This is, however, purely conjecture; other proofs of the truth of the incident seem unassailable. Soon after Smith's return, Pocahontas, a girl of thirteen, made her appearance at Jamestown bringing food, and she continued from that time onward to do all in her power to assist the colonists. When some Indians were arrested by Smith, Powhatan sent Pocahontas to intercede for them, and they were released at once "for her sake only." It is necessary to account for these incidents, especially for the interest felt by Pocahontas in the enemies of her people. It can only be accounted for on the ground that she took a deep interest in Smith. His own affectionate attachment for her is fully established. When she visited London, he wrote to the Queen, recommending her to the royal favor, on the ground that she had saved his life and the life of the colony also. He declared that she had "hazarded the beating out of her brains to save his;" and if the statement was untrue, Pocahontas, a pious and truthful person, countenanced a falsehood. On other occasions Smith referred to the incidents of his life in Virginia as occurrences to which Captain George Percy, and "other noble gentlemen and resolute spirits now living in England," could testify. In his "New England Trials," he wrote, "God made Pocahontas, the King's daughter, the means to deliver me;" and the "General History" contained only the fuller account of an event which had thus been repeatedly referred to. The only intelligible objection to the truth of the incident rests on the theory that Smith was a wandering adventurer, and invented it to attract attention to himself as the hero of a romantic event. The reply is that he was not, in any sense, a wandering adventurer, since he enjoyed the favor of the heir-apparent, afterwards

Charles I., and had been commissioned by James I. Admiral of New England.

Other objections to the truth of the narrative contributed by Smith to the "General History" refer to points of the least possible importance the amount of food and the number of guides supplied him by the Indians. It is not necessary to notice them. It may be said that the Pocahontas incident rests upon the highest moral evidence, and that the assailants of the "General History" have in no degree discredited it. It remains the original authority for the first years of American history, and Smith's character has not suffered, except in the estimation of a few critics, who seem to feel a personal enmity toward him.

His writings will be spoken of elsewhere. They bear the impress of the voyager and soldier, and, it may be added, of an earnest Christian man. It is diffi cult to find more serious and noble writing than some passages in his books. The rude sentences rise to the height of eloquence, and he exhorts his contemporaries to noble achievements in noble words.

"Seeing we are not born for ourselves, but each to help other," he says, "and our abilities are much alike at the hour of our birth and the minute of our death; seeing our good deeds or our bad, by faith in Christ's merits, is all we have to carry our souls to heaven or to hell; seeing honor is our lives' ambition, and our ambition after death to have an honorable memory of our life; and seeing by no means we would be abated of the dignities and glories of our predecessors, let us imitate their virtues to be worthily their successors."

Such writing is irreconcilable with the theory that Smith was merely a rough fighting man. The noble

maxim, "We are not born for ourselves, but each to help other," might have done honor to the most pious of the English bishops. What the soldier insists upon is the duty of love and charity — that men should not look to themselves and their own profit, but to the good of their neighbors. Faith in Christ, he says, is the main thing, and the next is to leave an honorable memory behind us. He elaborates his thought, and urges a life of noble action as the only life worth living.

"Who would live at home idly," he exclaims, "or think in himself any worth to live only to eat, drink, and sleep, and so die; or by consuming that carelessly his friends got worthily; or by using that miserably that maintained virtue honestly; or for being descended nobly, and pine, with the vain vaunt of great kindred, in penury; or to maintain a silly show of bravery, toil out thy heart, soul, and time basely by shifts, tricks, cards, and dice; offend the laws, surfeit with excess,

burthen thy country, abuse thyself, despair in want, though thou seest what honors and rewards the world yet hath for them that will seek them and worthily deserve them."

And elsewhere we come upon this earnest passage, which appeals directly to the men of our own time to Americans fretting under the cares and poverty of the older settlements, and to men of every nationality flocking to the shores of the Continent to establish new homes for themselves and their families:

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Who can desire more content that hath small means, or but only his merits to advance his fortunes, than to tread and plant that ground he hath purchased by the hazard of his life? If he have but the taste of virtue and magnanimity, what to such a mind can be more

pleasant than planting and building a foundation for his posterity, got from the rude earth by God's blessing and his own industry, without prejudice to any?"

This is the spirit of the American of to-day, - the pioneer who goes West to build a new home for his family in the wilderness. Smith tells his contemporaries that the rude earth shall not daunt the man with that spirit in him. By God's blessing and his own industry, without prejudice to any, a home for wife and little ones shall rise in the new land; new societies will be founded, new States built up in the wilds; and his words are almost a prophecy of the future United States. "What so truly suits with honor and honesty as the discovering things unknown," he says, "erecting towns, peopling countries, informing the ignorant, reforming things unjust, teaching virtue and gain to our native mother country .. so far from wronging any as to cause posterity to remember thee, and, remembering thee, ever honor that remembrance with praise."

Thus, in the voice of the soldier-voyager of the seventeenth century, speaks the man of the last half of the nineteenth. The new life awaits them; they have only to set out with good heart to find it. They are poor and humble; they will be rich and powerful. They are wasting with ignoble cares; they will prosper and be happy. It is the dream of the modern world, and already filled the mind of this man of the age of Elizabeth. He adds a last exhortation. What could " a man with faith in religion do more agreeable to God than to seek to convert these poor savages to Christ and humanity"?

It is impossible that this phrase, "Christ and humanity" could have been written by a charlatan. And if

we doubt the real character of this man, who is represented as "a Gascon and a beggar," the full-length portrait drawn of him by one of his associates ought to set the doubt at rest. "Thus we lost him," says the chronicle, "that in all our proceedings made justice his first guide, and experience his second; ever hating baseness, sloth, pride, and indignity more than any dangers; that never allowed more for himself than his soldiers with him; that upon no danger would send them where he would not lead them himself; that would never see us want what he either had or could by any means get us; that would rather want than borrow, or starve than not pay; that loved action more than words, and hated falsehood and covetousness worse than death; whose adventures were our lives and whose loss our deaths."

XIII.

VIRGINIA ABANDONED.

WHEN Smith sailed away from Virginia, in the month of September, 1609, Jamestown was a straggling assemblage of fifty or sixty houses. They were built of wood, some of them two stories in height, with roofs of boards, or mats, or reed thatch. There was a church and a store-house the whole inclosed by a palisade of strong logs, fifteen feet in height. At the neck of the peninsula was a fort, with cannon mounted on platforms; in rear the forest, where dusky shadows flitted to and fro; and in front the broad river flowing to the sea, toward which the straining eyes had so often been directed in search of the white sails coming from the home land.