CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH.*
AT the end of last year a luncheon was given in London to celebrate the two-hundredth anniversary of the sailing from London of the expedition which founded Jamestown, Virginia. A distinguished General in the after-luncheon speeches claimed descent from the famous Captain John Smith who took part in the expedition and was one of the first Governors of Virginia ; and an Admiral, with perhaps surer warrant, pro- fessed himself a descendant of John Rolfe, who married the Indian Princess Pocahontas. The republication in a delightful form of Smith's Generall Historie by the Glasgow University Press is therefore to be welcomed as opportune as well as desirable in every other way. It is one of the best stories of adventure in our language. But is it always more than a story ? Is it all history, and exact a The General{ Kietorie of Virginia, New England and the Summer Isl.. Tog.sur with The True Travels, Adventures and Observations, and A. bey Grammar. By Captain° ;ohs ilvdth. I vols. ebtagow: James MacLenose and Bons. En% wt.] history ? We fancy that most readers who go right through these two volumes, as we have done, will feel the internal evidence to be proof, on the whole, of Smith's veracity. His manner is careful ; he recorded facts of natural history in strict accordance with his observation. He had, too, a grammatical or lexicographical mind. No one who had not something like a passion for verbal truth would have tackled a sea-grammar, and given the inexpert an explanation of all the professional terms of the sailor. The volumes before us are simply a reprint without notes, and, if we may make bold enough to say so, are all the better for that. But the casual reader into whose bands they fall may be at a loss to know what value historians concede to Smith's rather " tall " stories, which seem (especially in the romantic inci- dents connected with Pocahontas) almost too good to be true. Let us say, then, that the Pocahontas story was never questioned till Mr. Charles Deane edited Smith's True _Relation in 1866. Since then the doubts have been scotched by Professor Arber's masterly edition of Smith's works, but have been revived by Mr. Henry Adams. We must not pretend to a very definite opinion, but no doubt all of us who want to swallow Smith whole are prepared to make the most of the aids to digestion provided by the indefatigable Professor Arbor.
John Smith was born in Lincolnshire in 1580, and after his father's death his guardian put him into the service of a merchant at Lynn. Wearied by the work, he was taken to France by a son of Lord Willoughby, and fought under Henry IV. at Havre. He came home by the Low Countries, and we find him in Lincolnshire again, living the simplest of simple lives in the woods and reading Marcus Aurelius and , Machiavelli. His next adventures were in France once more, where he was robbed by gentlemen of the road. He joined the ship of a piratical merchant, and helped to capture a Venetian argosy in the Mediterranean. His subsequent wanderings were in Germany, France, Spain, Hungary, and Morocco. Then came the most important part of his life, when he was chosen by the London company which fitted out the Virginian expedition. During the voyage to Virginia he was suspected of intrigue, and was very nearly banged at the yardarm ; but he was destined to survive many perils even more menacing than that. Such was the man who wrote the Generall Historic. He was intelligent, and his narrative, though startling, is not the work of a swashbuckler.
, When Jamestown bad been founded there was very soon a famine in the colony. Smith ranged about the country searching for food, and in so doing was taken by Powhatan, an Indian chief, the father of the celebrated Pocahontas. The Court of Powbatan, with much joyful ceremonitd, made ready to execute so important a prisoner, and the stones on which his head was to be battered were prepared on the ground, when the romantic and tender-hearted Princess flung herself on Smith, crying that if they beat out his brains they should also beat out hers. But we must give this celebrated passage in Smith's own words. His odd, and not immodest, use of the third person is invariable in his books :-
"At last they brought him to Meronocomo, where was Powhatan their Emperor. Here more then two hundred of those grim Courtiers stood wondering at him, as he had beans a monster ; till Powhatan and his trayne had put themselves in their greatest braveries. Before a fire upon a seat like a bedsted, he sat covered with a great robe, made of Barowcun skinnes, and all the Myles hanging by. On either hand did sit a young wench of 16 or 18 yeares, and along on each side the house, two rowes of men, and behind them as many women, with all their heads and shoulders painted red; many of their heads bedecked with the white downe of Birds ; but every one with something and a great chayne of white beads about their necks. At his entrance before the King, all the people gave a great shout. The Queens of Appamatuck was appointed to bring him water to wash his hands, and another brought him a bunch of feathers, in stead of a Towell to dry them, having feasted him after their best barbarous manner they could, a long consultation was held, but the conclusion was, two great stones were brought before Powhatan : then as many as could layd hands on him, dragged him to them, and thereon laid his bead, and being ready with their clubs, to beats out his braines, Pocahontas the Kings dearest daughter, when no intreaty could prevail°, got his head in her armee, and laid her owns upon his to save him from death whereat the Emperour was contented he should live to make him hatchets, and her bells, beads, and copper; for they thought him aswell of all occupations as them- selves."
If Smith had been a mere liar, it is probable that he would have invented tender passages between himself and the young Princess. But he did nothing of the sort. He speaks of her with unfailing respect and admiration, and duly chronicles all the services she did the Englishmen in their troubles with the Indians; but he records her marriage to John Rolfe in the coolest and most businesslike way.
The early years of Virginia were indeed more romantic than those of any other colony. Reading this history, one is reminded of the relations between the Israelites and the Philistines. Like them, the settlers and the Indiana met and traded freely, and each side knew the hospitality of the other; and yet underneath there was always profound suspicion, the readiness to profit by any opportunity, and, in spite of a pro- fessed belief in an ultimate understanding, the continual misunderstanding which was inevitable between two such different peoples. "Our most royall King James," says Smith in his preface, "bath place and opportnnitie to inlarge his ancient Dominions without wronging any, (which is a condition most agreeable to his moat just and pious resolu- tions)." But that sane Imperialism as practised was not sane enough for our canons of to-day. The Virginians, it is true, were far more humane than the Spaniards (the inhumanity inseparable from piracy always admitted), and yet they had no one who thought on the plane of the good Las Cams, known as the Apostle of the Indians, who denounced the enslaving of Indians, bitterly repented afterwards his advocacy of substituting negro slave labour—the Chinese labour of those days—and eventually concluded that it was un-Christian to fight against the Indians at all. Did he not return to Spain and make a memorable oration on that subject before a Junta at Valladolid ? Smith uses everywhere the word "love" to describe the condition of peace between the colonists and the Indians, when perhaps to-day we should not dream of going beyond the diplomatic word "correct." The following passage conveys excellently the contrast of outward peace and secret hostility. It is marked in the margin "The Salvages [i.e., savages] dissemble their intent" :— " Upon this away went their Bowes and Arrowes, and men, women, and children brought in their Commodities two or three houres they so thronged about the President and so overwearied him, as he retyred himselfe to rest, leaving Mr. Behethland and Mr. Powell to receive their presents, but some Salvages perceiving him fast asleepe, Sc the guard somewhat carelesly dispersed, fortis, or fiftie of their choise men each with a club, or an English sword in his hand began to enter the house with two or three hundred others, that pressed to second them. The noyse and haat they made in, did so shake the house they awoke him from his sleeps, and being halts amazed with this suddaine sight, betooke him strait to his sword and Target; Mr. Chrashaw and some others charged in like manner; whereat they quickly thronged faster baste then before forward."
We wish that Smith had told us more often exactly how difficulties were overcome. The absence of carefulness in this matter is to 011r mind, however, one of the internal evidences of veracity. One wonders, for instance, what most of the settlers made of the difficult polysynthetic language of the Indians. In Smith's pages both sides seem to converse easily enough. Then, were the Indians as noble, according to their lights, as every schoolboy believes them to have been who has read Indian stories, from Fenimore Cooper onwards ? Smith, if we read fairly between his lines, approached more nearly the cynical modern American opinion that "the only good Indian is a dead Indian." It is said that even the brave Indian tribes (there are, of course, notoriously unvalorous tribes) are given to too much caution. But this may imply nothing more than a conception of tactics wholly different from ours. The same thing was said of the Boers. It is ourpeculiar national conception of courage which requires people "to come out into the open" morally and actually. It may not be an exclusively wise conception, but it is inevitable in us. Nowadays, however, it must be almost impossible to argue back to the character of the unspoiled Indian. Most modern Indians who are at all comparable with the old stock are poor creatures, pauperised materially and rained morally by Government annuities. No group of Indians has the singular force of character which once enabled an Indian tribe to close their mines as they had observed that wherever mines were there also were troubles. They acted as though gold meant as little to them as it did to the people of Eldorado in Voltaire's Candide. Red Jacket and Black Hawk in real life, or Leather Stocking in fiction, were characters who have fixed their names and dignity in our minds. One would like to know Smith's exact opinion of their prototypes. We are provoked, even while we are engrossed, by the way in which he
took everything for granted. Pocahontas, no doubt, was "that blessed jewel " ; but one might gratefully say that of any woman who invariably turned the point of the best- directed plots of her own people in order to save her friend the enemy. We should like to know the Indian opinion of Pocahontas. Do any legends survive P
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