwise called Alba Regalis, a place so strong by
art and nature that it was thought impregnable.

This stronghold, situated on the northeast of the Platen Sea, was, like
Caniza and Oberlympack, one of the Turkish advanced posts, by means of
which they pushed forward their operations from Buda on the Danube.

This noble friend of Smith, the Duke of Mercury, whom Haylyn styles Duke
Mercurio, seems to have puzzled the biographers of Smith. In fact, the
name of “Mercury” has given a mythological air to Smith's narration and
aided to transfer it to the region of romance. He was, however, as we
have seen, identical with a historical character of some importance, for
the services he rendered to the Church of Rome, and a commander of
some considerable skill. He is no other than Philip de Lorraine, Duc de
Mercceur.'

[So far as I know, Dr. Edward Eggleston was the first to identify him.
There is a sketch of him in the “Biographie Universelle,” and a life
with an account of his exploits in Hungary, entitled: Histoire de Duc
Mercoeur, par Bruseles de Montplain Champs, Cologne, 1689-97]

At the siege of Alba Regalis, the Turks gained several successes by
night sallies, and, as usual, it was not till Smith came to the front
with one of his ingenious devices that the fortune of war changed. The
Earl Meldritch, in whose regiment Smith served, having heard from
some Christians who escaped from the town at what place there were the
greatest assemblies and throngs of people in the city, caused Captain
Smith to put in practice his “fiery dragons.” These instruments of
destruction are carefully described: “Having prepared fortie or fiftie
round-bellied earthen pots, and filled them with hand Gunpowder, then
covered them with Pitch, mingled with Brimstone and Turpentine, and
quartering as many Musket-bullets, that hung together but only at the
center of the division, stucke them round in the mixture about the
pots, and covered them againe with the same mixture, over that a strong
sear-cloth, then over all a goode thicknesse of Towze-match, well
tempered with oyle of Linseed, Campheer, and powder of Brimstone, these
he fitly placed in slings, graduated so neere as they could to the
places of these assemblies.”

These missiles of Smith's invention were flung at midnight, when the
alarum was given, and “it was a perfect sight to see the short flaming
course of their flight in the air, but presently after their fall, the
lamentable noise of the miserable slaughtered Turkes was most wonderful
to heare.”

While Smith was amusing the Turks in this manner, the Earl Rosworme
planned an attack on the opposite suburb, which was defended by a muddy
lake, supposed to be impassable. Furnishing his men with bundles of
sedge, which they threw before them as they advanced in the dark night,
the lake was made passable, the suburb surprised, and the captured
guns of the Turks were turned upon them in the city to which they had
retreated. The army of the Bashaw was cut to pieces and he himself
captured.

The Earl of Meldritch, having occupied the town, repaired the walls and
the ruins of this famous city that had been in the possession of the
Turks for some threescore years.

It is not our purpose to attempt to trace the meteoric course of Captain
Smith in all his campaigns against the Turks, only to indicate the large
part he took in these famous wars for the possession of Eastern Europe.
The siege of Alba Regalis must have been about the year 1601--Smith
never troubles himself with any dates--and while it was undecided,
Mahomet III.--this was the prompt Sultan who made his position secure
by putting to death nineteen of his brothers upon his accession--raised
sixty thousand troops for its relief or its recovery. The Duc de
Mercoeur went out to meet this army, and encountered it in the plains
of Girke. In the first skirmishes the Earl Meldritch was very nearly
cut off, although he made “his valour shine more bright than his armour,
which seemed then painted with Turkish blood.” Smith himself was sore
wounded and had his horse slain under him. The campaign, at first
favorable to the Turks, was inconclusive, and towards winter the Bashaw
retired to Buda. The Duc de Mercoeur then divided his army. The Earl of
Rosworme was sent to assist the Archduke Ferdinand, who was besieging
Caniza; the Earl of Meldritch, with six thousand men, was sent to assist
Georgio Busca against the Transylvanians; and the Duc de Mercoeur set
out for France to raise new forces. On his way he received great
honor at Vienna, and staying overnight at Nuremberg, he was royally
entertained by the Archdukes Mathias and Maximilian. The next morning
after the feast--how it chanced is not known--he was found dead His
brother-inlaw died two days afterwards, and the hearts of both, with
much sorrow, were carried into France.

We now come to the most important event in the life of Smith before he
became an adventurer in Virginia, an event which shows Smith's readiness
to put in practice the chivalry which had in the old chronicles
influenced his boyish imagination; and we approach it with the
satisfaction of knowing that it loses nothing in Smith's narration.

It must be mentioned that Transylvania, which the Earl of Meldritch,
accompanied by Captain Smith, set out to relieve, had long been in a
disturbed condition, owing to internal dissensions, of which the Turks
took advantage. Transylvania, in fact, was a Turkish dependence, and
it gives us an idea of the far reach of the Moslem influence in Europe,
that Stephen VI., vaivode of Transylvania, was, on the commendation of
Sultan Armurath III., chosen King of Poland.

To go a little further back than the period of Smith's arrival, John II.
of Transylvania was a champion of the Turk, and an enemy of Ferdinand
and his successors. His successor, Stephen VI., surnamed Battori, or
Bathor, was made vaivode by the Turks, and afterwards, as we have said,
King of Poland. He was succeeded in 1575 by his brother Christopher
Battori, who was the first to drop the title of vaivode and assume that
of Prince of Transylvania. The son of Christopher, Sigismund Battori,
shook off the Turkish bondage, defeated many of their armies, slew some
of their pashas, and gained the title of the Scanderbeg of the times
in which he lived. Not able to hold out, however, against so potent
an adversary, he resigned his estate to the Emperor Rudolph II., and
received in exchange the dukedoms of Oppelon and Ratibor in Silesia,
with an annual pension of fifty thousand joachims. The pension not being
well paid, Sigismund made another resignation of his principality to his
cousin Andrew Battori, who had the ill luck to be slain within the
year by the vaivode of Valentia. Thereupon Rudolph, Emperor and King of
Hungary, was acknowledged Prince of Transylvania. But the Transylvania
soldiers did not take kindly to a foreign prince, and behaved so
unsoldierly that Sigismund was called back. But he was unable to settle
himself in his dominions, and the second time he left his country in
the power of Rudolph and retired to Prague, where, in 1615, he died
unlamented.

It was during this last effort of Sigismund to regain his position that
the Earl of Meldritch, accompanied by Smith, went to Transylvania, with
the intention of assisting Georgio Busca, who was the commander of the
Emperor's party. But finding Prince Sigismund in possession of the most
territory and of the hearts of the people, the earl thought it best
to assist the prince against the Turk, rather than Busca against the
prince. Especially was he inclined to that side by the offer of free
liberty of booty for his worn and unpaid troops, of what they could get
possession of from the Turks.

This last consideration no doubt persuaded the troops that Sigismund had
“so honest a cause.” The earl was born in Transylvania, and the Turks
were then in possession of his father's country. In this distracted
state of the land, the frontiers had garrisons among the mountains, some
of which held for the emperor, some for the prince, and some for the
Turk. The earl asked leave of the prince to make an attempt to regain
his paternal estate. The prince, glad of such an ally, made him
camp-master of his army, and gave him leave to plunder the Turks.
Accordingly the earl began to make incursions of the frontiers into what
Smith calls the Land of Zarkam--among rocky mountains, where were some
Turks, some Tartars, but most Brandittoes, Renegadoes, and such like,
which he forced into the Plains of Regall, where was a city of men and
fortifications, strong in itself, and so environed with mountains that
it had been impregnable in all these wars.

It must be confessed that the historians and the map-makers did not
always attach the importance that Smith did to the battles in which he
was conspicuous, and we do not find the Land of Zarkam or the city of
Regall in the contemporary chronicles or atlases. But the region is
sufficiently identified. On the River Maruch, or Morusus, was the town
of Alba Julia, or Weisenberg, the residence of the vaivode or Prince
of Transylvania. South of this capital was the town Millenberg, and
southwest of this was a very strong fortress, commanding a narrow pass
leading into Transylvania out of Hungary, probably where the River
Maruct: broke through the mountains. We infer that it was this pass
that the earl captured by a stratagem, and carrying his army through it,
began the siege of Regall in the plain. “The earth no sooner put on her
green habit,” says our knight-errant, “than the earl overspread her with
his troops.” Regall occupied a strong fortress on a promontory and the
Christians encamped on the plain before it.

In the conduct of this campaign, we pass at once into the age of
chivalry, about which Smith had read so much. We cannot but recognize
that this is his opportunity. His idle boyhood had been soaked in old
romances, and he had set out in his youth to do what equally dreamy but
less venturesome devourers of old chronicles were content to read
about. Everything arranged itself as Smith would have had it. When
the Christian army arrived, the Turks sallied out and gave it a lively
welcome, which cost each side about fifteen hundred men. Meldritch had
but eight thousand soldiers, but he was re-enforced by the arrival of
nine thousand more, with six-and-twenty pieces of ordnance, under Lord
Zachel Moyses, the general of the army, who took command of the whole.

After the first skirmish the Turks remained within their fortress, the
guns of which commanded the plain, and the Christians spent a month in
intrenching themselves and mounting their guns.

The Turks, who taught Europe the art of civilized war, behaved all this
time in a courtly and chivalric manner, exchanging with the besiegers
wordy compliments until such time as the latter were ready to begin. The
Turks derided the slow progress of the works, inquired if their ordnance
was in pawn, twitted them with growing fat for want of exercise, and
expressed the fear that the Christians should depart without making an
assault.

In order to make the time pass pleasantly, and exactly in accordance
with the tales of chivalry which Smith had read, the Turkish Bashaw in
the fortress sent out his challenge: “That to delight the ladies, who
did long to see some courtlike pastime, the Lord Tubashaw did defy any
captaine that had the command of a company, who durst combat with him
for his head.”

This handsome offer to swap heads was accepted; lots were cast for the
honor of meeting the lord, and, fortunately for us, the choice fell
upon an ardent fighter of twenty-three years, named Captain John Smith.
Nothing was wanting to give dignity to the spectacle. Truce was made;
the ramparts of this fortress-city in the mountains (which we cannot
find on the map) were “all beset with faire Dames and men in Armes”;
the Christians were drawn up in battle array; and upon the theatre thus
prepared the Turkish Bashaw, armed and mounted, entered with a flourish
of hautboys; on his shoulders were fixed a pair of great wings,
compacted of eagles' feathers within a ridge of silver richly garnished
with gold and precious stones; before him was a janissary bearing his
lance, and a janissary walked at each side leading his steed.

This gorgeous being Smith did not keep long waiting. Riding into the
field with a flourish of trumpets, and only a simple page to bear his
lance, Smith favored the Bashaw with a courteous salute, took position,
charged at the signal, and before the Bashaw could say “Jack Robinson,”
 thrust his lance through the sight of his beaver, face, head and all,
threw him dead to the ground, alighted, unbraced his helmet, and cut off
his head. The whole affair was over so suddenly that as a pastime for
ladies it must have been disappointing. The Turks came out and took
the headless trunk, and Smith, according to the terms of the challenge,
appropriated the head and presented it to General Moyses.

This ceremonious but still hasty procedure excited the rage of one
Grualgo, the friend of the Bashaw, who sent a particular challenge to
Smith to regain his friend's head or lose his own, together with
his horse and armor. Our hero varied the combat this time. The two
combatants shivered lances and then took to pistols; Smith received a
mark upon the “placard,” but so wounded the Turk in his left arm that he
was unable to rule his horse. Smith then unhorsed him, cut off his head,
took possession of head, horse, and armor, but returned the rich apparel
and the body to his friends in the most gentlemanly manner.

Captain Smith was perhaps too serious a knight to see the humor of
these encounters, but he does not lack humor in describing them, and
he adopted easily the witty courtesies of the code he was illustrating.
After he had gathered two heads, and the siege still dragged, he became
in turn the challenger, in phrase as courteously and grimly facetious as
was permissible, thus:

“To delude time, Smith, with so many incontradictible perswading
reasons, obtained leave that the Ladies might know he was not so much
enamored of their servants' heads, but if any Turke of their ranke would
come to the place of combat to redeem them, should have also his, upon
like conditions, if he could winne it.”

This considerate invitation was accepted by a person whom Smith, with
his usual contempt for names, calls “Bonny Mulgro.” It seems difficult
to immortalize such an appellation, and it is a pity that we have not
the real one of the third Turk whom Smith honored by killing. But
Bonny Mulgro, as we must call the worthiest foe that Smith's prowess
encountered, appeared upon the field. Smith understands working up
a narration, and makes this combat long and doubtful. The challenged
party, who had the choice of weapons, had marked the destructiveness of
his opponent's lance, and elected, therefore, to fight with pistols and
battle-axes. The pistols proved harmless, and then the battle-axes came
in play, whose piercing bills made sometime the one, sometime the other,
to have scarce sense to keep their saddles. Smith received such a blow
that he lost his battle-axe, whereat the Turks on the ramparts set up
a great shout. “The Turk prosecuted his advantage to the utmost of
his power; yet the other, what by the readiness of his horse, and
his judgment and dexterity in such a business, beyond all men's
expectations, by God's assistance, not only avoided the Turke's
violence, but having drawn his Faulchion, pierced the Turke so under the
Culets throrow backe and body, that although he alighted from his horse,
he stood not long ere he lost his head, as the rest had done.”

There is nothing better than this in all the tales of chivalry, and John
Smith's depreciation of his inability to equal Caesar in describing his
own exploits, in his dedicatory letter to the Duchess of Richmond, must
be taken as an excess of modesty. We are prepared to hear that these
beheadings gave such encouragement to the whole army that six thousand
soldiers, with three led horses, each preceded by a soldier bearing a
Turk's head on a lance, turned out as a guard to Smith and conducted
him to the pavilion of the general, to whom he presented his trophies.
General Moyses (occasionally Smith calls him Moses) took him in his arms
and embraced him with much respect, and gave him a fair horse, richly
furnished, a scimeter, and a belt worth three hundred ducats. And his
colonel advanced him to the position of sergeant-major of his regiment.
If any detail was wanting to round out and reward this knightly
performance in strict accord with the old romances, it was supplied by
the subsequent handsome conduct of Prince Sigismund.

When the Christians had mounted their guns and made a couple of breaches
in the walls of Regall, General Moyses ordered an attack one dark night
“by the light that proceeded from the murdering muskets and peace-making
cannon.” The enemy were thus awaited, “whilst their slothful governor
lay in a castle on top of a high mountain, and like a valiant prince
asketh what's the matter, when horrour and death stood amazed at
each other, to see who should prevail to make him victorious.” These
descriptions show that Smith could handle the pen as well as the
battleaxe, and distinguish him from the more vulgar fighters of his
time. The assault succeeded, but at great cost of life. The Turks sent a
flag of truce and desired a “composition,” but the earl, remembering the
death of his father, continued to batter the town and when he took it
put all the men in arms to the sword, and then set their heads upon
stakes along the walls, the Turks having ornamented the walls with
Christian heads when they captured the fortress. Although the town
afforded much pillage, the loss of so many troops so mixed the sour
with the sweet that General Moyses could only allay his grief by sacking
three other towns, Veratis, Solmos, and Kapronka. Taking from these a
couple of thousand prisoners, mostly women and children, Earl Moyses
marched north to Weisenberg (Alba Julia), and camped near the palace of
Prince Sigismund.

When Sigismund Battori came out to view his army he was made acquainted
with the signal services of Smith at “Olumpagh, Stowell-Weisenberg, and
Regall,” and rewarded him by conferring upon him, according to the law
of--arms, a shield of arms with “three Turks' heads.” This was granted
by a letter-patent, in Latin, which is dated at “Lipswick, in Misenland,
December 9, 1603” It recites that Smith was taken captive by the
Turks in Wallachia November 18, 1602; that he escaped and rejoined his
fellow-soldiers. This patent, therefore, was not given at Alba Julia,
nor until Prince Sigismund had finally left his country, and when the
Emperor was, in fact, the Prince of Transylvania. Sigismund styles
himself, by the grace of God, Duke of Transylvania, etc. Appended to
this patent, as published in Smith's “True Travels,” is a certificate
by William Segar, knight of the garter and principal king of arms of
England, that he had seen this patent and had recorded a copy of it in
the office of the Herald of Armes. This certificate is dated August 19,
1625, the year after the publication of the General Historie.

Smith says that Prince Sigismund also gave him his picture in gold, and
granted him an annual pension of three hundred ducats. This promise of
a pension was perhaps the most unsubstantial portion of his reward,
for Sigismund himself became a pensioner shortly after the events last
narrated.

The last mention of Sigismund by Smith is after his escape from
captivity in Tartaria, when this mirror of virtues had abdicated. Smith
visited him at “Lipswicke in Misenland,” and the Prince “gave him
his Passe, intimating the service he had done, and the honors he had
received, with fifteen hundred ducats of gold to repair his losses.”
 The “Passe” was doubtless the “Patent” before introduced, and we hear no
word of the annual pension.

Affairs in Transylvania did not mend even after the capture of Regall,
and of the three Turks' heads, and the destruction of so many villages.
This fruitful and strong country was the prey of faction, and became
little better than a desert under the ravages of the contending armies.
The Emperor Rudolph at last determined to conquer the country for
himself, and sent Busca again with a large army. Sigismund finding
himself poorly supported, treated again with the Emperor and agreed to
retire to Silicia on a pension. But the Earl Moyses, seeing no prospect
of regaining his patrimony, and determining not to be under subjection
to the Germans, led his troops against Busca, was defeated, and fled to
join the Turks. Upon this desertion the Prince delivered up all he
had to Busca and retired to Prague. Smith himself continued with the
imperial party, in the regiment of Earl Meldritch. About this time the
Sultan sent one Jeremy to be vaivode of Wallachia, whose tyranny
caused the people to rise against him, and he fled into Moldavia. Busca
proclaimed Lord Rodoll vaivode in his stead. But Jeremy assembled an
army of forty thousand Turks, Tartars, and Moldavians, and retired
into Wallachia. Smith took active part in Rodoll's campaign to recover
Wallachia, and narrates the savage war that ensued. When the armies were
encamped near each other at Raza and Argish, Rodoll cut off the heads of
parties he captured going to the Turkish camp, and threw them into
the enemy's trenches. Jeremy retorted by skinning alive the Christian
parties he captured, hung their skins upon poles, and their carcasses
and heads on stakes by them. In the first battle Rodoll was successful
and established himself in Wallachia, but Jeremy rallied and began
ravaging the country. Earl Meldritch was sent against him, but the
Turks' force was much superior, and the Christians were caught in a
trap. In order to reach Rodoll, who was at Rottenton, Meldritch with
his small army was obliged to cut his way through the solid body of the
enemy. A device of Smith's assisted him. He covered two or three hundred
trunks--probably small branches of trees--with wild-fire. These fixed
upon the heads of lances and set on fire when the troops charged in the
night, so terrified the horses of the Turks that they fled in dismay.
Meldritch was for a moment victorious, but when within three leagues
of Rottenton he was overpowered by forty thousand Turks, and the last
desperate fight followed, in which nearly all the friends of the Prince
were slain, and Smith himself was left for dead on the field.

On this bloody field over thirty thousand lay headless, armless,
legless, all cut and mangled, who gave knowledge to the world how dear
the Turk paid for his conquest of Transylvania and Wallachia--a conquest
that might have been averted if the three Christian armies had been
joined against the “cruel devouring Turk.” Among the slain were many
Englishmen, adventurers like the valiant Captain whom Smith names, men
who “left there their bodies in testimony of their minds.” And there,
“Smith among the slaughtered dead bodies, and many a gasping soule with
toils and wounds lay groaning among the rest, till being found by the
Pillagers he was able to live, and perceiving by his armor and habit,
his ransome might be better than his death, they led him prisoner
with many others.” The captives were taken to Axopolis and all sold as
slaves. Smith was bought by Bashaw Bogall, who forwarded him by way of
Adrianople to Constantinople, to be a slave to his mistress. So chained
by the necks in gangs of twenty they marched to the city of Constantine,
where Smith was delivered over to the mistress of the Bashaw, the young
Charatza Tragabigzanda.




III. CAPTIVITY AND WANDERING

Our hero never stirs without encountering a romantic adventure. Noble
ladies nearly always take pity on good-looking captains, and Smith was
far from ill-favored. The charming Charatza delighted to talk with her
slave, for she could speak Italian, and would feign herself too sick to
go to the bath, or to accompany the other women when they went to weep
over the graves, as their custom is once a week, in order to stay at
home to hear from Smith how it was that Bogall took him prisoner, as the
Bashaw had written her, and whether Smith was a Bohemian lord conquered
by the Bashaw's own hand, whose ransom could adorn her with the glory of
her lover's conquests. Great must have been her disgust with Bogall
when she heard that he had not captured this handsome prisoner, but had
bought him in the slave-market at Axopolis. Her compassion for her slave
increased, and the hero thought he saw in her eyes a tender interest.
But she had no use for such a slave, and fearing her mother would sell
him, she sent him to her brother, the Tymor Bashaw of Nalbrits in the
country of Cambria, a province of Tartaria (wherever that may be). If
all had gone on as Smith believed the kind lady intended, he might have
been a great Bashaw and a mighty man in the Ottoman Empire, and we might
never have heard of Pocahontas. In sending him to her brother, it was
her intention, for she told him so, that he should only sojourn in
Nalbrits long enough to learn the language, and what it was to be a
Turk, till time made her master of herself. Smith himself does not
dissent from this plan to metamorphose him into a Turk and the husband
of the beautiful Charatza Tragabigzanda. He had no doubt that he was
commended to the kindest treatment by her brother; but Tymor “diverted
all this to the worst of cruelty.” Within an hour of his arrival, he was
stripped naked, his head and face shaved as smooth as his hand, a ring
of iron, with a long stake bowed like a sickle, riveted to his neck, and
he was scantily clad in goat's skin. There were many other slaves, but
Smith being the last, was treated like a dog, and made the slave of
slaves.

The geographer is not able to follow Captain Smith to Nalbrits. Perhaps
Smith himself would have been puzzled to make a map of his own career
after he left Varna and passed the Black Sea and came through the
straits of Niger into the Sea Disbacca, by some called the Lake Moetis,
and then sailed some days up the River Bruapo to Cambria, and two days
more to Nalbrits, where the Tyrnor resided.

Smith wrote his travels in London nearly thirty years after, and it is
difficult to say how much is the result of his own observation and how
much he appropriated from preceding romances. The Cambrians may have
been the Cossacks, but his description of their habits and also those
of the “Crym-Tartars” belongs to the marvels of Mandeville and other
wide-eyed travelers. Smith fared very badly with the Tymor. The Tymor
and his friends ate pillaw; they esteemed “samboyses” and “musselbits”
 “great dainties, and yet,” exclaims Smith, “but round pies, full of all
sorts of flesh they can get, chopped with variety of herbs.” Their best
drink was “coffa” and sherbet, which is only honey and water. The common
victual of the others was the entrails of horses and “ulgries” (goats?)
cut up and boiled in a caldron with “cuskus,” a preparation made from
grain. This was served in great bowls set in the ground, and when
the other prisoners had raked it thoroughly with their foul fists the
remainder was given to the Christians. The same dish of entrails used to
be served not many years ago in Upper Egypt as a royal dish to entertain
a distinguished guest.

It might entertain but it would too long detain us to repeat Smith's
information, probably all secondhand, about this barbarous region. We
must confine ourselves to the fortunes of our hero. All his hope of
deliverance from thraldom was in the love of Tragabigzanda, whom he
firmly believed was ignorant of his bad usage. But she made no sign.
Providence at length opened a way for his escape. He was employed in
thrashing in a field more than a league from the Tymor's home. The
Bashaw used to come to visit his slave there, and beat, spurn, and
revile him. One day Smith, unable to control himself under these
insults, rushed upon the Tymor, and beat out his brains with a thrashing
bat--“for they had no flails,” he explains--put on the dead man's
clothes, hid the body in the straw, filled a knapsack with corn, mounted
his horse and rode away into the unknown desert, where he wandered many
days before he found a way out. If we may believe Smith this wilderness
was more civilized in one respect than some parts of our own land, for
on all the crossings of the roads were guide-boards. After traveling
sixteen days on the road that leads to Muscova, Smith reached a
Muscovite garrison on the River Don. The governor knocked off the iron
from his neck and used him so kindly that he thought himself now risen
from the dead. With his usual good fortune there was a lady to take
interest in him--“the good Lady Callamata largely supplied all his
wants.”

After Smith had his purse filled by Sigismund he made a thorough tour of
Europe, and passed into Spain, where being satisfied, as he says, with
Europe and Asia, and understanding that there were wars in Barbary, this
restless adventurer passed on into Morocco with several comrades on a
French man-of-war. His observations on and tales about North Africa
are so evidently taken from the books of other travelers that they
add little to our knowledge of his career. For some reason he found no
fighting going on worth his while. But good fortune attended his
return. He sailed in a man-of-war with Captain Merham. They made a few
unimportant captures, and at length fell in with two Spanish men-of-war,
which gave Smith the sort of entertainment he most coveted. A sort of
running fight, sometimes at close quarters, and with many boardings and
repulses, lasted for a couple of days and nights, when having battered
each other thoroughly and lost many men, the pirates of both nations
separated and went cruising, no doubt, for more profitable game. Our
wanderer returned to his native land, seasoned and disciplined for the
part he was to play in the New World. As Smith had traveled all over
Europe and sojourned in Morocco, besides sailing the high seas, since he
visited Prince Sigismund in December, 1603, it was probably in the
year 1605 that he reached England. He had arrived at the manly age of
twenty-six years, and was ready to play a man's part in the wonderful
drama of discovery and adventure upon which the Britons were then
engaged.




IV. FIRST ATTEMPTS IN VIRGINIA

John Smith has not chosen to tell us anything of his life during the
interim--perhaps not more than a year and a half--between his
return from Morocco and his setting sail for Virginia. Nor do his
contemporaries throw any light upon this period of his life.

One would like to know whether he went down to Willoughby and had a
reckoning with his guardians; whether he found any relations or friends
of his boyhood; whether any portion of his estate remained of that
“competent means” which he says he inherited, but which does not seem
to have been available in his career. From the time when he set out for
France in his fifteenth year, with the exception of a short sojourn in
Willoughby seven or eight years after, he lived by his wits and by the
strong hand. His purse was now and then replenished by a lucky windfall,
which enabled him to extend his travels and seek more adventures.
This is the impression that his own story makes upon the reader in a
narrative that is characterized by the boastfulness and exaggeration
of the times, and not fuller of the marvelous than most others of that
period.

The London to which Smith returned was the London of Shakespeare. We
should be thankful for one glimpse of him in this interesting town. Did
he frequent the theatre? Did he perhaps see Shakespeare himself at the
Globe? Did he loaf in the coffee-houses, and spin the fine thread of
his adventures to the idlers and gallants who resorted to them? If he
dropped in at any theatre of an afternoon he was quite likely to hear
some allusion to Virginia, for the plays of the hour were full of chaff,
not always of the choicest, about the attractions of the Virgin-land,
whose gold was as plentiful as copper in England; where the prisoners
were fettered in gold, and the dripping-pans were made of it; and
where--an unheard-of thing--you might become an alderman without having
been a scavenger.

Was Smith an indulger in that new medicine for all ills, tobacco? Alas!
we know nothing of his habits or his company. He was a man of piety
according to his lights, and it is probable that he may have had the
then rising prejudice against theatres. After his return from Virginia
he and his exploits were the subject of many a stage play and spectacle,
but whether his vanity was more flattered by this mark of notoriety than
his piety was offended we do not know. There is certainly no sort of
evidence that he engaged in the common dissipation of the town, nor gave
himself up to those pleasures which a man rescued from the hardships of
captivity in Tartaria might be expected to seek. Mr. Stith says that
it was the testimony of his fellow soldiers and adventurers that “they
never knew a soldier, before him, so free from those military vices of
wine, tobacco, debts, dice, and oathes.”

But of one thing we may be certain: he was seeking adventure according
to his nature, and eager for any heroic employment; and it goes without
saying that he entered into the great excitement of the day--adventure
in America. Elizabeth was dead. James had just come to the throne, and
Raleigh, to whom Elizabeth had granted an extensive patent of Virginia,
was in the Tower. The attempts to make any permanent lodgment in the
countries of Virginia had failed. But at the date of Smith's advent
Captain Bartholomew Gosnold had returned from a voyage undertaken in
1602 under the patronage of the Earl of Southampton, and announced that
he had discovered a direct passage westward to the new continent, all
the former voyagers having gone by the way of the West Indies. The
effect of this announcement in London, accompanied as it was with
Gosnold's report of the fruitfulness of the coast of New England which
he explored, was something like that made upon New York by the discovery
of gold in California in 1849. The route by the West Indies, with its
incidents of disease and delay, was now replaced by the direct course
opened by Gosnold, and the London Exchange, which has always been quick
to scent any profit in trade, shared the excitement of the distinguished
soldiers and sailors who were ready to embrace any chance of adventure
that offered.

It is said that Captain Gosnold spent several years in vain, after
his return, in soliciting his friends and acquaintances to join him
in settling this fertile land he had explored; and that at length he
prevailed upon Captain John Smith, Mr. Edward Maria Wingfield, the Rev.
Mr. Robert Hunt, and others, to join him. This is the first appearance
of the name of Captain John Smith in connection with Virginia. Probably
his life in London had been as idle as unprofitable, and his purse
needed replenishing. Here was a way open to the most honorable,
exciting, and profitable employment. That its mere profit would have
attracted him we do not believe; but its danger, uncertainty, and chance
of distinction would irresistibly appeal to him. The distinct object of
the projectors was to establish a colony in Virginia. This proved too
great an undertaking for private persons. After many vain projects the
scheme was commended to several of the nobility, gentry, and merchants,
who came into it heartily, and the memorable expedition of 1606 was
organized.

The patent under which this colonization was undertaken was obtained
from King James by the solicitation of Richard Hakluyt and others.
Smith's name does not appear in it, nor does that of Gosnold nor of
Captain Newport. Richard Hakluyt, then clerk prebendary of Westminster,
had from the first taken great interest in the project. He was chaplain
of the English colony in Paris when Sir Francis Drake was fitting out
his expedition to America, and was eager to further it. By his diligent
study he became the best English geographer of his time; he was the
historiographer of the East India Company, and the best informed man in
England concerning the races, climates, and productions of all parts of
the globe. It was at Hakluyt's suggestion that two vessels were sent out
from Plymouth in 1603 to verify Gosnold's report of his new short route.
A further verification of the feasibility of this route was made
by Captain George Weymouth, who was sent out in 1605 by the Earl of
Southampton.

The letters-patent of King James, dated April 10, 1606, licensed the
planting of two colonies in the territories of America commonly called
Virginia. The corporators named in the first colony were Sir Thos.
Gates, Sir George Somers, knights, and Richard Hakluyt and Edward Maria
Wingfield, adventurers, of the city of London. They were permitted
to settle anywhere in territory between the 34th and 41st degrees of
latitude.

The corporators named in the second colony were Thomas Hankam, Raleigh
Gilbert, William Parker, and George Popham, representing Bristol,
Exeter, and Plymouth, and the west counties, who were authorized to make
a settlement anywhere between the 38th and 48th degrees of latitude.

The--letters commended and generously accepted this noble work of
colonization, “which may, by the Providence of Almighty God, hereafter
tend to the glory of his Divine Majesty, in propagating of Christian
religion to such people as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance
of all true knowledge and worship of God, and may in time bring the
infidels and savages living in those parts to human civility and to
a settled and quiet government.” The conversion of the Indians was as
prominent an object in all these early adventures, English or Spanish,
as the relief of the Christians has been in all the Russian campaigns
against the Turks in our day.

Before following the fortunes of this Virginia colony of 1606, to
which John Smith was attached, it is necessary to glance briefly at the
previous attempt to make settlements in this portion of America.

Although the English had a claim upon America, based upon the discovery
of Newfoundland and of the coast of the continent from the 38th to the
68th north parallel by Sebastian Cabot in 1497, they took no further
advantage of it than to send out a few fishing vessels, until Sir
Humphrey Gilbert, a noted and skillful seaman, took out letters-patent
for discovery, bearing date the 11th of January, 1578. Gilbert was the
half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh and thirteen years his senior. The
brothers were associated in the enterprise of 1579, which had for its
main object the possession of Newfoundland. It is commonly said, and
in this the biographical dictionaries follow one another, that Raleigh
accompanied his brother on this voyage of 1579 and went with him to
Newfoundland. The fact is that Gilbert did not reach Newfoundland on
that voyage, and it is open to doubt if Raleigh started with him. In
April, 1579, when Gilbert took active steps under the charter of 1578,
diplomatic difficulties arose, growing out of Elizabeth's policy with
the Spaniards, and when Gilbert's ships were ready to sail he
was stopped by an order from the council. Little is known of this
unsuccessful attempt of Gilbert's. He did, after many delays, put to
sea, and one of his contemporaries, John Hooker, the antiquarian, says
that Raleigh was one of the assured friends that accompanied him. But
he was shortly after driven back, probably from an encounter with the
Spaniards, and returned with the loss of a tall ship.

Raleigh had no sooner made good his footing at the court of Elizabeth
than he joined Sir Humphrey in a new adventure. But the Queen
peremptorily retained Raleigh at court, to prevent his incurring the
risks of any “dangerous sea-fights.” To prevent Gilbert from embarking
on this new voyage seems to have been the device of the council rather
than the Queen, for she assured Gilbert of her good wishes, and desired
him, on his departure, to give his picture to Raleigh for her, and she
contributed to the large sums raised to meet expenses “an anchor guarded
by a lady,” which the sailor was to wear at his breast. Raleigh risked L
2,000 in the venture, and equipped a ship which bore his name, but which
had ill luck. An infectious fever broke out among the crew, and the
“Ark Raleigh” returned to Plymouth. Sir Humphrey wrote to his brother
admiral, Sir George Peckham, indignantly of this desertion, the reason
for which he did not know, and then proceeded on his voyage with
his four remaining ships. This was on the 11th of January, 1583. The
expedition was so far successful that Gilbert took formal possession
of Newfoundland for the Queen. But a fatality attended his further
explorations: the gallant admiral went down at sea in a storm off our
coast, with his crew, heroic and full of Christian faith to the last,
uttering, it is reported, this courageous consolation to his comrades at
the last moment: “Be of good heart, my friends. We are as near to heaven
by sea as by land.”

In September, 1583, a surviving ship brought news of the disaster to
Falmouth. Raleigh was not discouraged. Within six months of this loss he
had on foot another enterprise. His brother's patent had expired. On
the 25th of March, 1584, he obtained from Elizabeth a new charter with
larger powers, incorporating himself, Adrian Gilbert, brother of
Sir Humphrey, and John Davys, under the title of “The College of the
Fellowship for the Discovery of the Northwest Passage.” But Raleigh's
object was colonization. Within a few days after his charter was issued
he despatched two captains, Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlow, who in July
of that year took possession of the island of Roanoke.

The name of Sir Walter Raleigh is intimately associated with Carolina
and Virginia, and it is the popular impression that he personally
assisted in the discovery of the one and the settlement of the other.
But there is no more foundation for the belief that he ever visited the
territory of Virginia, of which he was styled governor, than that he
accompanied Sir Humphrey Gilbert to Newfoundland. An allusion by William
Strachey, in his “Historie of Travaile into Virginia,” hastily read, may
have misled some writers. He speaks of an expedition southward, “to some
parts of Chawonock and the Mangoangs, to search them there left by Sir
Walter Raleigh.” But his further sketch of the various prior expeditions
shows that he meant to speak of settlers left by Sir Ralph Lane and
other agents of Raleigh in colonization. Sir Walter Raleigh never saw
any portion of the coast of the United States.

In 1592 he planned an attack upon the Spanish possessions of Panama, but
his plans were frustrated. His only personal expedition to the New World
was that to Guana in 1595.

The expedition of Captain Amadas and Captain Barlow is described by
Captain Smith in his compilation called the “General Historie,” and by
Mr. Strachey. They set sail April 27, 1584, from the Thames. On the 2d
of July they fell with the coast of Florida in shoal water, “where
they felt a most delicate sweet smell,” but saw no land. Presently land
appeared, which they took to be the continent, and coasted along to the
northward a hundred and thirty miles before finding a harbor. Entering
the first opening, they landed on what proved to be the Island of
Roanoke. The landing-place was sandy and low, but so productive of
grapes or vines overrunning everything, that the very surge of the sea
sometimes overflowed them. The tallest and reddest cedars in the world
grew there, with pines, cypresses, and other trees, and in the woods
plenty of deer, conies, and fowls in incredible abundance.

After a few days the natives came off in boats to visit them, proper
people and civil in their behavior, bringing with them the King's
brother, Granganameo (Quangimino, says Strachey). The name of the King
was Winginia, and of the country Wingandacoa. The name of this
King might have suggested that of Virginia as the title of the new
possession, but for the superior claim of the Virgin Queen. Granganameo
was a friendly savage who liked to trade. The first thing he took a
fancy was a pewter dish, and he made a hole through it and hung it about
his neck for a breastplate. The liberal Christians sold it to him for
the low price of twenty deer-skins, worth twenty crowns, and they
also let him have a copper kettle for fifty skins. They drove a lively
traffic with the savages for much of such “truck,” and the chief came
on board and ate and drank merrily with the strangers. His wife and
children, short of stature but well-formed and bashful, also paid them
a visit. She wore a long coat of leather, with a piece of leather about
her loins, around her forehead a band of white coral, and from her
ears bracelets of pearls of the bigness of great peas hung down to her
middle. The other women wore pendants of copper, as did the children,
five or six in an ear. The boats of these savages were hollowed trunks
of trees. Nothing could exceed the kindness and trustfulness the Indians
exhibited towards their visitors. They kept them supplied with game and
fruits, and when a party made an expedition inland to the residence of
Granganameo, his wife (her husband being absent) came running to the
river to welcome them; took them to her house and set them before
a great fire; took off their clothes and washed them; removed the
stockings of some and washed their feet in warm water; set plenty of
victual, venison and fish and fruits, before them, and took pains to
see all things well ordered for their comfort. “More love they could
not express to entertain us.” It is noted that these savages drank wine
while the grape lasted. The visitors returned all this kindness with
suspicion.

They insisted upon retiring to their boats at night instead of lodging
in the house, and the good woman, much grieved at their jealousy, sent
down to them their half-cooked supper, pots and all, and mats to cover
them from the rain in the night, and caused several of her men and
thirty women to sit all night on the shore over against them. “A more
kind, loving people cannot be,” say the voyagers.

In September the expedition returned to England, taking specimens of the
wealth of the country, and some of the pearls as big as peas, and
two natives, Wanchese and Manteo. The “lord proprietary” obtained the
Queen's permission to name the new lands “Virginia,” in her honor, and
he had a new seal of his arms cut, with the legend, Propria insignia
Walteri Ralegh, militis, Domini et Gubernatoris Virginia.

The enticing reports brought back of the fertility of this land, and the
amiability of its pearl-decked inhabitants, determined Raleigh at once
to establish a colony there, in the hope of the ultimate salvation
of the “poor seduced infidell” who wore the pearls. A fleet of seven
vessels, with one hundred householders, and many things necessary to
begin a new state, departed from Plymouth in April, 1585. Sir Richard
Grenville had command of the expedition, and Mr. Ralph Lane was made
governor of the colony, with Philip Amadas for his deputy. Among
the distinguished men who accompanied them were Thomas Hariot,
the mathematician, and Thomas Cavendish, the naval discoverer. The
expedition encountered as many fatalities as those that befell Sir
Humphrey Gilbert; and Sir Richard was destined also to an early
and memorable death. But the new colony suffered more from its own
imprudence and want of harmony than from natural causes.

In August, Grenville left Ralph Lane in charge of the colony and
returned to England, capturing a Spanish ship on the way. The colonists
pushed discoveries in various directions, but soon found themselves
involved in quarrels with the Indians, whose conduct was less friendly
than formerly, a change partly due to the greed of the whites. In June,
when Lane was in fear of a conspiracy which he had discovered against
the life of the colony, and it was short of supplies, Sir Francis Drake
appeared off Roanoke, returning homeward with his fleet from the sacking
of St. Domingo, Carthagena, and St. Augustine. Lane, without waiting for
succor from England, persuaded Drake to take him and all the colony back
home. Meantime Raleigh, knowing that the colony would probably need aid,
was preparing a fleet of three well appointed ships to accompany Sir
Richard Grenville, and an “advice ship,” plentifully freighted, to send
in advance to give intelligence of his coming. Great was Grenville's
chagrin, when he reached Hatorask, to find that the advice boat had
arrived, and finding no colony, had departed again for England. However,
he established fifteen men (“fifty,” says the “General Historie”) on the
island, provisioned for two years, and then returned home.


[Sir Richard Grenville in 1591 was vice-admiral of a fleet, under
command of Lord Thomas Howard, at the Azores, sent against a Spanish
Plate-fleet. Six English vessels were suddenly opposed by a Spanish
convoy of 53 ships of war. Left behind his comrades, in embarking from
an island, opposed by five galleons, he maintained a terrible fight
for fifteen hours, his vessel all cut to pieces, and his men nearly
all slain. He died uttering aloud these words: “Here dies Sir Richard
Grenville, with a joyful and quiet mind, for that I have ended my
life as a true soldier ought to do, fighting for his country, queen,
religion, and honor.”]


Mr. Ralph Lane's colony was splendidly fitted out, much better furnished
than the one that Newport, Wingfield, and Gosnold conducted to the River
James in 1607; but it needed a man at the head of it. If the governor
had possessed Smith's pluck, he would have held on till the arrival of
Grenville.

Lane did not distinguish himself in the conduct of this governorship,
but he nevertheless gained immortality. For he is credited with first
bringing into England that valuable medicinal weeds called tobacco,
which Sir Walter Raleigh made fashionable, not in its capacity to drive
“rheums” out of the body, but as a soother, when burned in the bowl of a
pipe and drawn through the stem in smoke, of the melancholy spirit.

The honor of introducing tobacco at this date is so large that it has
been shared by three persons--Sir Francis Drake, who brought Mr. Lane
home; Mr. Lane, who carried the precious result of his sojourn in
America; and Sir Walter Raleigh, who commended it to the use of the
ladies of Queen Elizabeth's court.

But this was by no means its first appearance in Europe. It was already
known in Spain, in France, and in Italy, and no doubt had begun to make
its way in the Orient. In the early part of the century the Spaniards
had discovered its virtues. It is stated by John Neander, in his “Tobaco
Logia,” published in Leyden in 1626, that Tobaco took its name from
a province in Yucatan, conquered by Fernando Cortez in 1519. The name
Nicotiana he derives from D. Johanne Nicotino Nemansensi, of the council
of Francis II., who first introduced the plant into France. At the date
of this volume (1626) tobacco was in general use all over Europe and
in the East. Pictures are given of the Persian water pipes, and
descriptions of the mode of preparing it for use. There are reports and
traditions of a very ancient use of tobacco in Persia and in China, as
well as in India, but we are convinced that the substance supposed to be
tobacco, and to be referred to as such by many writers, and described as
“intoxicating,” was really India hemp, or some plant very different from
the tobacco of the New World. At any rate there is evidence that in the
Turkish Empire as late as 1616 tobacco was still somewhat a novelty, and
the smoking of it was regarded as vile, and a habit only of the low.
The late Hekekian Bey, foreign minister of old Mahomet Ali, possessed an
ancient Turkish MS which related an occurrence at Smyrna about the year
1610, namely, the punishment of some sailors for the use of tobacco,
which showed that it was a novelty and accounted a low vice at that
time. The testimony of the trustworthy George Sandys, an English
traveler into Turkey, Egypt, and Syria in 1610 (afterwards, 1621,
treasurer of the colony in Virginia), is to the same effect as given in
his “Relation,” published in London in 1621. In his minute description
of the people and manners of Constantinople, after speaking of opium,
which makes the Turks “giddy-headed” and “turbulent dreamers,” he says:
“But perhaps for the self-same cause they delight in Tobacco: which they
take through reedes that have joyned with them great heads of wood to
containe it, I doubt not but lately taught them as brought them by the
English; and were it not sometimes lookt into (for Morat Bassa [Murad
III.?] not long since commanded a pipe to be thrust through the nose of
a Turke, and to be led in derision through the Citie), no question but
it would prove a principal commodity. Nevertheless they will take it in
corners; and are so ignorant therein, that that which in England is not
saleable, doth passe here among them for most excellent.”

Mr. Stith (“History of Virginia,” 1746) gives Raleigh credit for the
introduction of the pipe into good society, but he cautiously says, “We
are not informed whether the queen made use of it herself: but it is
certain she gave great countenance to it as a vegetable of singular
strength and power, which might therefore prove of benefit to mankind,
and advantage to the nation.” Mr. Thomas Hariot, in his observations on
the colony at Roanoke, says that the natives esteemed their tobacco, of
which plenty was found, their “chief physicke.”

It should be noted, as against the claim of Lane, that Stowe in his
“Annales” (1615) says: “Tobacco was first brought and made known in
England by Sir John Hawkins, about the year 1565, but not used by
Englishmen in many years after, though at this time commonly used by
most men and many women.” In a side-note to the edition of 1631 we read:
“Sir Walter Raleigh was the first that brought tobacco in use, when all
men wondered what it meant.” It was first commended for its medicinal
virtues. Harrison's “Chronologie,” under date of 1573, says: “In these
daies the taking in of the smoke of the Indian herbe called 'Tabaco' by
an instrument formed like a little ladell, whereby it passeth from the
mouth into the hed and stomach, is gretlie taken-up and used in England,
against Rewmes and some other diseases ingendred in the longes and
inward partes, and not without effect.” But Barnaby Rich, in “The
Honestie of this Age,” 1614, disagrees with Harrison about its benefit:
“They say it is good for a cold, for a pose, for rewmes, for aches, for
dropsies, and for all manner of diseases proceeding of moyst humours;
but I cannot see but that those that do take it fastest are as much (or
more) subject to all these infirmities (yea, and to the poxe itself)
as those that have nothing at all to do with it.” He learns that 7,000
shops in London live by the trade of tobacco-selling, and calculates
that there is paid for it L 399,375 a year, “all spent in smoake.” Every
base groom must have his pipe with his pot of ale; it “is vendible
in every taverne, inne, and ale-house; and as for apothecaries shops,
grosers shops, chandlers shops, they are (almost) never without company
that, from morning till night, are still taking of tobacco.” Numbers of
houses and shops had no other trade to live by. The wrath of King James
was probably never cooled against tobacco, but the expression of it was
somewhat tempered when he perceived what a source of revenue it became.

The savages of North America gave early evidence of the possession of
imaginative minds, of rare power of invention, and of an amiable desire
to make satisfactory replies to the inquiries of their visitors. They
generally told their questioners what they wanted to know, if they could
ascertain what sort of information would please them. If they had known
the taste of the sixteenth century for the marvelous they could not have
responded more fitly to suit it. They filled Mr. Lane and Mr. Hariot
full of tales of a wonderful copper mine on the River Maratock
(Roanoke), where the metal was dipped out of the stream in great bowls.
The colonists had great hopes of this river, which Mr. Hariot thought
flowed out of the Gulf of Mexico, or very near the South Sea. The
Indians also conveyed to the mind of this sagacious observer the notion
that they had a very respectably developed religion; that they believed
in one chief god who existed from all eternity, and who made many gods
of less degree; that for mankind a woman was first created, who by
one of the gods brought forth children; that they believed in the
immortality of the soul, and that for good works a soul will be conveyed
to bliss in the tabernacles of the gods, and for bad deeds to pokogusso,
a great pit in the furthest part of the world, where the sun sets,
and where they burn continually. The Indians knew this because two men
lately dead had revived and come back to tell them of the other world.
These stories, and many others of like kind, the Indians told of
themselves, and they further pleased Mr. Hariot by kissing his Bible and
rubbing it all over their bodies, notwithstanding he told them there was
no virtue in the material book itself, only in its doctrines. We must
do Mr. Hariot the justice to say, however, that he had some little
suspicion of the “subtiltie” of the weroances (chiefs) and the priests.

Raleigh was not easily discouraged; he was determined to plant his
colony, and to send relief to the handful of men that Grenville had left
on Roanoke Island. In May, 1587, he sent out three ships and a hundred
and fifty householders, under command of Mr. John White, who was
appointed Governor of the colony, with twelve assistants as a Council,
who were incorporated under the name of “The Governor and Assistants
of the City of Ralegh in Virginia,” with instructions to change their
settlement to Chesapeake Bay. The expedition found there no one of the
colony (whether it was fifty or fifteen the writers disagree), nothing
but the bones of one man where the plantation had been; the houses were
unhurt, but overgrown with weeds, and the fort was defaced. Captain
Stafford, with twenty men, went to Croatan to seek the lost colonists.
He heard that the fifty had been set upon by three hundred Indians, and,
after a sharp skirmish and the loss of one man, had taken boats and gone
to a small island near Hatorask, and afterwards had departed no one knew
whither.

Mr. White sent a band to take revenge upon the Indians who were
suspected of their murder through treachery, which was guided by Mateo,
the friendly Indian, who had returned with the expedition from England.
By a mistake they attacked a friendly tribe. In August of this year
Mateo was Christianized, and baptized under the title of Lord of Roanoke
and Dassomonpeake, as a reward for his fidelity. The same month Elinor,
the daughter of the Govemor, the wife of Ananias Dare, gave birth to a
daughter, the first white child born in this part of the continent, who
was named Virginia.

Before long a dispute arose between the Governor and his Council as to
the proper person to return to England for supplies. White himself was
finally prevailed upon to go, and he departed, leaving about a hundred
settlers on one of the islands of Hatorask to form a plantation.

The Spanish invasion and the Armada distracted the attention of Europe
about this time, and the hope of plunder from Spanish vessels was more
attractive than the colonization of America. It was not until 1590
that Raleigh was able to despatch vessels to the relief of the Hatorask
colony, and then it was too late. White did, indeed, start out from
Biddeford in April, 1588, with two vessels, but the temptation to chase
prizes was too strong for him, and he went on a cruise of his own, and
left the colony to its destruction.

In March, 1589-90, Mr. White was again sent out, with three ships, from
Plymouth, and reached the coast in August. Sailing by Croatan they went
to Hatorask, where they descried a smoke in the place they had left the
colony in 1587. Going ashore next day, they found no man, nor sign that
any had been there lately. Preparing to go to Roanoke next day, a boat
was upset and Captain Spicer and six of the crew were drowned. This
accident so discouraged the sailors that they could hardly be persuaded
to enter on the search for the colony. At last two boats, with nineteen
men, set out for Hatorask, and landed at that part of Roanoke where the
colony had been left. When White left the colony three years before, the
men had talked of going fifty miles into the mainland, and had agreed to
leave some sign of their departure. The searchers found not a man of
the colony; their houses were taken down, and a strong palisade had been
built. All about were relics of goods that had been buried and dug up
again and scattered, and on a post was carved the name “CROATAN.” This
signal, which was accompanied by no sign of distress, gave White hope
that he should find his comrades at Croatan. But one mischance or
another happening, his provisions being short, the expedition decided to
run down to the West Indies and “refresh” (chiefly with a little Spanish
plunder), and return in the spring and seek their countrymen; but
instead they sailed for England and never went to Croatan. The men of
the abandoned colonies were never again heard of. Years after, in 1602,
Raleigh bought a bark and sent it, under the charge of Samuel Mace, a
mariner who had been twice to Virginia, to go in search of the survivors
of White's colony. Mace spent a month lounging about the Hatorask coast
and trading with the natives, but did not land on Croatan, or at any
place where the lost colony might be expected to be found; but having
taken on board some sassafras, which at that time brought a good price
in England, and some other barks which were supposed to be valuable, he
basely shirked the errand on which he was hired to go, and took himself
and his spicy woods home.

The “Lost Colony” of White is one of the romances of the New World.
Governor White no doubt had the feelings of a parent, but he did not
allow them to interfere with his more public duties to go in search of
Spanish prizes. If the lost colony had gone to Croatan, it was probable
that Ananias Dare and his wife, the Governor's daughter, and the little
Virginia Dare, were with them. But White, as we have seen, had such
confidence in Providence that he left his dear relatives to its care,
and made no attempt to visit Croatan.

Stith says that Raleigh sent five several times to search for the
lost, but the searchers returned with only idle reports and frivolous
allegations. Tradition, however, has been busy with the fate of these
deserted colonists. One of the unsupported conjectures is that the
colonists amalgamated with the tribe of Hatteras Indians, and Indian
tradition and the physical characteristics of the tribe are said to
confirm this idea. But the sporadic birth of children with white
skins (albinos) among black or copper-colored races that have had no
intercourse with white people, and the occurrence of light hair and blue
eyes among the native races of America and of New Guinea, are facts so
well attested that no theory of amalgamation can be sustained by such
rare physical manifestations. According to Captain John Smith, who wrote
of Captain Newport's explorations in 1608, there were no tidings of
the waifs, for, says Smith, Newport returned “without a lump of gold, a
certainty of the South Sea, or one of the lost company sent out by Sir
Walter Raleigh.”

In his voyage of discovery up the Chickahominy, Smith seem; to have
inquired about this lost colony of King Paspahegh, for he says, “what he
knew of the dominions he spared not to acquaint me with, as of certaine
men cloathed at a place called Ocanahonan, cloathcd like me.”

[Among these Hatteras Indians Captain Amadas, in 1584, saw children with
chestnut-colored hair.]

We come somewhat nearer to this matter in the “Historie of Travaile
into Virginia Britannia,” published from the manuscript by the Hakluyt
Society in 1849, in which it is intimated that seven of these deserted
colonists were afterwards rescued. Strachey is a first-rate authority
for what he saw. He arrived in Virginia in 1610 and remained there two
years, as secretary of the colony, and was a man of importance. His
“Historie” was probably written between 1612 and 1616. In the first
portion of it, which is descriptive of the territory of Virginia, is
this important passage: “At Peccarecamek and Ochanahoen, by the relation
of Machumps, the people have houses built with stone walls, and one
story above another, so taught them by those English who escaped the
slaughter of Roanoke. At what time this our colony, under the conduct
of Captain Newport, landed within the Chesapeake Bay, where the
people breed up tame turkies about their houses, and take apes in the
mountains, and where, at Ritanoe, the Weroance Eyanaco, preserved
seven of the English alive--four men, two boys, and one young maid (who
escaped [that is from Roanoke] and fled up the river of Chanoke), to
beat his copper, of which he hath certain mines at the said Ritanoe, as
also at Pamawauk are said to be store of salt stones.”

This, it will be observed, is on the testimony of Machumps. This
pleasing story is not mentioned in Captain Newport's “Discoveries” (May,
1607). Machumps, who was the brother of Winganuske, one of the many
wives of Powhatan, had been in England. He was evidently a lively
Indian. Strachey had heard him repeat the “Indian grace,” a sort of
incantation before meat, at the table of Sir Thomas Dale. If he did
not differ from his red brothers he had a powerful imagination, and was
ready to please the whites with any sort of a marvelous tale. Newport
himself does not appear to have seen any of the “apes taken in the
mountains.” If this story is to be accepted as true we have to think of
Virginia Dare as growing up to be a woman of twenty years, perhaps as
other white maidens have been, Indianized and the wife of a native.
But the story rests only upon a romancing Indian. It is possible that
Strachey knew more of the matter than he relates, for in his history he
speaks again of those betrayed people, “of whose end you shall hereafter
read in this decade.” But the possessed information is lost, for it is
not found in the remainder of this “decade” of his writing, which is
imperfect. Another reference in Strachey is more obscure than the first.
He is speaking of the merciful intention of King James towards the
Virginia savages, and that he does not intend to root out the natives
as the Spaniards did in Hispaniola, but by degrees to change their
barbarous nature, and inform them of the true God and the way to
Salvation, and that his Majesty will even spare Powhatan himself. But,
he says, it is the intention to make “the common people likewise to
understand, how that his Majesty has been acquainted that the men,
women, and children of the first plantation of Roanoke were by practice
of Powhatan (he himself persuaded thereunto by his priests) miserably
slaughtered, without any offense given him either by the first planted
(who twenty and odd years had peaceably lived intermixed with those
savages, and were out of his territory) or by those who are now come to
inhabit some parts of his distant lands,” etc.

Strachey of course means the second plantation and not the first, which,
according to the weight of authority, consisted of only fifteen men and
no women.

In George Percy's Discourse concerning Captain Newport's exploration
of the River James in 1607 (printed in Purchas's “Pilgrims”) is this
sentence: “At Port Cotage, in our voyage up the river, we saw a savage
boy, about the age of ten years, which had a head of hair of a perfect
yellow, and reasonably white skin, which is a miracle amongst all
savages.” Mr. Neill, in his “History of the Virginia Company,” says that
this boy “was no doubt the offspring of the colonists left at Roanoke by
White, of whom four men, two boys, and one young maid had been preserved
from slaughter by an Indian Chief.” Under the circumstances, “no doubt”
 is a very strong expression for a historian to use.

This belief in the sometime survival of the Roanoke colonists, and their
amalgamation with the Indians, lingered long in colonial gossip. Lawson,
in his History, published in London in 1718, mentions a tradition among
the Hatteras Indians, “that several of their ancestors were white people
and could talk from a book; the truth of which is confirmed by gray eyes
being among these Indians and no others.”

But the myth of Virginia Dare stands no chance beside that of
Pocahontas.




V. FIRST PLANTING OF THE COLONY

The way was now prepared for the advent of Captain John Smith in
Virginia. It is true that we cannot give him his own title of its
discoverer, but the plantation had been practically abandoned, all
the colonies had ended in disaster, all the governors and captains
had lacked the gift of perseverance or had been early drawn into other
adventures, wholly disposed, in the language of Captain John White, “to
seek after purchase and spoils,” and but for the energy and persistence
of Captain Smith the expedition of 1606 might have had no better fate.
It needed a man of tenacious will to hold a colony together in one spot
long enough to give it root. Captain Smith was that man, and if we find
him glorying in his exploits, and repeating upon single big Indians
the personal prowess that distinguished him in Transylvania and in the
mythical Nalbrits, we have only to transfer our sympathy from the Turks
to the Sasquesahanocks if the sense of his heroism becomes oppressive.

Upon the return of Samuel Mace, mariner, who was sent out in 1602 to
search for White's lost colony, all Raleigh's interest in the Virginia
colony had, by his attainder, escheated to the crown. But he never
gave up his faith in Virginia: neither the failure of nine several
expeditions nor twelve years imprisonment shook it. On the eve of his
fall he had written, “I shall yet live to see it an English nation:” and
he lived to see his prediction come true.

The first or Virginian colony, chartered with the Plymouth colony in
April, 1606, was at last organized by the appointment of Sir Thomas
Smith, the 'Chief of Raleigh's assignees, a wealthy London merchant, who
had been ambassador to Persia, and was then, or shortly after, governor
of the East India Company, treasurer and president of the meetings of
the council in London; and by the assignment of the transportation of
the colony to Captain Christopher Newport, a mariner of experience in
voyages to the West Indies and in plundering the Spaniards, who had the
power to appoint different captains and mariners, and the sole charge of
the voyage. No local councilors were named for Virginia, but to Captain
Newport, Captain Bartholomew Gosnold, and Captain John Ratcliffe were
delivered sealed instructions, to be opened within twenty-four hours
after their arrival in Virginia, wherein would be found the names of the
persons designated for the Council.

This colony, which was accompanied by the prayers and hopes of London,
left the Thames December 19, 1606, in three vessels--the Susan Constant,
one hundred tons, Captain Newport, with seventy-one persons; the
God-Speed, forty tons, Captain Gosnold, with fifty-two persons; and a
pinnace of twenty tons, the Discovery, Captain Ratcliffe, with twenty
persons. The Mercure Francais, Paris, 1619, says some of the passengers
were women and children, but there is no other mention of women. Of the
persons embarked, one hundred and five were planters, the rest crews.
Among the planters were Edward Maria Wingfield, Captain John Smith,
Captain John Martin, Captain Gabriel Archer, Captain George Kendall,
Mr. Robert Hunt, preacher, and Mr. George Percie, brother of the Earl of
Northumberland, subsequently governor for a brief period, and one of the
writers from whom Purchas compiled. Most of the planters were shipped
as gentlemen, but there were four carpenters, twelve laborers, a
blacksmith, a sailor, a barber, a bricklayer, a mason, a tailor, a
drummer, and a chirurgeon.

The composition of the colony shows a serious purpose of settlement,
since the trades were mostly represented, but there were too many
gentlemen to make it a working colony. And, indeed, the gentlemen, like
the promoters of the enterprise in London, were probably more solicitous
of discovering a passage to the South Sea, as the way to increase
riches, than of making a state. They were instructed to explore every
navigable river they might find, and to follow the main branches, which
would probably lead them in one direction to the East Indies or South
Sea, and in the other to the Northwest Passage. And they were forcibly
reminded that the way to prosper was to be of one mind, for their own
and their country's good.

This last advice did not last the expedition out of sight of land. They
sailed from Blackwell, December 19, 1606, but were kept six weeks on the
coast of England by contrary winds. A crew of saints cabined in those
little caravels and tossed about on that coast for six weeks would
scarcely keep in good humor. Besides, the position of the captains and
leaders was not yet defined. Factious quarrels broke out immediately,
and the expedition would likely have broken up but for the wise conduct
and pious exhortations of Mr. Robert Hunt, the preacher. This faithful
man was so ill and weak that it was thought he could not recover, yet
notwithstanding the stormy weather, the factions on board, and although
his home was almost in sight, only twelve miles across the Downs, he
refused to quit the ship. He was unmoved, says Smith, either by the
weather or by “the scandalous imputations (of some few little better
than atheists, of the greatest rank amongst us).” With “the water of his
patience” and “his godly exhortations” he quenched the flames of envy
and dissension.

They took the old route by the West Indies. George Percy notes that on
the 12th of February they saw a blazing star, and presently a storm.
They watered at the Canaries, traded with savages at San Domingo, and
spent three weeks refreshing themselves among the islands. The quarrels
revived before they reached the Canaries, and there Captain Smith was
seized and put in close confinement for thirteen weeks.

We get little light from contemporary writers on this quarrel. Smith
does not mention the arrest in his “True Relation,” but in his “General
Historie,” writing of the time when they had been six weeks in Virginia,
he says: “Now Captain Smith who all this time from their departure from
the Canaries was restrained as a prisoner upon the scandalous suggestion
of some of the chiefs (envying his repute) who fancied he intended to
usurp the government, murder the Council, and make himself King, that
his confedcrates were dispersed in all three ships, and that divers
of his confederates that revealed it, would affirm it, for this he was
committed a prisoner; thirteen weeks he remained thus suspected, and by
that time they should return they pretended out of their commiserations,
to refer him to the Council in England to receive a check, rather than
by particulating his designs make him so odious to the world, as to
touch his life, or utterly overthrow his reputation. But he so much
scorned their charity and publically defied the uttermost of their
cruelty, he wisely prevented their policies, though he could not
suppress their envies, yet so well he demeaned himself in this business,
as all the company did see his innocency, and his adversaries' malice,
and those suborned to accuse him accused his accusers of subornation;
many untruths were alleged against him; but being apparently disproved,
begot a general hatred in the hearts of the company against such unjust
Commanders, that the President was adjudged to give him L 200, so
that all he had was seized upon, in part of satisfaction, which Smith
presently returned to the store for the general use of the colony.”--

Neither in Newport's “Relatyon” nor in Mr. Wingfield's “Discourse” is
the arrest mentioned, nor does Strachey speak of it.

About 1629, Smith, in writing a description of the Isle of Mevis (Nevis)
in his “Travels and Adventures,” says: “In this little [isle] of Mevis,
more than twenty years agone, I have remained a good time together,
to wod and water--and refresh my men.” It is characteristic of Smith's
vivid imagination, in regard to his own exploits, that he should speak
of an expedition in which he had no command, and was even a prisoner, in
this style: “I remained,” and “my men.” He goes on: “Such factions here
we had as commonly attend such voyages, and a pair of gallows was made,
but Captaine Smith, for whom they were intended, could not be persuaded
to use them; but not any one of the inventors but their lives by justice
fell into his power, to determine of at his pleasure, whom with much
mercy he favored, that most basely and unjustly would have betrayed
him.” And it is true that Smith, although a great romancer, was often
magnanimous, as vain men are apt to be.

King James's elaborate lack of good sense had sent the expedition to sea
with the names of the Council sealed up in a box, not to be opened
till it reached its destination. Consequently there was no recognized
authority. Smith was a young man of about twenty-eight, vain and no
doubt somewhat “bumptious,” and it is easy to believe that Wingfield
and the others who felt his superior force and realized his experience,
honestly suspected him of designs against the expedition. He was the
ablest man on board, and no doubt was aware of it. That he was not only
a born commander of men, but had the interest of the colony at heart,
time was to show.

The voyagers disported themselves among the luxuries of the West Indies.
At Guadaloupe they found a bath so hot that they boiled their pork in
it as well as over the fire. At the Island of Monaca they took from the
bushes with their hands near two hogsheads full of birds in three or
four hours. These, it is useless to say, were probably not the “barnacle
geese” which the nautical travelers used to find, and picture
growing upon bushes and dropping from the eggs, when they were ripe,
full-fledged into the water. The beasts were fearless of men. Wild birds
and natives had to learn the whites before they feared them.

“In Mevis, Mona, and the Virgin Isles,” says the “General Historie,” “we
spent some time, where with a lothsome beast like a crocodile, called
a gwayn [guana], tortoises, pellicans, parrots, and fishes, we feasted
daily.”

Thence they made sail-in search of Virginia, but the mariners lost their
reckoning for three days and made no land; the crews were discomfited,
and Captain Ratcliffe, of the pinnace, wanted to up helm and return to
England. But a violent storm, which obliged them “to hull all night,”
 drove them to the port desired. On the 26th of April they saw a bit
of land none of them had ever seen before. This, the first land they
descried, they named Cape Henry, in honor of the Prince of Wales; as the
opposite cape was called Cape Charles, for the Duke of York, afterwards
Charles I. Within these capes they found one of the most pleasant places
in the world, majestic navigable rivers, beautiful mountains, hills, and
plains, and a fruitful and delightsome land.

Mr. George Percy was ravished at the sight of the fair meadows and
goodly tall trees. As much to his taste were the large and delicate
oysters, which the natives roasted, and in which were found many pearls.
The ground was covered with fine and beautiful strawberries, four times
bigger than those in England.

Masters Wingfield, Newport, and Gosnold., with thirty men, went ashore
on Cape Henry, where they were suddenly set upon by savages, who came
creeping upon all-fours over the hills, like bears, with their bows
in their hands; Captain Archer was hurt in both hands, and a sailor
dangerously wounded in two places on his body. It was a bad omen.

The night of their arrival they anchored at Point Comfort, now Fortress
Monroe; the box was opened and the orders read, which constituted Edward
Maria Wingfield, Bartholomew Gosnold, John Smith, Christopher Newport,
John Ratcliffe, John Martin, and George Kendall the Council, with power
to choose a President for a year. Until the 13th of May they were slowly
exploring the River Powhatan, now the James, seeking a place for the
settlement. They selected a peninsula on the north side of the river,
forty miles from its mouth, where there was good anchorage, and which
could be readily fortified. This settlement was Jamestown. The Council
was then sworn in, and Mr. Wingfield selected President. Smith being
under arrest was not sworn in of the Council, and an oration was made
setting forth the reason for his exclusion.

When they had pitched upon a site for the fort, every man set to work,
some to build the fort, others to pitch the tents, fell trees and make
clapboards to reload the ships, others to make gardens and nets. The
fort was in the form of a triangle with a half-moon at each corner,
intended to mount four or five guns.

President Wingfield appears to have taken soldierly precautions, but
Smith was not at all pleased with him from the first. He says “the
President's overweening jealousy would admit of no exercise at arms, or
fortifications but the boughs of trees cast together in the form of a
half-moon by the extraordinary pains and diligence of Captain Kendall.”
 He also says there was contention between Captain Wingfield and Captain
Gosnold about the site of the city.

The landing was made at Jamestown on the 14th of May, according to
Percy. Previous to that considerable explorations were made. On the 18th
of April they launched a shallop, which they built the day before,
and “discovered up the bay.” They discovered a river on the south side
running into the mainland, on the banks of which were good stores
of mussels and oysters, goodly trees, flowers of all colors, and
strawberries. Returning to their ships and finding the water shallow,
they rowed over to a point of land, where they found from six to twelve
fathoms of water, which put them in good comfort, therefore they named
that part of the land Cape Comfort. On the 29th they set up a cross on
Chesapeake Bay, on Cape Henry, and the next day coasted to the Indian
town of Kecoughton, now Hampton, where they were kindly entertained.
When they first came to land the savages made a doleful noise, laying
their paws to the ground and scratching the earth with their nails. This
ceremony, which was taken to be a kind of idolatry, ended, mats were
brought from the houses, whereon the guests were seated, and given
to eat bread made of maize, and tobacco to smoke. The savages also
entertained them with dancing and singing and antic tricks and grimaces.
They were naked except a covering of skins about the loins, and many
were painted in black and red, with artificial knots of lovely colors,
beautiful and pleasing to the eye. The 4th of May they were entertained
by the chief of Paspika, who favored them with a long oration, making
a foul noise and vehement in action, the purport of which they did not
catch. The savages were full of hospitality. The next day the weroance,
or chief, of Rapahanna sent a messenger to invite them to his seat. His
majesty received them in as modest a proud fashion as if he had been a
prince of a civil government. His body was painted in crimson and his
face in blue, and he wore a chain of beads about his neck and in his
ears bracelets of pearls and a bird's claw. The 8th of May they went up
the river to the country Apomatica, where the natives received them in
hostile array, the chief, with bow and arrows in one hand, and a pipe of
tobacco in the other, offering them war or peace.

These savages were as stout and able as any heathen or Christians in
the world. Mr. Percy said they bore their years well. He saw among the
Pamunkeys a savage reported to be 160, years old, whose eyes were sunk
in his head, his teeth gone his hair all gray, and quite a big beard,
white as snow; he was a lusty savage, and could travel as fast as
anybody.

The Indians soon began to be troublesome in their visits to the
plantations, skulking about all night, hanging around the fort by
day, bringing sometimes presents of deer, but given to theft of small
articles, and showing jealousy of the occupation. They murmured, says
Percy, at our planting in their country. But worse than the disposition
of the savages was the petty quarreling in the colony itself.

In obedience to the orders to explore for the South Sea, on the 22d of
May, Newport, Percy, Smith, Archer, and twenty others were sent in the
shallop to explore the Powhatan, or James River.

Passing by divers small habitations, and through a land abounding in
trees, flowers, and small fruits, a river full of fish, and of sturgeon
such as the world beside has none, they came on the 24th, having passed
the town of Powhatan, to the head of the river, the Falls, where they
set up the cross and proclaimed King James of England.

Smith says in his “General Historie” they reached Powhatan on the 26th.
But Captain Newport's “Relatyon” agrees with Percy's, and with, Smith's
“True Relation.” Captain Newport, says Percy, permitted no one to visit
Powhatan except himself.

Captain Newport's narration of the exploration of the James is
interesting, being the first account we have of this historic river.
At the junction of the Appomattox and the James, at a place he calls
Wynauk, the natives welcomed them with rejoicing and entertained them
with dances. The Kingdom of Wynauk was full of pearl-mussels. The king
of this tribe was at war with the King of Paspahegh. Sixteen miles above
this point, at an inlet, perhaps Turkey Point, they were met by eight
savages in a canoe, one of whom was intelligent enough to lay out the
whole course of the river, from Chesapeake Bay to its source, with a
pen and paper which they showed him how to use. These Indians kept them
company for some time, meeting them here and there with presents of
strawberries, mulberries, bread, and fish, for which they received pins,
needles, and beads. They spent one night at Poore Cottage (the Port
Cotage of Percy, where he saw the white boy), probably now Haxall. Five
miles above they went ashore near the now famous Dutch Gap, where King
Arahatic gave them a roasted deer, and caused his women to bake cakes
for them. This king gave Newport his crown, which was of deer's hair
dyed red. He was a subject of the great King Powhatan. While they sat
making merry with the savages, feasting and taking tobacco and seeing
the dances, Powhatan himself appeared and was received with great show
of honor, all rising from their seats except King Arahatic, and shouting
loudly. To Powhatan ample presents were made of penny-knives, shears,
and toys, and he invited them to visit him at one of his seats called
Powhatan, which was within a mile of the Falls, where now stands the
city of Richmond. All along the shore the inhabitants stood in clusters,
offering food to the strangers. The habitation of Powhatan was situated
on a high hill by the water side, with a meadow at its foot where was
grown wheat, beans, tobacco, peas, pompions, flax, and hemp.

Powhatan served the whites with the best he had, and best of all with
a friendly welcome and with interesting discourse of the country. They
made a league of friendship. The next day he gave them six men as guides
to the falls above, and they left with him one man as a hostage.

On Sunday, the 24th of May, having returned to Powhatan's seat, they
made a feast for him of pork, cooked with peas, and the Captain and King
ate familiarly together; “he eat very freshly of our meats, dranck of
our beere, aquavite, and sack.” Under the influence of this sack and
aquavite the King was very communicative about the interior of the
country, and promised to guide them to the mines of iron and copper; but
the wary chief seems to have thought better of it when he got sober, and
put them off with the difficulties and dangers of the way.

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 copper about her
neck, a coronet of copper upon her hed. She had long, black haire, which
hanged loose down her back to her myddle; which only part was covered
with a deare's skyn, and ells all naked. She had her women attending
her, adorned much like herself (except they wanted the copper). Here we
had our accustomed eates, tobacco, and welcome. Our Captaine presented
her with guyfts liberally, whereupon shee cheered somewhat her
countenance, and requested him to shoote off a piece; whereat (we noted)
she showed not near the like feare as Arahatic, though he be a goodly
man.”

The company was received with the same hospitality by King Pamunkey,
whose land was believed to be rich in copper and pearls. The copper was
so flexible that Captain Newport bent a piece of it the thickness of his
finger as if it had been lead. The natives were unwilling to part with
it. The King had about his neck a string of pearls as big as peas, which
would have been worth three or four hundred pounds, if the pearls had
been taken from the mussels as they should have been.

Arriving on their route at Weanock, some twenty miles above the fort,
they were minded to visit Paspahegh and another chief Jamestown lay in
the territory of Paspahegh--but suspicious signs among the natives made
them apprehend trouble at the fort, and they hastened thither to find
their suspicions verified. The day before, May 26th, the colony had been
attacked by two hundred Indians (four hundred, Smith says), who were
only beaten off when they had nearly entered the fort, by the use of the
artillery. The Indians made a valiant fight for an hour; eleven white
men were wounded, of whom one died afterwards, and a boy was killed on
the pinnace. This loss was concealed from the Indians, who for some time
seem to have believed that the whites could not be hurt. Four of the
Council were hurt in this fight, and President Wingfield, who showed
himself a valiant gentleman, had a shot through his beard. They killed
eleven of the Indians, but their comrades lugged them away on their
backs and buried them in the woods with a great noise. For several days
alarms and attacks continued, and four or five men were cruelly wounded,
and one gentleman, Mr. Eustace Cloville, died from the effects of five
arrows in his body.

Upon this hostility, says Smith, the President was contented the fort
should be palisaded, and the ordnance mounted, and the men armed and
exercised. The fortification went on, but the attacks continued, and it
was unsafe for any to venture beyond the fort.

Dissatisfaction arose evidently with President Wingfield's management.
Captain Newport says: “There being among the gentlemen and all the
company a murmur and grudge against certain proceedings and inconvenient
courses [Newport] put up a petition to the Council for reformation.” The
Council heeded this petition, and urged to amity by Captain Newport,
the company vowed faithful love to each other and obedience to the
superiors. On the 10th of June, Captain Smith was sworn of the Council.
In his “General Historie,” not published till 1624, he says: “Many were
the mischiefs that daily sprung from their ignorant (yet ambitious)
spirits; but the good doctrine and exhortation of our preacher Mr. Hunt,
reconciled them and caused Captain Smith to be admitted to the Council.”
 The next day they all partook of the holy communion.

In order to understand this quarrel, which was not by any means appeased
by this truce, and to determine Captain Smith's responsibility for it,
it is necessary to examine all the witnesses. Smith is unrestrained
in his expression of his contempt for Wingfield. But in the diary of
Wingfield we find no accusation against Smith at this date. Wingfield
says that Captain Newport before he departed asked him how he thought
himself settled in the government, and that he replied “that no
disturbance could endanger him or the colony, but it must be wrought
either by Captain Gosnold or Mr. Archer, for the one was strong with
friends and followers and could if he would; and the other was troubled
with an ambitious spirit and would if he could.”

The writer of Newport's “Relatyon” describes the Virginia savages as a
very strong and lusty race, and swift warriors. “Their skin is tawny;
not so borne, but with dyeing and painting themselves, in which they
delight greatly.” That the Indians were born white was, as we shall see
hereafter, a common belief among the first settlers in Virginia and New
England. Percy notes a distinction between maids and married women: “The
maids shave close the fore part and sides of their heads, and leave it
long behind, where it is tied up and hangs down to the hips. The married
women wear their hair all of a length, but tied behind as that of maids
is. And the women scratch on their bodies and limbs, with a sharp iron,
pictures of fowls, fish, and beasts, and rub into the 'drawings' lively
colors which dry into the flesh and are permanent.” The “Relatyon” says
the people are witty and ingenious and allows them many good qualities,
but makes this exception: “The people steal anything comes near them;
yea, are so practiced in this art, that looking in our face, they would
with their foot, between their toes, convey a chisel, knife, percer, or
any indifferent light thing, which having once conveyed, they hold it
an injury to take the same from them. They are naturally given to
treachery; howbeit we could not find it in our travel up the river, but
rather a most kind and loving people.”




VI. QUARRELS AND HARDSHIPS

On Sunday, June 21st, they took the communion lovingly together. That
evening Captain Newport gave a farewell supper on board his vessel. The
22d he sailed in the Susan Constant for England, carrying specimens of
the woods and minerals, and made the short passage of five weeks. Dudley
Carleton, in a letter to John Chamberlain dated Aug. 18, 1607, writes
“that Captain Newport has arrived without gold or silver, and that the
adventurers, cumbered by the presence of the natives, have fortified
themselves at a place called Jamestown.” The colony left numbered one
hundred and four.

The good harmony of the colony did not last. There were other reasons
why the settlement was unprosperous. The supply of wholesome provisions
was inadequate. The situation of the town near the Chickahominy swamps
was not conducive to health, and although Powhatan had sent to make
peace with them, and they also made a league of amity with the chiefs
Paspahegh and Tapahanagh, they evidently had little freedom of movement
beyond sight of their guns. Percy says they were very bare and scant of
victuals, and in wars and dangers with the savages.

Smith says in his “True Relation,” which was written on the spot, and is
much less embittered than his “General Historie,” that they were in
good health and content when Newport departed, but this did not long
continue, for President Wingfield and Captain Gosnold, with the most of
the Council, were so discontented with each other that nothing was done
with discretion, and no business transacted with wisdom. This he charges
upon the “hard-dealing of the President,” the rest of the Council being
diversely affected through his audacious command. “Captain Martin,
though honest, was weak and sick; Smith was in disgrace through the
malice of others; and God sent famine and sickness, so that the living
were scarce able to bury the dead. Our want of sufficient good food, and
continual watching, four or five each night, at three bulwarks, being
the chief cause; only of sturgeon we had great store, whereon we would
so greedily surfeit, as it cost many their lives; the sack, Aquavite,
and other preservations of our health being kept in the President's
hands, for his own diet and his few associates.”

In his “General Historie,” written many years later, Smith enlarges this
indictment with some touches of humor characteristic of him. He says:

“Being thus left to our fortunes, it fortuned that within ten days
scarce ten amongst us could either go, or well stand, such extreme
weakness and sicknes oppressed us. And thereat none need marvaile if
they consider the cause and reason, which was this: whilst the ships
stayed, our allowance was somewhat bettered, by a daily proportion of
Bisket, which the sailors would pilfer to sell, give, or exchange with
us for money, Saxefras, furres, or love. But when they departed, there
remained neither taverne, beere-house, nor place of reliefe, but the
common Kettell. Had we beene as free from all sinnes as gluttony, and
drunkennesse, we might have been canonized for Saints. But our President
would never have been admitted, for ingrissing to his private, Oatmeale,
Sacke, Oyle, Aquavitz, Beef, Egges, or what not, but the Kettell: that
indeed he allowed equally to be distributed, and that was half a pint
of wheat, and as much barley boyled with water for a man a day, and this
being fryed some twenty-six weeks in the ship's hold, contained as many
wormes as graines; so that we might truly call it rather so much bran
than corrne, our drinke was water, our lodgings Castles in the ayre;
with this lodging and dyet, our extreme toile in bearing and planting
Pallisadoes, so strained and bruised us, and our continual labour in the
extremitie of the heat had so weakened us, as were cause sufficient to
have made us miserable in our native countrey, or any other place in the
world.”

Affairs grew worse. The sufferings of this colony in the summer equaled
that of the Pilgrims at Plymouth in the winter and spring. Before
September forty-one were buried, says Wingfield; fifty, says Smith
in one statement, and forty-six in another; Percy gives a list of
twenty-four who died in August and September. Late in August Wingfield
said, “Sickness had not now left us seven able men in our town.” “As
yet,” writes Smith in September, “we had no houses to cover us, our
tents were rotten, and our cabins worse than nought.”

Percy gives a doleful picture of the wretchedness of the colony:
“Our men were destroyed with cruel sickness, as swellings, fluxes,
burning-fevers, and by wars, and some departed suddenly, but for the
most part they died of mere famine.... We watched every three nights,
lying on the cold bare ground what weather soever came, worked all the
next day, which brought our men to be most feeble wretches, our food was
but a small can of barley, sod in water to five men a day, our drink but
cold water taken out of the river, which was at the flood very salt, at
a low tide full of shrimp and filth, which was the destruction of many
of our men. Thus we lived for the space of five months in this miserable
distress, but having five able men to man our bulwarks upon any
occasion. If it had not pleased God to put a terror in the savage
hearts, we had all perished by those wild and cruel Pagans, being in
that weak state as we were: our men night and day groaning in every
corner of the fort, most pitiful to hear. If there were any conscience
in men, it would make their hearts to bleed to hear the pitiful
murmurings and outcries of our sick men, without relief, every night and
day, for the space of six weeks: some departing out of the world; many
times three or four in a night; in the morning their bodies trailed out
of their cabins, like dogs, to be buried. In this sort did I see the
mortality of divers of our people.”

A severe loss to the colony was the death on the 22d of August of
Captain Bartholomew Gosnold, one of the Council, a brave and adventurous
mariner, and, says Wingfield, a “worthy and religious gentleman.” He
was honorably buried, “having all the ordnance in the fort shot off with
many volleys of small shot.” If the Indians had known that those volleys
signified the mortality of their comrades, the colony would no
doubt have been cut off entirely. It is a melancholy picture, this
disheartened and half-famished band of men quarreling among themselves;
the occupation of the half-dozen able men was nursing the sick and
digging graves. We anticipate here by saying, on the authority of a
contemporary manuscript in the State Paper office, that when Captain
Newport arrived with the first supply in January, 1608, “he found the
colony consisting of no more than forty persons; of those, ten only able
men.”

After the death of Gosnold, Captain Kendall was deposed from the Council
and put in prison for sowing discord between the President and Council,
says Wingfield; for heinous matters which were proved against him,
says Percy; for “divers reasons,” says Smith, who sympathized with his
dislike of Wingfield. The colony was in very low estate at this time,
and was only saved from famine by the providential good-will of the
Indians, who brought them corn half ripe, and presently meat and fruit
in abundance.

On the 7th of September the chief Paspahegh gave a token of peace by
returning a white boy who had run away from camp, and other runaways
were returned by other chiefs, who reported that they had been well used
in their absence. By these returns Mr. Wingfield was convinced that the
Indians were not cannibals, as Smith believed.

On the 10th of September Mr. Wingfield was deposed from the presidency
and the Council, and Captain John Ratcliffe was elected President.
Concerning the deposition there has been much dispute; but the accounts
of it by Captain Smith and his friends, so long accepted as the truth,
must be modified by Mr. Wingfield's “Discourse of Virginia,” more
recently come to light, which is, in a sense, a defense of his conduct.

In his “True Relation” Captain Smith is content to say that “Captain
Wingfield, having ordered the affairs in such sort that he was hated
of them all, in which respect he was with one accord deposed from the
presidency.”

In the “General Historie” the charges against him, which we have already
quoted, are extended, and a new one is added, that is, a purpose of
deserting the colony in the pinnace: “the rest seeing the President's
projects to escape these miseries in our pinnace by flight (who all this
time had neither felt want nor sickness), so moved our dead spirits we
deposed him.”

In the scarcity of food and the deplorable sickness and death, it
was inevitable that extreme dissatisfaction should be felt with the
responsible head. Wingfield was accused of keeping the best of the
supplies to himself. The commonalty may have believed this. Smith
himself must have known that the supplies were limited, but have been
willing to take advantage of this charge to depose the President, who
was clearly in many ways incompetent for his trying position. It appears
by Mr. Wingfield's statement that the supply left with the colony was
very scant, a store that would only last thirteen weeks and a half,
and prudence in the distribution of it, in the uncertainty of Newport's
return, was a necessity. Whether Wingfield used the delicacies himself
is a question which cannot be settled. In his defense, in all we read
of him, except that written by Smith and his friends, he seems to be
a temperate and just man, little qualified to control the bold spirits
about him.

As early as July, “in his sickness time, the President did easily
fortell his own deposing from his command,” so much did he differ from
the Council in the management of the colony. Under date of September 7th
he says that the Council demanded a larger allowance for themselves and
for some of the sick, their favorites, which he declined to give without
their warrants as councilors. Captain Martin of the Council was till
then ignorant that only store for thirteen and a half weeks was in
the hands of the Cape Merchant, or treasurer, who was at that time Mr.
Thomas Studley. Upon a representation to the Council of the lowness of
the stores, and the length of time that must elapse before the harvest
of grain, they declined to enlarge the allowance, and even ordered that
every meal of fish or flesh should excuse the allowance of porridge. Mr.
Wingfield goes on to say: “Nor was the common store of oyle, vinegar,
sack, and aquavite all spent, saving two gallons of each: the sack
reserved for the Communion table, the rest for such extremities as
might fall upon us, which the President had only made known to Captain
Gosnold; of which course he liked well. The vessels wear, therefore,
boonged upp. When Mr. Gosnold was dead, the President did acquaint the
rest of the Council with the said remnant; but, Lord, how they then
longed for to supp up that little remnant: for they had now emptied all
their own bottles, and all other that they could smell out.”

Shortly after this the Council again importuned the President for some
better allowance for themselves and for the sick. He protested his
impartiality, showed them that if the portions were distributed
according to their request the colony would soon starve; he still
offered to deliver what they pleased on their warrants, but would not
himself take the responsibility of distributing all the stores, and when
he divined the reason of their impatience he besought them to bestow
the presidency among themselves, and he would be content to obey as
a private. Meantime the Indians were bringing in supplies of corn and
meat, the men were so improved in health that thirty were able to work,
and provision for three weeks' bread was laid up.

Nevertheless, says Mr. Wingfield, the Council had fully plotted to
depose him. Of the original seven there remained, besides Mr. Wingfield,
only three in the Council. Newport was in England, Gosnold was dead, and
Kendall deposed. Mr. Wingfield charged that the three--Ratcliffe,
Smith, and Martin--forsook the instructions of his Majesty, and set up
a Triumvirate. At any rate, Wingfield was forcibly deposed from the
Council on the 10th of September. If the object had been merely to
depose him, there was an easier way, for Wingfield was ready to resign.
But it appears, by subsequent proceedings, that they wished to
fasten upon him the charge of embezzlement, the responsibility of the
sufferings of the colony, and to mulct him in fines. He was arrested,
and confined on the pinnace. Mr. Ratcliffe was made President.

On the 11th of September Mr. Wingfield was brought before the Council
sitting as a court, and heard the charges against him. They were, as Mr.
Wingfield says, mostly frivolous trifles. According to his report they
were these:

First, Mister President [Radcliffe] said that I had denied him a penny
whitle, a chicken, a spoonful of beer, and served him with foul corn;
and with that pulled some grain out of a bag, showing it to the company.

Then starts up Mr. Smith and said that I had told him plainly how he
lied; and that I said, though we were equal here, yet if we were in
England, he [I] would think scorn his man should be my companion.

Mr. Martin followed with: “He reported that I do slack the service in
the colony, and do nothing but tend my pot, spit, and oven; but he hath
starved my son, and denied him a spoonful of beer. I have friends in
England shall be revenged on him, if ever he come in London.”

Voluminous charges were read against Mr. Wingfield by Mr. Archer,
who had been made by the Council, Recorder of Virginia, the author,
according to Wingfield, of three several mutinies, as “always hatching
of some mutiny in my time.”

Mr. Percy sent him word in his prison that witnesses were hired to
testify against him by bribes of cakes and by threats. If Mr. Percy,
who was a volunteer in this expedition, and a man of high character, did
send this information, it shows that he sympathized with him, and this
is an important piece of testimony to his good character.

Wingfield saw no way of escape from the malice of his accusers, whose
purpose he suspected was to fine him fivefold for all the supplies whose
disposition he could not account for in writing: but he was finally
allowed to appeal to the King for mercy, and recommitted to the pinnace.
In regard to the charge of embezzlement, Mr. Wingfield admitted that it
was impossible to render a full account: he had no bill of items from
the Cape Merchant when he received the stores, he had used the stores
for trade and gifts with the Indians; Captain Newport had done the same
in his expedition, without giving any memorandum. Yet he averred that he
never expended the value of these penny whittles [small pocket-knives]
to his private use.

There was a mutinous and riotous spirit on shore, and the Council
professed to think Wingfield's life was in danger. He says: “In all
these disorders was Mr. Archer a ringleader.” Meantime the Indians
continued to bring in supplies, and the Council traded up and down the
river for corn, and for this energy Mr. Wingfield gives credit to “Mr.
Smith especially,” “which relieved the colony well.” To the report that
was brought him that he was charged with starving the colony, he replies
with some natural heat and a little show of petulance, that may be taken
as an evidence of weakness, as well as of sincerity, and exhibiting the
undignified nature of all this squabbling:

“I did alwaises give every man his allowance faithfully, both of corne,
oyle, aquivite, etc., as was by the counsell proportioned: neyther was
it bettered after my tyme, untill, towards th' end of March, a bisket
was allowed to every working man for his breakfast, by means of the
provision brought us by Captn. Newport: as will appeare hereafter. It is
further said, I did much banquit and ryot. I never had but one squirrel
roasted; whereof I gave part to Mr. Ratcliffe then sick: yet was that
squirrel given me. I did never heate a flesh pott but when the comon
pott was so used likewise. Yet how often Mr. President's and the
Counsellors' spitts have night and daye bene endaungered to break their
backes-so, laden with swanns, geese, ducks, etc.! how many times their
flesh potts have swelled, many hungrie eies did behold, to their great
longing: and what great theeves and theeving thear hath been in the
comon stoare since my tyme, I doubt not but is already made knowne to
his Majesty's Councell for Virginia.”

Poor Wingfield was not left at ease in his confinement. On the 17th he
was brought ashore to answer the charge of Jehu [John?] Robinson that
he had with Robinson and others intended to run away with the pinnace to
Newfoundland; and the charge by Mr. Smith that he had accused Smith
of intending mutiny. To the first accuser the jury awarded one hundred
pounds, and to the other two hundred pounds damages, for slander.
“Seeing their law so speedy and cheap,” Mr. Wingfield thought he would
try to recover a copper kettle he had lent Mr. Crofts, worth half its
weight in gold. But Crofts swore that Wingfield had given it to him, and
he lost his kettle: “I told Mr. President I had not known the like law,
and prayed they would be more sparing of law till we had more witt
or wealthe.” Another day they obtained from Wingfield the key to his
coffers, and took all his accounts, note-books, and “owne proper goods,”
 which he could never recover. Thus was I made good prize on all sides.

During one of Smith's absences on the river President Ratcliffe did beat
James Read, the blacksmith. Wingfield says the Council were continually
beating the men for their own pleasure. Read struck back.

For this he was condemned to be hanged; but “before he turned of the
lather,” he desired to speak privately with the President, and thereupon
accused Mr. Kendall--who had been released from the pinnace when
Wingfield was sent aboard--of mutiny. Read escaped. Kendall was
convicted of mutiny and shot to death. In arrest of judgment he objected
that the President had no authority to pronounce judgment because his
name was Sicklemore and not Ratcliffe. This was true, and Mr. Martin
pronounced the sentence. In his “True Relation,” Smith agrees with this
statement of the death of Kendall, and says that he was tried by a jury.
It illustrates the general looseness of the “General Historie,” written
and compiled many years afterwards, that this transaction there appears
as follows: “Wingfield and Kendall being in disgrace, seeing all things
at random in the absence of Smith, the company's dislike of their
President's weakness, and their small love to Martin's never-mending
sickness, strengthened themselves with the sailors and other
confederates to regain their power, control, and authority, or at
least such meanes aboard the pinnace (being fitted to sail as Smith had
appointed for trade) to alter her course and to goe for England. Smith
unexpectedly returning had the plot discovered to him, much trouble he
had to prevent it, till with store of sakre and musket-shot he forced
them to stay or sink in the river, which action cost the life of Captain
Kendall.”

In a following sentence he says: “The President [Ratcliffe] and Captain
Archer not long after intended also to have abandoned the country,
which project also was curbed and suppressed by Smith.” Smith was always
suppressing attempts at flight, according to his own story, unconfirmed
by any other writers. He had before accused President Wingfield of a
design to escape in the pinnace.

Communications were evidently exchanged with Mr. Wingfield on the
pinnace, and the President was evidently ill at ease about him. One day
he was summoned ashore, but declined to go, and requested an interview
with ten gentlemen. To those who came off to him he said that he had
determined to go to England to make known the weakness of the
colony, that he could not live under the laws and usurpations of the
Triumvirate; however, if the President and Mr. Archer would go, he
was willing to stay and take his fortune with the colony, or he would
contribute one hundred pounds towards taking the colony home. “They did
like none of my proffers, but made divers shott at uss in the pynnasse.”
 Thereupon he went ashore and had a conference.

On the 10th of December Captain Smith departed on his famous expedition
up the Chickahominy, during which the alleged Pocahontas episode
occurred. Mr. Wingfield's condensed account of this journey and
captivity we shall refer to hereafter. In Smith's absence President
Ratcliffe, contrary to his oath, swore Mr. Archer one of the Council;
and Archer was no sooner settled in authority than he sought to take
Smith's life. The enmity of this man must be regarded as a long credit
mark to Smith. Archer had him indicted upon a chapter in Leviticus (they
all wore a garb of piety) for the death of two men who were killed by
the Indians on his expedition. “He had had his trials the same daie of
his retourne,” says Wingfield, “and I believe his hanging the same, or
the next daie, so speedy is our law there. But it pleased God to send
Captain Newport unto us the same evening, to our unspeakable comfort;
whose arrivall saved Mr. Smyth's leif and mine, because he took me out
of the pynnasse, and gave me leave to lyve in the towne. Also by his
comyng was prevented a parliament, which the newe counsailor, Mr.
Recorder, intended thear to summon.”

Captain Newport's arrival was indeed opportune. He was the only one of
the Council whose character and authority seem to have been generally
respected, the only one who could restore any sort of harmony and curb
the factious humors of the other leaders. Smith should have all credit
for his energy in procuring supplies, for his sagacity in dealing
with the Indians, for better sense than most of the other colonists
exhibited, and for more fidelity to the objects of the plantation than
most of them; but where ability to rule is claimed for him, at this
juncture we can but contrast the deference shown by all to Newport with
the want of it given to Smith. Newport's presence at once quelled all
the uneasy spirits.

Newport's arrival, says Wingfield, “saved Mr Smith's life and mine.”
 Smith's account of the episode is substantially the same. In his “True
Relation” he says on his return to the fort “each man with truest signs
of joy they could express welcomed me, except Mr. Archer, and some two
or three of his, who was then in my absence sworn councilor, though not
with the consent of Captain Martin; great blame and imputation was laid
upon me by them for the loss of our two men which the Indians slew:
insomuch that they purposed to depose me, but in the midst of my
miseries, it pleased God to send Captain Newport, who arriving there the
same night, so tripled our joy, as for a while those plots against me
were deferred, though with much malice against me, which Captain Newport
in short time did plainly see.” In his “Map of Virginia,” the Oxford
tract of 1612, Smith does not allude to this; but in the “General
Historie” it had assumed a different aspect in his mind, for at the time
of writing that he was the irresistible hero, and remembered himself as
always nearly omnipotent in Virginia. Therefore, instead of expressions
of gratitude to Newport we read this: “Now in Jamestown they were all
in combustion, the strongest preparing once more to run away with the
pinnace; which with the hazard of his life, with Sakre, falcon and
musket shot, Smith forced now the third time to stay or sink. Some
no better than they should be, had plotted to put him to death by the
Levitical law, for the lives of Robinson and Emry, pretending that the
fault was his, that led them to their ends; but he quickly took such
order with such Lawyers, that he laid them by the heels till he sent
some of them prisoners to England.”

Clearly Captain Smith had no authority to send anybody prisoner to
England. When Newport returned, April 10th, Wingfield and Archer went
with him. Wingfield no doubt desired to return. Archer was so insolent,
seditious, and libelous that he only escaped the halter by the
interposition of Newport. The colony was willing to spare both these
men, and probably Newport it was who decided they should go. As one of
the Council, Smith would undoubtedly favor their going. He says in the
“General Historie”: “We not having any use of parliaments, plaises,
petitions, admirals, recorders, interpreters, chronologers, courts of
plea, or justices of peace, sent Master Wingfield and Captain Archer
home with him, that had engrossed all those titles, to seek some better
place of employment.” Mr. Wingfield never returned. Captain Archer
returned in 1609, with the expedition of Gates and Somers, as master of
one of the ships.

Newport had arrived with the first supply on the 8th of January, 1608.
The day before, according to Wingfield, a fire occurred which destroyed
nearly all the town, with the clothing and provisions. According to
Smith, who is probably correct in this, the fire did not occur till five
or six days after the arrival of the ship. The date is uncertain, and
some doubt is also thrown upon the date of the arrival of the ship.
It was on the day of Smith's return from captivity: and that captivity
lasted about four weeks if the return was January 8th, for he started on
the expedition December 10th. Smith subsequently speaks of his captivity
lasting six or seven weeks.

In his “General Historie” Smith says the fire happened after the return
of the expedition of Newport, Smith, and Scrivener to the Pamunkey:
“Good Master Hunt, our Preacher, lost all his library, and all he had
but the clothes on his back; yet none ever heard him repine at his
loss.” This excellent and devoted man is the only one of these first
pioneers of whom everybody speaks well, and he deserved all affection
and respect.

One of the first labors of Newport was to erect a suitable church.
Services had been held under many disadvantages, which Smith depicts in
his “Advertisements for Unexperienced Planters,” published in London in
1631:

“When I first went to Virginia, I well remember, we did hang an awning
(which is an old saile) to three or foure trees to shadow us from the
Sunne, our walls were rales of wood, our seats unhewed trees, till we
cut plankes, our Pulpit a bar of wood nailed to two neighboring trees,
in foule weather we shifted into an old rotten tent, for we had few
better, and this came by the way of adventure for me; this was our
Church, till we built a homely thing like a barne, set upon Cratchets,
covered with rafts, sedge and earth, so was also the walls: the best
of our houses of the like curiosity, but the most part farre much worse
workmanship, that could neither well defend wind nor raine, yet we had
daily Common Prayer morning and evening, every day two Sermons, and
every three moneths the holy Communion, till our Minister died, [Robert
Hunt] but our Prayers daily, with an Homily on Sundaies.”

It is due to Mr. Wingfield, who is about to disappear from Virginia,
that something more in his defense against the charges of Smith and the
others should be given. It is not possible now to say how the suspicion
of his religious soundness arose, but there seems to have been a notion
that he had papal tendencies. His grandfather, Sir Richard Wingfield,
was buried in Toledo, Spain. His father, Thomas Maria Wingfield, was
christened by Queen Mary and Cardinal Pole. These facts perhaps gave
rise to the suspicion. He answers them with some dignity and simplicity,
and with a little querulousness:

“It is noised that I combyned with the Spanniards to the distruccion of
the Collony; that I ame an atheist, because I carryed not a Bible with
me, and because I did forbid the preacher to preache; that I affected a
kingdome; that I did hide of the comon provision in the ground.

“I confesse I have alwayes admyred any noble vertue and prowesse, as
well in the Spanniards (as in other nations): but naturally I have
alwayes distrusted and disliked their neighborhoode. I sorted many
bookes in my house, to be sent up to me at my goeing to Virginia;
amongst them a Bible. They were sent up in a trunk to London, with
divers fruite, conserves, and preserves, which I did sett in Mr. Crofts
his house in Ratcliff. In my beeing at Virginia, I did understand my
trunk was thear broken up, much lost, my sweetmeates eaten at his table,
some of my bookes which I missed to be seene in his hands: and whether
amongst them my Bible was so ymbeasiled or mislayed by my servants, and
not sent me, I knowe not as yet.

“Two or three Sunday mornings, the Indians gave us allarums at our
towne. By that tymes they weare answered, the place about us well
discovered, and our devyne service ended, the daie was farr spent. The
preacher did aske me if it were my pleasure to have a sermon: hee said
hee was prepared for it. I made answere, that our men were weary and
hungry, and that he did see the time of the daie farr past (for at other
tymes bee never made such question, but, the service finished he began
his sermon); and that, if it pleased him, wee would spare him till some
other tyme. I never failed to take such noates by wrighting out of his
doctrine as my capacity could comprehend, unless some raynie day hindred
my endeavor. My mynde never swelled with such ympossible mountebank
humors as could make me affect any other kingdome than the kingdom of
heaven.

“As truly as God liveth, I gave an ould man, then the keeper of the
private store, 2 glasses with sallet oyle which I brought with me out of
England for my private stoare, and willed him to bury it in the ground,
for that I feared the great heate would spoile it. Whatsoever was more,
I did never consent unto or know of it, and as truly was it protested
unto me, that all the remaynder before mencioned of the oyle, wyne, &c.,
which the President receyved of me when I was deposed they themselves
poored into their owne bellyes.

“To the President's and Counsell's objections I saie that I doe knowe
curtesey and civility became a governor. No penny whittle was asked me,
but a knife, whereof I have none to spare The Indyans had long before
stoallen my knife. Of chickins I never did eat but one, and that in my
sicknes. Mr. Ratcliff had before that time tasted Of 4 or 5. I had by
my owne huswiferie bred above 37, and the most part of them my owne
poultrye; of all which, at my comyng awaie, I did not see three living.
I never denyed him (or any other) beare, when I had it. The corne was of
the same which we all lived upon.

“Mr. Smyth, in the time of our hungar, had spread a rumor in the
Collony, that I did feast myself and my servants out of the comon
stoare, with entent (as I gathered) to have stirred the discontented
company against me. I told him privately, in Mr. Gosnold's tent, that
indeede I had caused half a pint of pease to be sodden with a peese
of pork, of my own provision, for a poore old man, which in a sicknes
(whereof he died) he much desired; and said, that if out of his malice
he had given it out otherwise, that hee did tell a leye. It was proved
to his face, that he begged in Ireland like a rogue, without a lycence.
To such I would not my nam should be a companyon.”

The explanation about the Bible as a part of his baggage is a little
far-fetched, and it is evident that that book was not his daily
companion. Whether John Smith habitually carried one about with him we
are not informed. The whole passage quoted gives us a curious picture
of the mind and of the habits of the time. This allusion to John Smith's
begging is the only reference we can find to his having been in Ireland.
If he was there it must have been in that interim in his own narrative
between his return from Morocco and his going to Virginia. He was
likely enough to seek adventure there, as the hangers-on of the court in
Raleigh's day occasionally did, and perhaps nothing occurred during
his visit there that he cared to celebrate. If he went to Ireland he
probably got in straits there, for that was his usual luck.

Whatever is the truth about Mr. Wingfield's inefficiency and
embezzlement of corn meal, Communion sack, and penny whittles, his
enemies had no respect for each other or concord among themselves. It is
Wingfield's testimony that Ratcliffe said he would not have been
deposed if he had visited Ratcliffe during his sickness. Smith said
that Wingfield would not have been deposed except for Archer; that the
charges against him were frivolous. Yet, says Wingfield, “I do believe
him the first and only practiser in these practices,” and he attributed
Smith's hostility to the fact that “his name was mentioned in the
intended and confessed mutiny by Galthrop.” Noother reference is made to
this mutiny. Galthrop was one of those who died in the previous August.

One of the best re-enforcements of the first supply was Matthew
Scrivener, who was appointed one of the Council. He was a sensible man,
and he and Smith worked together in harmony for some time. They were
intent upon building up the colony. Everybody else in the camp was crazy
about the prospect of gold: there was, says Smith, “no talk, no hope, no
work, but dig gold, wash gold, refine gold, load gold, such a bruit of
gold that one mad fellow desired to be buried in the sands, lest they
should by their art make gold of his bones.” He charges that Newport
delayed his return to England on account of this gold fever, in order to
load his vessel (which remained fourteen weeks when it might have sailed
in fourteen days) with gold-dust. Captain Martin seconded Newport in
this; Smith protested against it; he thought Newport was no refiner, and
it did torment him “to see all necessary business neglected, to fraught
such a drunken ship with so much gilded durt.” This was the famous load
of gold that proved to be iron pyrites.

In speaking of the exploration of the James River as far as the Falls by
Newport, Smith, and Percy, we have followed the statements of Percy
and the writer of Newport's discovery that they saw the great Powhatan.
There is much doubt of this. Smith in his “True Relation” does not say
so; in his voyage up the Chickahominy he seems to have seen Powhatan for
the first time; and Wingfield speaks of Powhatan, on Smith's return
from that voyage, as one “of whom before we had no knowledge.” It is
conjectured that the one seen at Powhatan's seat near the Falls was a
son of the “Emperor.” It was partly the exaggeration of the times
to magnify discoveries, and partly English love of high titles, that
attributed such titles as princes, emperors, and kings to the half-naked
barbarians and petty chiefs of Virginia.

In all the accounts of the colony at this period, no mention is made
of women, and it is not probable that any went over with the first
colonists. The character of the men was not high. Many of them were
“gentlemen” adventurers, turbulent spirits, who would not work, who were
much better fitted for piratical maraudings than the labor of founding
a state. The historian must agree with the impression conveyed by Smith,
that it was poor material out of which to make a colony.




VII. SMITH TO THE FRONT

It is now time to turn to Smith's personal adventures among the Indians
during this period. Almost our only authority is Smith himself, or such
presumed writings of his companions as he edited or rewrote. Strachey
and others testify to his energy in procuring supplies for the colony,
and his success in dealing with the Indians, and it seems likely that
the colony would have famished but for his exertions. Whatever suspicion
attaches to Smith's relation of his own exploits, it must never be
forgotten that he was a man of extraordinary executive ability, and had
many good qualities to offset his vanity and impatience of restraint.

After the departure of Wingfield, Captain Smith was constrained to act
as Cape Merchant; the leaders were sick or discontented, the rest were
in despair, and would rather starve and rot than do anything for
their own relief, and the Indian trade was decreasing. Under these
circumstances, Smith says in his “True Relation,” “I was sent to the
mouth of the river, to Kegquoughtan [now Hampton], an Indian Towne, to
trade for corn, and try the river for fish.” The Indians, thinking them
near famished, tantalized them with offers of little bits of bread in
exchange for a hatchet or a piece of copper, and Smith offered trifles
in return. The next day the Indians were anxious to trade. Smith sent
men up to their town, a display of force was made by firing four guns,
and the Indians kindly traded, giving fish, oysters, bread, and deer.
The town contained eighteen houses, and heaps of grain. Smith obtained
fifteen bushels of it, and on his homeward way he met two canoes with
Indians, whom he accompanied to their villages on the south side of the
river, and got from them fifteen bushels more.

This incident is expanded in the “General Historie.” After the lapse of
fifteen years Smith is able to remember more details, and to conceive
himself as the one efficient man who had charge of everything outside
the fort, and to represent his dealings with the Indians in a much more
heroic and summary manner. He was not sent on the expedition, but went
of his own motion. The account opens in this way: “The new President
[Ratcliffe] and Martin, being little beloved, of weake judgement in
dangers, and loose industrie in peace, committed the management of all
things abroad to Captain Smith; who by his own example, good words, and
fair promises, set some to mow, others to binde thatch, some to builde
houses, others to thatch them, himselfe always bearing the greatest
taske for his own share, so that in short time he provided most of
them with lodgings, neglecting any for himselfe. This done, seeing the
Salvage superfluities beginne to decrease (with some of his workmen)
shipped himself in the Shallop to search the country for trade.”

In this narration, when the Indians trifled with Smith he fired a volley
at them, ran his boat ashore, and pursued them fleeing towards their
village, where were great heaps of corn that he could with difficulty
restrain his soldiers [six or seven] from taking. The Indians then
assaulted them with a hideous noise: “Sixty or seventy of them, some
black, some red, some white, some particoloured, came in a square order,
singing and dancing out of the woods, with their Okee (which is an Idol
made of skinnes, stuffed with mosse, and painted and hung with chains
and copper) borne before them; and in this manner being well armed with
clubs, targets, bowes and arrowes, they charged the English that so
kindly received them with their muskets loaden with pistol shot, that
down fell their God, and divers lay sprawling on the ground; the
rest fled againe to the woods, and ere long sent men of their
Quiyoughkasoucks [conjurors] to offer peace and redeeme the Okee.” Good
feeling was restored, and the savages brought the English “venison,
turkies, wild fowl, bread all that they had, singing and dancing in sign
of friendship till they departed.” This fantastical account is much more
readable than the former bare narration.

The supplies which Smith brought gave great comfort to the despairing
colony, which was by this time reasonably fitted with houses. But it
was not long before they again ran short of food. In his first narrative
Smith says there were some motions made for the President and Captain
Arthur to go over to England and procure a supply, but it was with much
ado concluded that the pinnace and the barge should go up the river to
Powhatan to trade for corn, and the lot fell to Smith to command the
expedition. In his “General Historie” a little different complexion is
put upon this. On his return, Smith says, he suppressed an attempt to
run away with the pinnace to England. He represents that what food “he
carefully provided the rest carelessly spent,” and there is probably
much truth in his charges that the settlers were idle and improvident.
He says also that they were in continual broils at this time. It is in
the fall of 1607, just before his famous voyage up the Chickahominy,
on which he departed December 10th--that he writes: “The President and
Captain Arthur intended not long after to have abandoned the country,
which project was curbed and suppressed by Smith. The Spaniard never
more greedily desired gold than he victual, nor his soldiers more to
abandon the country than he to keep it. But finding plenty of corn in
the river of Chickahomania, where hundreds of salvages in divers places
stood with baskets expecting his coming, and now the winter approaching,
the rivers became covered with swans, geese, ducks, and cranes, that we
daily feasted with good bread, Virginia peas, pumpions, and putchamins,
fish, fowls, and divers sorts of wild beasts as fat as we could
eat them, so that none of our Tuftaffaty humorists desired to go to
England.”

While the Chickahominy expedition was preparing, Smith made a voyage to
Popohanock or Quiyoughcohanock, as it is called on his map, a town
on the south side of the river, above Jamestown. Here the women and
children fled from their homes and the natives refused to trade. They
had plenty of corn, but Smith says he had no commission to spoil them.
On his return he called at Paspahegh, a town on the north side of the
James, and on the map placed higher than Popohanock, but evidently
nearer to Jamestown, as he visited it on his return. He obtained ten
bushels of corn of the churlish and treacherous natives, who closely
watched and dogged the expedition.

Everything was now ready for the journey to Powhatan. Smith had the
barge and eight men for trading and discovery, and the pinnace was
to follow to take the supplies at convenient landings. On the 9th of
November he set out in the barge to explore the Chickahominy, which is
described as emptying into the James at Paspahegh, eight miles above the
fort. The pinnace was to ascend the river twenty miles to Point Weanock,
and to await Smith there. All the month of November Smith toiled up and
down the Chickahominy, discovering and visiting many villages, finding
the natives kindly disposed and eager to trade, and possessing abundance
of corn. Notwithstanding this abundance, many were still mutinous. At
this time occurred the President's quarrel with the blacksmith, who,
for assaulting the President, was condemned to death, and released on
disclosing a conspiracy of which Captain Kendall was principal; and the
latter was executed in his place. Smith returned from a third voyage to
the Chickahominy with more supplies, only to find the matter of sending
the pinnace to England still debated.

This project, by the help of Captain Martin, he again quieted and at
last set forward on his famous voyage into the country of Powhatan and
Pocahontas.




VIII. THE FAMOUS CHICKAHOMINY VOYAGE

We now enter upon the most interesting episode in the life of the
gallant captain, more thrilling and not less romantic than the captivity
in Turkey and the tale of the faithful love of the fair young mistress
Charatza Tragabigzanda.

Although the conduct of the lovely Charatza in despatching Smith to her
cruel brother in Nalbrits, where he led the life of a dog, was never
explained, he never lost faith in her. His loyalty to women was equal
to his admiration of them, and it was bestowed without regard to race or
complexion. Nor is there any evidence that the dusky Pocahontas, who
is about to appear, displaced in his heart the image of the too partial
Tragabigzanda. In regard to women, as to his own exploits, seen in the
light of memory, Smith possessed a creative imagination. He did not
create Pocahontas, as perhaps he may have created the beautiful mistress
of Bashaw Bogall, but he invested her with a romantic interest which
forms a lovely halo about his own memory.

As this voyage up the Chickahominy is more fruitful in its consequences
than Jason's voyage to Colchis; as it exhibits the energy, daring,
invention, and various accomplishments of Captain Smith, as warrior,
negotiator, poet, and narrator; as it describes Smith's first and only
captivity among the Indians; and as it was during this absence of four
weeks from Jamestown, if ever, that Pocahontas interposed to prevent the
beating out of Smith's brains with a club, I shall insert the account
of it in full, both Smith's own varying relations of it, and such
contemporary notices of it as now come to light. It is necessary here to
present several accounts, just as they stand, and in the order in which
they were written, that the reader may see for himself how the story of
Pocahontas grew to its final proportions. The real life of Pocahontas
will form the subject of another chapter.

The first of these accounts is taken from “The True Relation,” written
by Captain John Smith, composed in Virginia, the earliest published work
relating to the James River Colony. It covers a period of a little more
than thirteen months, from the arrival at Cape Henry on April 26,
1607, to the return of Captain Nelson in the Phoenix, June 2, 1608.
The manuscript was probably taken home by Captain Nelson, and it was
published in London in 1608. Whether it was intended for publication
is doubtful; but at that time all news of the venture in Virginia was
eagerly sought, and a narrative of this importance would naturally
speedily get into print.

In the several copies of it extant there are variations in the
titlepage, which was changed while the edition was being printed. In
some the name of Thomas Watson is given as the author, in others “A
Gentleman of the Colony,” and an apology appears signed “T. H.,” for the
want of knowledge or inadvertence of attributing it to any one except
Captain Smith.

There is no doubt that Smith was its author. He was still in Virginia
when it was printed, and the printers made sad work of parts of his
manuscript. The question has been raised, in view of the entire omission
of the name of Pocahontas in connection with this voyage and captivity,
whether the manuscript was not cut by those who published it. The reason
given for excision is that the promoters of the Virginia scheme were
anxious that nothing should appear to discourage capitalists, or to
deter emigrants, and that this story of the hostility and cruelty of
Powhatan, only averted by the tender mercy of his daughter, would have
an unfortunate effect. The answer to this is that the hostility was
exhibited by the captivity and the intimation that Smith was being
fatted to be eaten, and this was permitted to stand. It is wholly
improbable that an incident so romantic, so appealing to the
imagination, in an age when wonder-tales were eagerly welcomed, and
which exhibited such tender pity in the breast of a savage maiden, and
such paternal clemency in a savage chief, would have been omitted. It
was calculated to lend a lively interest to the narration, and would be
invaluable as an advertisement of the adventure.


[For a full bibliographical discussion of this point the reader is
referred to the reprint of “The True Relation,” by Charles Deane,
Esq., Boston, 1864, the preface and notes to which are a masterpiece of
critical analysis.]


That some portions of “The True Relation” were omitted is possible.
There is internal evidence of this in the abrupt manner in which it
opens, and in the absence of allusions to the discords during the voyage
and on the arrival. Captain Smith was not the man to pass over such
questions in silence, as his subsequent caustic letter sent home to the
Governor and Council of Virginia shows. And it is probable enough that
the London promoters would cut out from the “Relation” complaints
and evidence of the seditions and helpless state of the colony. The
narration of the captivity is consistent as it stands, and wholly
inconsistent with the Pocahontas episode.

We extract from the narrative after Smith's departure from Apocant, the
highest town inhabited, between thirty and forty miles up the river, and
below Orapaks, one of Powhatan's seats, which also appears on his map.
He writes:

“Ten miles higher I discovered with the barge; in the midway a great
tree hindered my passage, which I cut in two: heere the river became
narrower, 8, 9 or 10 foote at a high water, and 6 or 7 at a lowe: the
stream exceeding swift, and the bottom hard channell, the ground most
part a low plaine, sandy soyle, this occasioned me to suppose it might
issue from some lake or some broad ford, for it could not be far to the
head, but rather then I would endanger the barge, yet to have beene able
to resolve this doubt, and to discharge the imputating malicious tungs,
that halfe suspected I durst not for so long delaying, some of the
company, as desirous as myself, we resolved to hier a canow, and returne
with the barge to Apocant, there to leave the barge secure, and put
ourselves upon the adventure: the country onely a vast and wilde
wilderness, and but only that Towne: within three or foure mile we hired
a canow, and 2 Indians to row us ye next day a fowling: having made such
provision for the barge as was needfull, I left her there to ride, with
expresse charge not any to go ashore til my returne. Though some wise
men may condemn this too bould attempt of too much indiscretion, yet if
they well consider the friendship of the Indians, in conducting me,
the desolatenes of the country, the probabilitie of some lacke, and the
malicious judges of my actions at home, as also to have some matters of
worth to incourage our adventurers in england, might well have caused
any honest minde to have done the like, as wel for his own discharge
as for the publike good: having 2 Indians for my guide and 2 of our own
company, I set forward, leaving 7 in the barge; having discovered 20
miles further in this desart, the river stil kept his depth and bredth,
but much more combred with trees; here we went ashore (being some 12
miles higher than ye barge had bene) to refresh our selves, during the
boyling of our vituals: one of the Indians I tooke with me, to see the
nature of the soile, and to cross the boughts of the river, the other
Indian I left with M. Robbinson and Thomas Emry, with their matches
light and order to discharge a peece, for my retreat at the first sight
of any Indian, but within a quarter of an houre I heard a loud cry, and
a hollowing of Indians, but no warning peece, supposing them surprised,
and that the Indians had betraid us, presently I seazed him and bound
his arme fast to my hand in a garter, with my pistoll ready bent to be
revenged on him: he advised me to fly and seemed ignorant of what was
done, but as we went discoursing, I was struck with an arrow on the
right thigh, but without harme: upon this occasion I espied 2 Indians
drawing their bowes, which I prevented in discharging a french pistoll:
by that I had charged again 3 or 4 more did the 'like, for the first
fell downe and fled: at my discharge they did the like, my hinde I made
my barricade, who offered not to strive, 20 or 30 arrowes were shot at
me but short, 3 or 4 times I had discharged my pistoll ere the king of
Pamauck called Opeckakenough with 200 men, environed me, each drawing
their bowe, which done they laid them upon the ground, yet without
shot, my hinde treated betwixt them and me of conditions of peace, he
discovered me to be the captaine, my request was to retire to ye boate,
they demanded my armes, the rest they saide were slaine, onely me they
would reserve: the Indian importuned me not to shoot. In retiring being
in the midst of a low quagmire, and minding them more than my steps, I
stept fast into the quagmire, and also the Indian in drawing me forth:
thus surprised, I resolved to trie their mercies, my armes I caste from
me, till which none durst approch me: being ceazed on me, they drew
me out and led me to the King, I presented him with a compasse diall,
describing by my best meanes the use thereof, whereat he so amazedly
admired, as he suffered me to proceed in a discourse of the roundnes of
the earth, the course of the sunne, moone, starres and plannets, with
kinde speeches and bread he requited me, conducting me where the canow
lay and John Robinson slaine, with 20 or 30 arrowes in him. Emry I saw
not, I perceived by the abundance of fires all over the woods, at each
place I expected when they would execute me, yet they used me with what
kindnes they could: approaching their Towne which was within 6 miles
where I was taken, onely made as arbors and covered with mats, which
they remove as occasion requires: all the women and children, being
advertised of this accident came forth to meet, the King well guarded
with 20 bow men 5 flanck and rear and each flanck before him a sword and
a peece, and after him the like, then a bowman, then I on each hand a
boweman, the rest in file in the reare, which reare led forth amongst
the trees in a bishion, eache his bowe and a handfull of arrowes, a
quiver at his back grimly painted: on eache flanck a sargeant, the one
running alwaiss towards the front the other towards the reare, each a
true pace and in exceeding good order, this being a good time continued,
they caste themselves in a ring with a daunce, and so eache man departed
to his lodging, the captain conducting me to his lodging, a quarter of
Venison and some ten pound of bread I had for supper, what I left was
reserved for me, and sent with me to my lodging: each morning three
women presented me three great platters of fine bread, more venison than
ten men could devour I had, my gowne, points and garters, my compas and
a tablet they gave me again, though 8 ordinarily guarded me, I
wanted not what they could devise to content me: and still our longer
acquaintance increased our better affection: much they threatened to
assault our forte as they were solicited by the King of Paspahegh, who
shewed at our fort great signs of sorrow for this mischance: the King
took great delight in understanding the manner of our ships and sayling
the seas, the earth and skies and of our God: what he knew of the
dominions he spared not to acquaint me with, as of certaine men cloathed
at a place called Ocanahonun, cloathed like me, the course of our river,
and that within 4 or 5 daies journey of the falles, was a great turning
of salt water: I desired he would send a messenger to Paspahegh, with a
letter I would write, by which they should understand, how kindly they
used me, and that I was well, lest they should revenge my death; this
he granted and sent three men, in such weather, as in reason were
unpossible, by any naked to be indured: their cruell mindes towards the
fort I had deverted, in describing the ordinance and the mines in the
fields, as also the revenge Captain Newport would take of them at his
returne, their intent, I incerted the fort, the people of Ocanahomm
and the back sea, this report they after found divers Indians that
confirmed: the next day after my letter, came a salvage to my lodging,
with his sword to have slaine me, but being by my guard intercepted,
with a bowe and arrow he offred to have effected his purpose: the cause
I knew not, till the King understanding thereof came and told me of a
man a dying wounded with my pistoll: he tould me also of another I had
slayne, yet the most concealed they had any hurte: this was the father
of him I had slayne, whose fury to prevent, the King presently conducted
me to another kingdome, upon the top of the next northerly river, called
Youghtanan, having feasted me, he further led me to another branch of
the river called Mattapament, to two other hunting townes they led
me, and to each of these Countries, a house of the great Emperor of
Pewhakan, whom as yet I supposed to be at the Fals, to him I tolde him
I must goe, and so returne to Paspahegh, after this foure or five dayes
march we returned to Rasawrack, the first towne they brought me too,
where binding the mats in bundles, they marched two dayes journey and
crossed the River of Youghtanan, where it was as broad as Thames: so
conducting me too a place called Menapacute in Pamunke, where ye King
inhabited; the next day another King of that nation called Kekataugh,
having received some kindness of me at the Fort, kindly invited me to
feast at his house, the people from all places flocked to see me, each
shewing to content me. By this the great King hath foure or five houses,
each containing fourscore or an hundred foote in length, pleasantly
seated upon an high sandy hill, from whence you may see westerly a
goodly low country, the river before the which his crooked course
causeth many great Marshes of exceeding good ground. An hundred houses,
and many large plaines are here together inhabited, more abundance of
fish and fowle, and a pleasanter seat cannot be imagined: the King with
fortie bowmen to guard me, intreated me to discharge my Pistoll, which
they there presented me with a mark at six score to strike therewith
but to spoil the practice I broke the cocke, whereat they were much
discontented though a chaunce supposed. From hence this kind King
conducted me to a place called Topahanocke, a kingdome upon another
river northward; the cause of this was, that the yeare before, a shippe
had beene in the River of Pamunke, who having been kindly entertained by
Powhatan their Emperour, they returned thence, and discovered the River
of Topahanocke, where being received with like kindnesse, yet he slue
the King, and tooke of his people, and they supposed I were bee, but the
people reported him a great man that was Captaine, and using mee kindly,
the next day we departed. This River of Topahanock, seemeth in breadth
not much lesse than that we dwell upon. At the mouth of the River is
a Countrey called Cuttata women, upwards is Marraugh tacum Tapohanock,
Apparnatuck, and Nantaugs tacum, at Topmanahocks, the head issuing from
many Mountains, the next night I lodged at a hunting town of Powhatam's,
and the next day arrived at Waranacomoco upon the river of Parnauncke,
where the great king is resident: by the way we passed by the top of
another little river, which is betwixt the two called Payankatank. The
most of this country though Desert, yet exceeding fertil, good timber,
most hils and in dales, in each valley a cristall spring.

“Arriving at Weramacomoco, their Emperour, proudly lying upon a Bedstead
a foote high upon tenne or twelve Mattes, richly hung with manie Chaynes
of great Pearles about his necke, and covered with a great covering of
Rahaughcums: At heade sat a woman, at his feete another, on each side
sitting upon a Matte upon the ground were raunged his chiefe men on each
side the fire, tenne in a ranke and behinde them as many yong women,
each a great Chaine of white Beades over their shoulders: their heades
painted in redde and with such a grave and Majeslicall countenance,
as drove me into admiration to see such state in a naked Salvage, bee
kindlv welcomed me with good wordes, and great Platters of sundrie
victuals, asiuring mee his friendship and my libertie within foure
dayes, bee much delighted in Opechan Conough's relation of what I had
described to him, and oft examined me upon the same. Hee asked me the
cause of our comming, I tolde him being in fight with the Spaniards our
enemie, being over powred, neare put to retreat, and by extreme weather
put to this shore, where landing at Chesipiack, the people shot us, but
at Kequoughtan they kindly used us, wee by signes demaunded fresh water,
they described us up the River was all fresh water, at Paspahegh, also
they kindly used us, our Pinnasse being leake wee were inforced to stay
to mend her, till Captain Newport my father came to conduct us away.
He demaunded why we went further with our Boate, I tolde him, in that
I would have occasion to talke of the backe Sea, that on the other side
the maine, where was salt water, my father had a childe slaine, which we
supposed Monocan his enemie, whose death we intended to revenge. After
good deliberation, hee began to describe me the countreys beyond the
Falles, with many of the rest, confirming what not only Opechancanoyes,
and an Indian which had been prisoner to Pewhatan had before tolde mee,
but some called it five days, some sixe, some eight, where the sayde
water dashed amongst many stones and rocks, each storme which caused oft
tymes the heade of the River to bee brackish: Anchanachuck he described
to bee the people that had slaine my brother, whose death hee would
revenge. Hee described also upon the same Sea, a mighty nation called
Pocoughtronack, a fierce nation that did eate men and warred with the
people of Moyaoncer, and Pataromerke, Nations upon the toppe of the
heade of the Bay, under his territories, where the yeare before they had
slain an hundred, he signified their crownes were shaven, long haire in
the necke, tied on a knot, Swords like Pollaxes.

“Beyond them he described people with short Coates, and Sleeves to the
Elbowes, that passed that way in Shippes like ours. Many Kingdomes hee
described mee to the heade of the Bay, which seemed to bee a mightie
River, issuing from mightie mountaines, betwixt the two seas; the people
clothed at Ocamahowan. He also confirmed, and the Southerly Countries
also, as the rest, that reported us to be within a day and a halfe of
Mangoge, two dayes of Chawwonock, 6 from Roonock, to the South part of
the backe sea: he described a countrie called Anone, where they
have abundance of Brasse, and houses walled as ours. I requited his
discourse, seeing what pride he had in his great and spacious Dominions,
seeing that all hee knewe were under his Territories.

“In describing to him the territories of Europe which was subject to our
great King whose subject I was, the innumerable multitude of his ships,
I gave him to understand the noyse of Trumpets and terrible manner of
fighting were under Captain Newport my father, whom I intituled the
Meworames which they call King of all the waters, at his greatnesse bee
admired and not a little feared; he desired mee to forsake Paspahegh,
and to live with him upon his River, a countrie called Capa Howasicke;
he promised to give me corne, venison, or what I wanted to feede us,
Hatchets and Copper wee should make him, and none should disturbe
us. This request I promised to performe: and thus having with all the
kindnes hee could devise, sought to content me, he sent me home with 4
men, one that usually carried my Gonne and Knapsacke after me, two other
loded with bread, and one to accompanie me.”

The next extract in regard to this voyage is from President Wingfield's
“Discourse of Virginia,” which appears partly in the form of a diary,
but was probably drawn up or at least finished shortly after Wingfield's
return to London in May, 1608. He was in Jamestown when Smith returned
from his captivity, and would be likely to allude to the romantic story
of Pocahontas if Smith had told it on his escape. We quote:

“Decem.--The 10th of December, Mr. Smyth went up the ryver of the
Chechohomynies to trade for corne; he was desirous to see the heade of
that river; and, when it was not passible with the shallop, he hired a
cannow and an Indian to carry him up further. The river the higher
grew worse and worse. Then hee went on shoare with his guide, and left
Robinson and Emmery, and twoe of our Men, in the cannow; which were
presently slayne by the Indians, Pamaonke's men, and hee himself taken
prysoner, and, by the means of his guide, his lief was saved; and
Pamaonche, haveing him prisoner, carryed him to his neybors wyroances,
to see if any of them knew him for one of those which had bene, some two
or three eeres before us, in a river amongst them Northward, and taken
awaie some Indians from them by force. At last he brought him to the
great Powaton (of whome before wee had no knowledg), who sent him home
to our towne the 8th of January.”


The next contemporary document to which we have occasion to refer is
Smith's Letter to the Treasurer and Council of Virginia in England,
written in Virginia after the arrival of Newport there in September,
1608, and probably sent home by him near the close of that year. In this
there is no occasion for a reference to Powhatan or his daughter, but he
says in it: “I have sent you this Mappe of the Bay and Rivers, with an
annexed Relation of the Countryes and Nations that inhabit them as
you may see at large.” This is doubtless the “Map of Virginia,” with
a description of the country, published some two or three years after
Smith's return to England, at Oxford, 1612. It is a description of the
country and people, and contains little narrative. But with this was
published, as an appendix, an account of the proceedings of the Virginia
colonists from 1606 to 1612, taken out of the writings of Thomas Studley
and several others who had been residents in Virginia. These several
discourses were carefully edited by William Symonds, a doctor of
divinity and a man of learning and repute, evidently at the request of
Smith. To the end of the volume Dr. Symonds appends a note addressed
to Smith, saying: “I return you the fruit of my labors, as Mr. Cranshaw
requested me, which I bestowed in reading the discourses and hearing the
relations of such as have walked and observed the land of Virginia with
you.” These narratives by Smith's companions, which he made a part of
his Oxford book, and which passed under his eye and had his approval,
are uniformly not only friendly to him, but eulogistic of him, and
probably omit no incident known to the writers which would do him honor
or add interest to him as a knight of romance. Nor does it seem probable
that Smith himself would have omitted to mention the dramatic scene of
the prevented execution if it had occurred to him. If there had been a
reason in the minds of others in 1608 why it should not appear in the
“True Relation,” that reason did not exist for Smith at this time, when
the discords and discouragements of the colony were fully known. And
by this time the young girl Pocahontas had become well known to the
colonists at Jamestown. The account of this Chickahominy voyage given in
this volume, published in 1612, is signed by Thomas Studley, and is as
follows:

“The next voyage he proceeded so farre that with much labour by cutting
of trees in sunder he made his passage, but when his Barge could passe
no farther, he left her in a broad bay out of danger of shot, commanding
none should go ashore till his returne; himselfe with 2 English and two
Salvages went up higher in a Canowe, but he was not long absent, but
his men went ashore, whose want of government gave both occasion and
opportunity to the Salvages to surprise one George Casson, and much
failed not to have cut of the boat and all the rest. Smith little
dreaming of that accident, being got to the marshes at the river's head,
20 miles in the desert, had his 2 men slaine (as is supposed) sleeping
by the Canowe, whilst himselfe by fowling sought them victual, who
finding he was beset by 200 Salvages, 2 of them he slew, stil defending
himselfe with the aid of a Salvage his guid (whome bee bound to his
arme and used as his buckler), till at last slipping into a bogmire
they tooke him prisoner: when this news came to the fort much was
their sorrow for his losse, fewe expecting what ensued. A month those
Barbarians kept him prisoner, many strange triumphs and conjurations
they made of him, yet he so demeaned himselfe amongst them, as he
not only diverted them from surprising the Fort, but procured his own
liberty, and got himselfe and his company such estimation amongst them,
that those Salvages admired him as a demi-God. So returning safe to the
Fort, once more staied the pinnas her flight for England, which til his
returne could not set saile, so extreme was the weather and so great the
frost.”

The first allusion to the salvation of Captain Smith by Pocahontas
occurs in a letter or “little booke” which he wrote to Queen Anne in
1616, about the time of the arrival in England of the Indian Princess,
who was then called the Lady Rebecca, and was wife of John Rolfe, by
whom she had a son, who accompanied them. Pocahontas had by this
time become a person of some importance. Her friendship had been of
substantial service to the colony. Smith had acknowledged this in
his “True Relation,” where he referred to her as the “nonpareil” of
Virginia. He was kind-hearted and naturally magnanimous, and would take
some pains to do the Indian convert a favor, even to the invention of an
incident that would make her attractive. To be sure, he was vain as well
as inventive, and here was an opportunity to attract the attention of
his sovereign and increase his own importance by connecting his name
with hers in a romantic manner. Still, we believe that the main motive
that dictated this epistle was kindness to Pocahontas. The sentence that
refers to her heroic act is this: “After some six weeks [he was absent
only four weeks] fatting amongst those Salvage Countries, at the minute
of my execution she hazarded the beating out of her own braines to save
mine, and not only that, but so prevailed with her father [of whom
he says, in a previous paragraph, 'I received from this great Salvage
exceeding great courtesie'], that I was safely conducted to Jamestown.”

This guarded allusion to the rescue stood for all known account of it,
except a brief reference to it in his “New England's Trials” of 1622,
until the appearance of Smith's “General Historie” in London, 1624. In
the first edition of “New England's Trials,” 1620, there is no reference
to it. In the enlarged edition of 1622, Smith gives a new version to his
capture, as resulting from “the folly of them that fled,” and says: “God
made Pocahontas, the King's daughter the means to deliver me.”

The “General Historie” was compiled--as was the custom in making up such
books at the time from a great variety of sources. Such parts of it as
are not written by Smith--and these constitute a considerable portion of
the history--bear marks here and there of his touch. It begins with his
description of Virginia, which appeared in the Oxford tract of 1612;
following this are the several narratives by his comrades, which formed
the appendix of that tract. The one that concerns us here is that
already quoted, signed Thomas Studley. It is reproduced here as “written
by Thomas Studley, the first Cape Merchant in Virginia, Robert Fenton,
Edward Harrington, and I. S.” [John Smith]. It is, however, considerably
extended, and into it is interjected a detailed account of the captivity
and the story of the stones, the clubs, and the saved brains.

It is worthy of special note that the “True Relation” is not
incorporated in the “General Historie.” This is the more remarkable
because it was an original statement, written when the occurrences it
describes were fresh, and is much more in detail regarding many things
that happened during the period it covered than the narratives that
Smith uses in the “General Historie.” It was his habit to use over
and over again his own publications. Was this discarded because it
contradicted the Pocahontas story--because that story could not be
fitted into it as it could be into the Studley relation?

It should be added, also, that Purchas printed an abstract of the Oxford
tract in his “Pilgrimage,” in 1613, from material furnished him
by Smith. The Oxford tract was also republished by Purchas in his
“Pilgrimes,” extended by new matter in manuscript supplied by Smith.
The “Pilgrimes” did not appear till 1625, a year after the “General
Historie,” but was in preparation long before. The Pocahontas legend
appears in the “Pilgrimes,” but not in the earlier “Pilgrimage.”

We have before had occasion to remark that Smith's memory had the
peculiarity of growing stronger and more minute in details the further
he was removed in point of time from any event he describes. The
revamped narrative is worth quoting in full for other reasons. It
exhibits Smith's skill as a writer and his capacity for rising into
poetic moods. This is the story from the “General Historie”:

“The next voyage hee proceeded so farre that with much labour by cutting
of trees in sunder he made his passage, but when his Barge could pass
no farther, he left her in a broad bay out of danger of shot, commanding
none should goe ashore till his return: himselfe with two English and
two Salvages went up higher in a Canowe, but he was not long absent, but
his men went ashore, whose want of government, gave both occasion and
opportunity to the Salvages to surprise one George Cassen, whom they
slew, and much failed not to have cut of the boat and all the rest.
Smith little dreaming of that accident, being got to the marshes at the
river's head, twentie myles in the desert, had his two men slaine (as is
supposed) sleeping by the Canowe, whilst himselfe by fowling sought them
victuall, who finding he was beset with 200 Salvages, two of them hee
slew, still defending himself with the ayd of a Salvage his guide, whom
he bound to his arme with his garters, and used him as a buckler, yet
he was shot in his thigh a little, and had many arrowes stucke in his
cloathes but no great hurt, till at last they tooke him prisoner. When
this newes came to Jamestowne, much was their sorrow for his losse, fewe
expecting what ensued. Sixe or seven weekes those Barbarians kept him
prisoner, many strange triumphes and conjurations they made of him, yet
hee so demeaned himselfe amongst them, as he not onely diverted them
from surprising the Fort, but procured his owne libertie, and got
himself and his company such estimation amongst them, that those
Salvages admired him more than their owne Quiyouckosucks. The manner how
they used and delivered him, is as followeth.

“The Salvages having drawne from George Cassen whether Captaine Smith
was gone, prosecuting that opportunity they followed him with 300
bowmen, conducted by the King of Pamaunkee, who in divisions searching
the turnings of the river, found Robinson and Entry by the fireside,
those they shot full of arrowes and slew. Then finding the Captaine as
is said, that used the Salvage that was his guide as his shield (three
of them being slaine and divers others s

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