II JOHN SMITH AND COMPANY AMERICAN antiquities are scarce and widely separated. Compared with those of the old world they are recent and also unproductive of large revenues from fees. Of the few we have, the most interesting is the old church tower which marks the place on the James River where in May, 1607, a hundred Englishmen disembarked to establish the first government and church within the territory of what is now the United States. They likewise began a literature there which has grown with the growth of the nation. Incidentally and parenthetically it may be observed, that there is no spot which should be of greater interest to Americans than the plot of fifty acres, now in charge of the Virginia Antiquarian Society, where can be seen all that time and the river have spared of the beginnings of the republic. Now and then a traveller steps off the Norfolk and Richmond boat at the end of a long landingstage, probably not far from the former shore line, and has a few hours for meditation, which he can continue if he chooses at old Williamsburg, seven miles inland. In 1907 it is expected that many pilgrims will gather to celebrate the three hundredth anniversary of the planting of the first permanent settlement in America, of which one John Smith was the foremost man. John Smith of Lincolnshire, with York and Lancaster blood in him, was no discredit to his ancestors, Smith as a even if he did run away from school and home Fortune. and 66 Ship himself all aboard of a ship, Soldier of He saw them to some purpose and as a soldier of fortune, as Ashton his contemporary calls him, in France and the Low Countries, in Italy and Transylvania, fighting Spaniard, Turk, and Tartar. The last knight-errant of English chivalry in quest of adventure, he tilts in tournament with three Turkish champions, the token of whose severed heads is blazoned on his heraldic escutcheon by order of Prince Sigismund Bathor. Fortune turning, he becomes the slave of a Bashaw and the favorite of a princess at Constantinople, escapes, turns up in Barbary, fights pirates, shares booty, and finally returns to England to hear of recent American discoveries, among them "the blessed herb tobacco," casts in his lot with Gosnold, Wingfield, and divers gentlemen to sail for Virginia and to search for the South Sea as the repository of immense riches. What they did find on the 26th of April, 1607, was a great store of roast oysters left by decamping natives, and nothing more valuable than the pearls in the shells. It was the beginning of a well-known story of disappointment and sickness, disaster and death, of which only the literary side can be touched upon here. Reading the melancholy account of the encampment on the flats by the tidewater of the James river, it would not be fair to expect great achievements in literature amidst such surroundings. Yet the redoubtable Smith, who had hewn his way through the world with a sword, does not hesitate to pick As a Writer. up the quill of a wild goose-the best of pens for the story of a chase for gold such as he had to record. To be sure, he is as apologetic as any new author, and fortifies himself at the start with the remark that other soldiers "have writ with their pens what their swords have done," and he counts it no disgrace to follow their example, as others since have followed his. But his manner of writing suggests the sword rather than the pen, stabbing upon paper as with a dagger point his sharp sentences. It is not the clerkly style, but that of a soldier, hirsute and bristling with helmet, back and breast plates, sitting in a hut of logs and mud, armed and prepared for morning calls of aboriginal visitors on mischief bent, interrupted on every page by business or brawl of comrades, and for days together by expeditions of discovery or diplomacy in savage wilds. Yet out of this turmoil and distraction he contrives to wrest letters which shall induce other Englishmen of spirit to join the little company for its advantage and their own. What is known as the "True Relation," or "News from Virginia," doubtless contains the substance of those early letters. How much it was tampered with later must be left to the critics to settle among themselves, but there are passages in it that bear the ear-mark of Captain John. For example: "The next day came first an Indian, then another as ambassadors to speak with me. Our discourse was, that what spades, shovels, swords, or tools, they had stolen, to bring home (if not the next day they should hang). The next news was they had taken two of our men, ranging in the woods, which mischief no punishment will prevent but hanging, and these they should redeem with their own. Sixteen or eighteen thus braving us to our doors we desired to sally upon them, that they might know what we durst to do, and at night manned our barge and burnt their towns and destroyed and spoiled what we could, but they brought our men and freely delivered them. The president released one, the rest we brought, well guarded, to morning and evening prayers. Our men all in arms, their trembling fear then caused them much sorrow which till then scoffed and scorned at what we durst do. The council concluded that I should terrify them with some torture." It is interesting to observe here the combination of an executive and a missionary spirit, and that the zeal of conquest was accompanied by compulsory attendance on the daily services. Also that religious observances prevailed in the planting of American civilization. More to the present purpose it is to note the jagged style, which originally was without intelligible punctuation, and had a lawless distribution of capitals and divisions of sentences. But the mixture of force and piety, of enterprise and bad grammar belongs to all our early history. In his dedication of his "History of Virginia" to the Duchess of Richmond, Smith says: "I have deeply hazarded myself in doing and suffering, and why should I stick to hazard my reputation in recording? Where shall we look to find a Julius Cæsar whose achievements shine as clear in his own Commentaries as they did in the field? But because I am no compiler by hearsay, but have been a real actor, I have therefore been bold to challenge them to come under the reach of my rough pen." He also lays the responsibility of his writing his "Travels and Adventures" upon Sir Robert Cotton, and also upon the perversion by contemporaries of his previous books, saying: "They have acted my fatal tragedies upon the stage and racked my relations at their pleasure." Doubtless this was a stroke at some of William Shakespeare's company at the Mermaid tavern. Of Romancing Turn. If in any of the eight books, large and small, which he wrote after the "News from Virginia," and six of them in England during a score of years — if in them he borders upon the marvellous at times, it must be remembered that he was a strong man, with the capacity of making the most and best of everything, himself included; that he had an enlarging lens for facts, and a royally romantic imagination with respect to distant events, and that he had Sir John Mandeville to precede him in stories of travel and Baron Munchausen to follow him in accounts of exploits among the Turks. It is possible that a great romancer was spoiled when he threw aside his Machiavelli's "Art of War" and Marcus Aurelius, his two favorite authors, and started to serve under Rudolf of Hungary. Nevertheless, his principal so-called fable of the Pocahontas episode has been fairly well established as true, his early silence being accounted for by a prudent reserve with regard to aboriginal customs toward intruders, lest Englishmen should be kept at home by visions of clubs and stony pillows. This story once confirmed, Smith's other narrations and descriptions may be taken with as little salt as should be administered with most histories of his day, such as Hakluyt's "Voyages" and Purchas' " Pilgrims" and "Pilgrimage." After all, it will be convenient to pack upon English shoulders most of the fault that is found with the literary shortcomings of the first man who wrote in America; for he went home in two and a half years to stay, and to write there for twenty more. We were still to be accounted Englishmen," he said of the colonists when they settled in |