The _Birth of the Nation. By Mrs. Roger A. Pryor.
(Macmillan and Co. 7s. 6d. net.)—The birth-year was 1607; the place what is now called Jamestown; the child what seemed at that time a very feeble bantling, the Virginian Colony. The enterprise of 1607 was not the first that had been attempted in that region ; but it was the first to attain to permanence. The story of the earlier attempts is melancholy, and discreditable to those who initiated or managed them in the Old Country. Nor is that of the effort which was destined to ultimate success without the very deepest shadows. There was the "hunger time" of 1610, when the new settlement was within an ace of being deserted. It had, in fact, been evacuated, when the opportune arrival of Lord Delaware brought back the fugitives. And there was the terrible massacre of 1623. Between these two came the romance of Pocahontas. Mrs. Pryor tells in detail the story of the Princess, daughter of Powhatan, once the bitterest and most powerful enemy of the English, but ultimately reconciled to them. It will be news to most readers that Pocahontas was a widow ; she had been married, as all Indian girls were married, at the usual ago to a young brave of her tribe. He died in early youth, and so occasion served for one of the strangest of the love-stories of the world. Pocahontas was presented at Court, which, indeed, might have learnt much from her. King James took her dignity in all seriousness, and was angry with her husband for intruding into the Royal caste. The died at Gravesend on her way home, leaving a son, to whom some of the most distinguished citizens of Virginia have traced their origin.
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