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"You brave heroic minds, Worthy your country's name, That honour still pursue, Go and subdue, Whilst loitering hinds Lurk here at home with shame.
" Britons, you stay too long, Quickly aboard bestow you. And with a merry gale Swell your stretched sail, With vows as strong As the winds that blow you.
" Your course securely steer, West and by South forth keep ; Rocks, lee shores, nor shoals, When Eolus scowls, You need not fear, So absolute the deep.
1 Drayton's Works, London, 1620. Drayton was afterwards poet laureate.
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OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
" And cheerfully at sea Success you still entice, To get the pearl and gold, And ours to hold VIRGINIA, Earth's only paradise !
" Where nature hath in store Fowl, venison, and fish ; And the fruitfull'st soil Without your toil, Three harvests more,
All greater than you wish.
" And the ambitions vine Crowns with his purple mass The cedar reaching high To kiss the sky, The cypress. pine,
And useful sassafras,
"To whose, the Golden Age Still nature's laws doth give ; No other cares that tend, But them to defend From winter's age,
That long there doth not live.
" When as the luscious smell Of that delicious land,
Above the seas that flows The clear wind throws
Your hearts to swell, Approaching the dear strand.
"In kenning of the shore (Thanks to God first given) O you, the happiest men Be frolic then ; Let cannons roar, Frighting the wide heaven.
A DISCOURSE OF WESTERN PLANTING. 79
" And in regions farre. Such heroes bring ye forth As those from whom we came ; And plant our name Under that star Not known unto our north.
" And as there plenty grows Of laurel everywhere, Apollo's sacred tree, You it may see, A poet's brows To crown, that may sing there.
" Thy voyages attend, Industrious Hakluyt, Whose reading shall inflame Men to seek fame, And much commend To after times thy wit."
With such omen sailed from merry England the men who were to make the beginnings of the United States of America. What they found and how they fared in the paradise of Virginia shall be the theme of our next chapter.
CHAPTER III.
THE LAND OF THE POWHATANS.
WHILE Captain Christopher Newport, with the ships of the London Company, is still in mid- ocean, and the seal of the king's casket containing the names of Virginia's first rulers is still un- broken, we may pause for a moment in our narra- tive, to bestow a few words upon the early career of the personage that is next to come upon the scene, - a man whose various and wild adventures have invested the homeliest of English names with
Captain a romantic interest that can never die.
John Smith. The life of Captain John Smith reads like a chapter from " The Cloister and the Hearth." It abounds in incidents such as we call improbable in novels, although precedents enough for every one of them may be found in real life. The aeenmulation of romantic adventures in the career of a single individual may sometimes lend an air of exaggera- tion to the story; yet in the genius for getting into scrapes and coming out of them sound and whole, the differences between people are quite as great as the differences in stature and complexion. John Smith evidently had a genius for adventures, and he lived at a time when one would often meet with things such as nowadays seldom happen in civil- ized countries. In these days of Pullinan cars
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THE LAND OF THE POWHATANS.
and organized police we are liable to forget the kind of perils that used to dog men's footsteps through the world. The romance of human life has by no means disappeared, but it has somewhat changed its character since the Elizabethan age, and is apt to consist of different kinds of incidents, so that the present generation has witnessed a ten- dency to disbelieve many stories of the older time. In the case of John Smith, for whose early life we have little else but his autobiography to go by, much incredulity has been expressed.1 To set him down as an arrant braggadocio would seem to some crities essential to their reputation for sound sense. Such a judgment, however, may simply show that the critie has failed to realize all the conditions of the case. Queer things could happen in the Tudor times. Lord Campbell tells us that Sir John Popham, when he was a law-student in the Middle Temple, used after nightfall to go out with his pistols and take purses on Hounslow Heath, partly to show that he was a young man of spirit, partly to recruit his meagre finances, impaired by riotous living.2 This amateur highwayman lived to become Chief Justice of England. The age in which such things could be done was that in which John Smith grew to manhood.
A Latin entry in the parish register at Wil-
1 Some skepticism was manifested by one of Smith's contem- poraries, Thomas Fuller, who says. in his Worthies of England, " It svendeth much to the diminution of his deeds that he along is the herald to publish and proclaim them." The good Fuller was mi taken, however. Some of Smith's most striking deeds, as we shall see, were first proclaimed by others.
2 Campbell's Lives of the Chief Justices, i. 210.
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82 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
loughby in Lincolnshire shows that he received infant baptism in the church there on the 9th of January, 1580. After the death of his parents, an irrepressible craving for adventure led him at an early age to France, where he served as a sol- dier for a while and afterward spent three years in the Netherlands fighting against the
His early
life. Spaniards. In the year 1600 he re- turned to Willoughby, "where within a short time, being glutted with too much company wherein he took small delight, he retired himself into a little woody pasture a good way from any town, environed with many hundred acres of woods. Here by a fair brook he built a pavilion of boughs where only in his elothes he lay. His study was Machiavelli's Art of War and Mareus Aurelius ; his exercise a good horse, with lance and ring; his food was thought to be more of venison than anything else." 1 However, he adds, these hermit-like pleasures could not content him long. " He was desirous to see more of the world, and try his fortune against the Turks; both la- menting and repenting to have seen so many Christians slaughtering one another." In passing through Franee he was robbed of all he had about him, but his life was saved by a peasant who found him lying in the forest, half dead with hunger and grief and nearly frozen. He made his way to Marseilles, and embarked with a company of pil- grims for the Levant; but a violent storm arose.
1 This sketch of Smith's early life is based upon his True Travels, etc., in his Works, edited by Edward Arber, Birming- ham, 1884, pp. 821-880.
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THE LAND OF THE POWHATANS.
which they said was all because of their having this heretic on board, and so, like Jonah, the young adventurer was thrown into the sea. He was a good swimmer, however, and "God brought him," he says, to a little island with no inhabit- ants but a few kine and goats. Next morning he was picked up by a Breton vessel which carried him as far as Egypt and Cyprus. The command- ing officer, Captain La Roche, who knew some of Smith's friends in France, treated him with great kindness and consideration. On their A cruise in
return voyage, at the entrance of the the Mediter- ranean.
Adriatic Sea, a Venetian argosy fired upon them, and a hot fight ensued, until the Vene- tian strnek her colours. The Bretons robbed her of an immense treasure in silks and velvets, be- sides Turkish gold and silver coin, as much as they could carry without overloading their own ship, and then let her go on her way. When the spoil was divided, Smith was allowed to share with the rest, and thus received £225 in coin besides a box of stuffs worth nearly as much more. After Cap- tain La Roche, of whom he speaks with warm affection, had set him ashore in Piedmont, he made a comfortable journey through Italy as far as Naples, and seems to have learned much and enjoyed himself in "sight seeing," quite like a modern traveller. At Rome he saw Pope Clement VIII. with several cardinals creeping on hands and knees up the Holy Staircase. He called on Father Parsons, the famous English Jesuit; he " satisfied himself with the rarities of Rome ; " he visited in like manner Florence and Bologna, and
84 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
gradually made his way to Venice, and so on to Gratz in Styria, where he entered the service of the Emperor Rudolph IT .. and was presently put in command of a company of 250 cavalry with the rank of captain. On one occasion he made him- self useful by devising a system of signals, and on another occasion by inventing a kind of rude missiles which he called " fiery dragons," which sorely annoyed the Turks by setting fire to their camp.
During the years 1601 and 1602 Smith saw much rough campaigning. The troop to which his company belonged passed into the service of Sigismund 1 Bathori, Prince of Transylvania ; and now comes the most notable incident in Smith's narrative. The Transylvanians were besieging Regal, one of their towns which the Turks had occupied, and the siege made but little progress, so that the barbarians from the top of the wall hurled down sarcasms upon their assailants and complained of growing fat for lack of exercise. One day a Turkish captain sent a challenge, de- claring that " in order to delight the ladies, who did long to see some court-like pastime, The three Turks' he did defy any captain that had the com- head3. mand of a company, who durst combat with him for his head." The challenge was ac- cepted by the Christian army, it was decided to select the champion by lot, and the lot fell upon Smith. A truce was proclaimed for the single
1 For a good sketch of Sigismund and his relations to the Empire and to the Turks, see Schlosser's Weltgeschichte, vol. xiii. pp. 825-344.
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THE LAND OF THE POWHATANS.
combat, the besieging army was drawn up in bat- tle array, the town walls were crowded with veiled dames and turbaned warriors, the combatants on their horses politely exchanged salutes, and then rushed at each other with levelled lances. At the first thrust Smith killed the Turk, and dismount- ing unfastened his helmet, cut off his head, and carried it to the commanding general, Moses Tzekely, who accepted it graciously. The Turks were so chagrined that one of their captains sent a personal challenge to Smith, and next day the scene was repeated. This time both lances were shivered and recourse was had to pistols, the Turk received a ball which threw him to the ground, and then Smith beheaded him. Some time after- ward our victorious champion sent a message into the town "that the ladies might know he was not so much enamoured of their servants' heads, but if any Turk of their rank would come to the place of combat to redeem them, he should have his also upon the like conditions, if he could win it." The defiance was accepted. This time the Turk, hav- ing the choice of weapons, chose battle-axes and pressed Smith so hard that his axe flew from his hand, whereat loud cheers arose from the ram- parts ; but with a quick movement of his horse he dodged his enemy's next blow, and drawing his sword gave him a fearful thrust in the side which settled the affair ; in another moment Smith had his head. At a later time, after Prince Sigismund had heard of these exploits, he granted to Smith a coat-of-arms with three Turks' heads in a shield.
This story forcibly reminds us that the Middle
86 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
Ages, which had completely passed away from France and Italy, the Netherlands and England, still survived at the beginning of the seventeenth century in the eastern parts of Europe. In the Middle Ages such " court-like pastime," in the in- tervals of relaxation from more serious warfare, was not unfashionable. Still, though the incidents are by no means incredible, the story has enough of the look of an old soldier's yarn to excuse a mno- ment's doubt of it. Surely here if anywhere Smith may seem to be drawing the long bow. But at the Heralds' College in London, in the official register of grants of arms, there is an entry in Latin which does not sustain such a doubt. It is the record of a coat-of-arms granted by Sigismund Bathori,
Prince of Transylvania, " to John Smith, The entry in the Heralds' College.
captain of 250 soldiers, etc. .. . in mem- ory of three Turks' heads which with his sword before the town of Regal he did overcome, kill, and cut off, in the province of Transylvania." 1 The document on record, which contains this men- tion of the grant. is a letter of safe conduct dated December 9, 1603, signed by Sigismund at Leip- sic and given by him to Smith. The entry is duly approved, and the genuineness of Sigismund's seal and signature certified, by Sir William Segar, Garter King at Arms. Some crities have sug- gested that Smith may have imposed upon Segar with a bogus document, and since the entry at the Heralds' College was made in 1625, it is urged that such a long delay in registering invests the whole affair with suspicion.
1 Smith's Works, ed. Arber, pp. xxii., 842.
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THE LAND OF THE POWHATANS.
The document, however, cannot be thus sum- marily set aside. In the year 1625 Rev. Samuel Purchas published the second volume of his de- lightful Pilgrimes,1 and in the course of it he devotes several pages to Captain Smith's adven- tures in the east of Europe, including the story of the three Turks as above given. Purchas's au- thority for the story was " a Booke intituled The Warres of Transylvania, Wallachi, and Moldavia," written in Italian by Francesco Farnese, secretary to Prince Sigismund. This history seems never to have been published in its ori- Farnese's manuscript history. ginal form, and the manuscript is now apparently lost,2 but there can be no doubt that Purchas had it, or a copy of it, in his hands about 1623. Smith's own book entitled " True Travels " was not published until 1629, so that our original authority for this passage at arms is not Smith himself, but one of Prince Sigismund's secreta- ries, who first told the story of the English cap- tain's exploit in a book written for Italian readers. To the flippant criticism which treats Smith as a vapouring braggart, this simple fact is a stag- gering blow between the eyes. Let me add that in his way of telling his tale there is no trace of boastfulness.3 For freedom from egotistic self-
1 Purchas, His Pilgrimes, ii. 1363.
2 So many long missing historical documents have turned up of late years that it is never safe to assert that one is "lost." That great scholar, Don Pascual de Gayangos, seems to have seen a printed Spanish translation of Farnese's book, but I do not know where it is.
3 It would be just like Smith, I think, not to make much ac- count of his exploit. Hence he neglected to make any record of
..
88 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
consciousness Smith's writings remind me strongly of such books as the Memoirs of General Grant. Inaccuracies that are manifest errors of memory now and then occur, prejudices and errors of judg- ment here and there confront us, but the stamp of honesty I find on every page.
At the bloody battle of Rothenthurin, November 18, 1602, Smith was taken prisoner and sold into
slavery. At Constantinople the lady Charatza
Tragabigzanda, into the service of whose
Smith is sold as a slave, family he passed, was able to talk with him in Italian and treated him with kindness. One can read between the lines that she may per- haps have cherished a tender feeling for the young Englishman, or that he may have thought so. It would not have been strange. Smith's portrait, as engraved and published during his lifetime, is that of an attractive and noble-looking man. His brief narrative does not make it elear how he re- - garded the lady, or what relations they sustained to each other, but she left an abiding impression upon his memory. When in 1614 he explored the coast of New England he gave the name Tragabig- zanda to the cape which Prince Charles afterwards named Cape Anne, and the three little neighbour- ing islands he called the Turks' Heads.
The narrative is far from satisfying us as to the reasons why Smith was sent away from Con- stantinople. To the east of the Sea of Azov, and bordering on the Cossaek country, was a territory
his grant of arms until the appearance of Purchas's book in 1625, and resulting talks among friends, probably impressed upon him the desirableness of making such a record.
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THE LAND OF THE POWHATANS.
which Gerard Mercator calls Nalbrits, and Timour, the Pasha of Nalbrits, was brother to the lady Tragabigzanda. Thither she sent him, with a request that he should be well treated; but the rude Pasha paid no heed to his sister's message, and our young hero was treated as badly as the other slaves, of whom . this tyrant . had- many. " Among these slavish fortunes," says Smith, "there was no great choice ; for the best was so bad, a dog could hardly have lived to
endure [it]." He was dressed in the skin
and cruelly treated.
of a wild beast, had an iron collar fastened around his neck, and was cuffed and kicked about until he grew desperate. One day, as he was threshing wheat in a lonely grange more than a league dis- tant from Timour's castle. the Pasha came in and reviled and struck him, whereupon Smith suddenly knocked him down with his threshing-stick and beat his brains out. Then he stripped the body and hid it under the straw, dressed up in the dead man's clothes and mounted his horse, tied a sack of grain to his saddle-bow, and galloped off into the Scythian desert. The one tormenting fear was of meeting some roving party of Turks who might recognize the mark on his iron collar and either send him back to his late master's place
or enslave him on their own account.
His escape,
But in sixteen days of misery he saw nobody ; then he arrived at a Russian fortress on the Don and got rid of his badge of slavery. He was helped on his way from one Russian town to another, and every where treated most kindly. Through the Po- lish country he went, finding by the wayside much
90 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
mirth and entertainment, and then through Hun- gary and Bohemia, until at length he reached Leipsic, where he found Prince Sigismund. It was then, in December, 1603, that he obtained the letter of safe conduct already mentioned. In the course of the next year Smith travelled in Ger- many, France, Spain, and Morocco, and after some
and re- further adventures made his way back to
turn to England in the nick of time for taking
England. part in the enterprise projected by the London Company. Meeting with Newport and Gosnold, and other captains who had visited the shores of America, it was natural that his strong geographical curiosity should combine with his love of adventure to urge him to share in the enter- prise.
The brevity of Smith's narrations now and then leaves the story obscure. Like many another charming old writer, he did not always consult the convenience of the historians of a later age. So much ouly is clear, that during the voyage across the Atlantic the seeds of quarrel were sown which bore fruit in much bitterness and wrangling
The smoke after the colonists had landed. Indeed,
of contro- after nearly three centuries some smoke
versy. of the conflict still hovers about the field. To this day John Smith is one of the personages about whom writers of history are apt to lose their tempers. In recent days there have been many attempts to belittle him, but the turmoil that has been made is itself a tribute to the potency and ineisiveness of his character. Weak men do not call forth such belligerency. Amid all the con-
3
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THE LAND OF THE POWHATANS.
flieting statements, too, there comes out quite dis- tinctly the contemporary recognition of his dignity and purity. Never was warrior known, says one old writer, " from debts, wine, dice, and oaths so free ; " 1 a staunch Puritan in morals, though not in doctrine.
Captain Newport's voyage was a long one, for he followed the traditional route, first running down to the Canary Islands and then following Columbus's route, wafted by the trade- A tedious wind straight across to the West Indies. voyage.
It seems strange that he should have done so, for the modern method of great-cirele sailing, - first practised on a great scale by Americus Vespucius, in 1502, in his superb voyage of 4,000 miles in 33 days, from the ice-clad island of South Georgia to Sierra Leone,2 - this more scientific method had lately been adopted by Captain Gosnold, who in 1602 crossed directly from the English Channel to Cape Cod. As Gosnold was now second in command in this expedition to Virginia, it would seem as if the shorter route might once more have been tried to advantage. So many weeks upon the ocean sadly diminished the stock of provisions. In the course of the voyage some trouble arose between Smith and Wingfield, and while they were stopping at Dominica, on the 24th of March, an accusation of plotting mutiny was brought against the former, so that he was kept in irons until the ships reached Virginia. After leaving the West
1 Thomas Carlton's verses. in Smith's Works, ed. Arber, p. 692.
2 See my Discovery of America, ii. 105.
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OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
Indies they encountered bad weather and lost their reckoning, but the 26th of April brought them to the eape which was forthwith named Henry, after the Prince of Wales, as the opposite cape Arrival in Chesapeake was afterwards named for his younger
Bay.
brother, Prince Charles. A few of the company ventured on shore, where they were at once attacked by Indians and two were badly wounded with arrows. That evening the sealed box was opened, and it was found that Bartholo- mew Gosnold, Edward Wingfield, John Smith. John Ratcliffe, John Martin, and George Kendall were appointed members of the Council. - six in all. of whom the president was to have two votes. As the ships proceeded into Hampton Roads after so much stress of weather, they named the promon- tory at the entrance Point Comfort.1 The name of the broad river which the voyagers now entered speaks for itself. They scrutinized the banks until they found a spot which seemed suited for a settlement, and there they landed on the 13th of May. It was such a place as the worthy Halthyt (or whoever wrote their letter of instructions ) had emphatically warned them against, low and damp, and liable to prove malarious.2 At high tide the rising waters half covered the little peninsula, but in this there was an element of military security, for the narrow neck was easy to guard, and per- haps it may have been such considerations that
1 It seems likely that the point at the upper end of the Roads received its name of Newport News from the gallant captain. On several old maps I have found it spelled Newport Ness, which is equivalent to Point Newport.
2 See above, p. 75.
5
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THE LAND OF THE POWHATANS.
prevailed. Smith says there was a dispute between Wingfield and Gosnold over the selection of this site. As soon as the company had landed here the members of the Council. all save Smith, were sworn into office. and then they chose Wingfield for their president for the first Founding of Jamestown ; Wingfield chosen president. year. On the next day the men went to work at building their fort, a wooden structure of triangular shape, with a demi-lune at each angle, mounting eannon. They called it Fort James, but soon the settlement came to be known as Jamestown.1 For a church they nailed a board between two trees to serve as a reading desk, and stretched a eanvas awning over it, and there the Rev. Robert Hunt, a high-minded and courageons divine, first clergyman of English America, read the Episcopal service and preached a sermon twice on every Sunday.
Smith's enemies were a majority in the Council and would not admit him as a member, but he was no longer held as a prisoner. Newport's next business was to explore the river, and Smith with four other gentlemen, four skilled mariners, and fourteen common sailors, went along with him, while the Jamestown fort was building. They sailed up about as far as the site of Richmond, fre- quently meeting parties of Indians on the banks, or passing Indian villages. Newport was uniformly kind and sagacious in his dealings with the red men, and they seemed quite friendly. These were
1 It was not far from this spot that Ayllon had made his un- successful attempt to found a Spanish colony in 1526. See my Discovery of America, il. 450.
94 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
Algonquins, of the tribe called Powhatans, and the natives who had assaulted the English at
The Powha-
tan tribe, Cape Henry belonged to a hostile tribe,
confederacy, and head so that that incident furnished a bond
war-chief. of sympathy between the Powhatans and the white men. After a few days they reached the village called Powhatan (i. e. "Falling Waters"), which Thomas Studley, the colonial storekeeper, describes as consisting of about a dozen houses "pleasantly seated on a hill." Old drawings indi- cate that they were large elan houses, with frame- work of beams and covering of bark, similar in general shape though not in all details to the long houses of the Iroquois. The Powhatans seem to have been the leading or senior tribe in a loose con- federacy. Their principal village was called Wero- wocomoco, situated on the north side of the York River, about fifteen miles northeast from James- town as the crow flies. . The place is now called Putin Bay, a name which is merely a corruption of Powhatan. At Werowocomoco dwelt the head war-chief of the tribe, by name Wahunsunakok, but much more generally known by his title as The Powhatan, just as the head of an Irish or Scotch clan is styled The O'Neill or The Mac- Gregor. Newport and Smith, hearing that The Powhatan was a chief to whom other chiefs were in a measure subordinate, spoke of him as the em- peror and the subordinate chiefs as kings, a gro- tesque terminology which was natural enough at that day but which in the interest of historical ac- curacy it is high time for modern writers to drop.
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