Corn Conquers Virginia 51 



had entrusted with government of the colony. One of the 

 handful who survived the Starving Time in the winter after 

 Smith had left Virginia wrote of him that "He would rather 

 want than borrow; or starve than not pay. He loved action 

 more than words, and hated falsehood worse than death; whose 

 adventures were our lives, and whose loss our death. . . ." 



That the planting made in the early spring of 1607 sur- 

 vived, and finally gave birth to a nation, is due to the sheer 

 capability of John Smith. He looms out of the records as one 

 of the truly great men in our national history. 



Born with an insatiable curiosity about the world in which 

 he lived, and with a capacity for adventure at first hand, his 

 report of himself is that he had served in France under 

 Admiral Coligny, who discussed with him the advisability of 

 planting a colony of Huguenots in Florida; in the Low Coun- 

 tries against Spain, and in Transylvania, fighting the Turks as 

 one of Sigismund Bathory's captains. There he slew in single 

 combat three Ottomans and was awarded a coat-of-arms show- 

 ing three Turks' heads on a shield. Later, he was taken captive 

 and enslaved. He escaped only by killing his owner who had 

 set him to threshing wheat, seizing his horse and galloping 

 away into Russia. Then he journeyed by adventurous paths 

 across Poland, Bohemia, Germany, France, arriving in London 

 in time to hear the propaganda put out by the Virginia Com- 

 pany, and to decide on America as his next field of action. 



And all this before his twenty-seventh year. 



The recital of his adventures, told tersely in his own words, 

 would seem to place him among the rashlings. But John Smith 

 was no d'Artagnan. He had executive ability, as shrewd a sense 

 of values as any city merchant, and a comprehension of eco- 

 nomic factors in government rarely met with in his time and 

 in the class to which he belonged that of the professional 

 soldier. This was proven during the two years of his stay in 

 Virginia. In the course of that time he saved the colonists 

 from starvation and massacre by his skill in handling the 

 Indians, buying corn from them and learning from them all 



