CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH AND POCAHONTAS. [To TEE EDITOR OF THE
'! SPECTATOR.") sin,—In the Spectator of December 20th, 1902, there is a curious slip. You say that Captain John Smith, ten years after landing in Virginia, brought home his Indian bride Pocahontas. It was not Jiffin Smith who married Pocahontas. It was John Rolfe. Your notice of Smith is more purely eulogistic than would be likely to find acceptance among us. " Worthy and wise Dr. Fuller" would be apt to be thought by us to have sized up his doughtiness pretty shrewdly. Fuller drily remarks that Smith seems to have achieved all sorts of wonderful exploits, provided we take his word for them. Doubtless he is to be honoured as a man of great courage and vigour, who perhaps saved English America from extinction; but he is suspected also of availing himself to the full of the ancient traveller's privilege of drawing the long- bow. The story of his deliverance by Pocahontas is so pretty that it seems a pity that it did not occur to him to say any- thing about it until, I think, the third edition of his travels. However, Pocahontas actually did afterwards save the whole colony by a timely warning, for which she is to be honoured. So much at least is true of her. The unvarnished accounts, not of her immorality, but of her Indian shamelessness, if better known, would make still more ridiculous the behaviour of that ridiculous King, James L, who came very near throw- ing Rolfe into prison for marrying this daughter of a fabulous "Emperor" without Royal license. Some think he might have been hanged him for having a wife and children already, but I doubt whether this can be proved.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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