May 9, 1907] 



NA TURE 



27 



all the world and his wife to come and see what 

 Virginia can show them after three hundred years of 

 existence, in spite of the grievous calamity of forty 

 years since. What the warships of the other Powers 

 have to do with the celebration is not quite clear • 

 one would have thought that this would have been 

 a domestic event to be celebrated by the navies and 

 peoples of the United States and Great Britain alone. 

 For there was no foreigner, barring a recalcitrant 

 Dutchman or two, concerned in the settling of 

 Jamestown and the creation of Virginia in the fair 

 land of Wingandacoa, in the year of grace 1607. 



For although Wingandacoa had been discovered by 

 the emissaries of Sir Walter Raleigh, and its name 

 changed to " Virginia '' by " Her Maiesties Grace " 

 in honour of her glorious self, in 15S4. it was not 

 until 1607 that the permanent settlement was made, 

 and called Jamestown in honour of the " Solomon " 

 who now presided over the destinies of the British 

 nation. It was odd that the name of his tobacco- 

 hating majesty should have been given to the first 

 C'.pital of the country which has always produced the 

 bulk of the obnoxious weed ! 



\\'ith the expedition which set sail from Blackwall 

 in December, 1606, came Master John Smith the 

 redoubtable, who bore for his arms the three Turks' 

 heads granted to him by Sigismundus Bathorv, " b\ 

 the Grace of God Duke of Transilvania, Wallachia, 

 and Moldavia, Earle of Anchard, Salford, and 

 Growenda," in commemoration of his great exploit 

 in the service of that prince, when, " with his sword, 

 before the towne of Regall, in single combat he did 

 overcome, kill, and cut off " the heads of three 

 Turkish champions. In memory of which exploit the 

 three isles off the American coast called the "Turks' 

 Heads " were also named by Master John Smith 

 himself. Smith was a man of the most indomitable 

 energy and determination, as his fellow-voyagers to 

 Mrginia, Mr. Edward-maria Wingfield and the rest, 

 soon found ; and it was not verv long before the hero 

 of the Turks' heads was in full command of the 

 colony, very much for its good, and Wingfield and 

 Smith's enemies returned to England to sow the seeds 

 of opposition which- eventuallv made the position of 

 the masterful governor untenable. 



Smith himself tells the story of his work in his 

 remarkable " Generall Historie," of which Messrs. 

 Maclehose have issued the present admirable reprint 

 just at the right moment, when the tercentenary of the 

 founding of Jamestown is being celebrated in 

 Virginia. Egotistical the book is, but when he wrote 

 it Smith was smarting under the undeserved reproach 

 of the enemies that his energy had made for him, 

 and his purpose was to assert to the world what he 

 had done, and to show, what none will gainsay, that 

 but for him the Commonwealth of Virginia would 

 never have been securely founded. Enemies he may 

 well have made, for he called a spade a spade, and 

 could not suffer a fool gladly ; the gentlemen of the 

 Virginia Company at home were roundly trounced 

 in his despatches to them for their foolish desires for 

 non-existent gold, when all that Virginia could give 

 them was fish, tobacco, and a little copper; and 

 NO. 1958, VOL 76] 



why not raise revenue and gain honest profit from 

 fish and tobacco? says he. Rough with the natives 

 he was said to be, but that is the way of the pioneers, 

 and we can see from many passages in his book 

 that Smith was really a most kindly man, and liked 

 the "salvages." We know in our own time how 

 accusations of roughness to " natives " are made 

 against men of the type of Smith by people whose 

 knowledge of foreign lands is derived from books 

 and their own brains, and have never themselves come 

 into personal contact with the less civilised races in 

 their own home. Of his truly scientific quality of ob- 

 seivation and deduction Smith's book is eloquent 

 proof; he knew what he was talking about. But that 

 he was tactless and undiplomatic in dealing with his 

 own fellows, however well he mav have understood 

 the natives, is equally evident. And the man who 

 knows, but is impatient and tactless in trving to 

 drive others to realise his knowledge for their own 

 good, often sees his work torn from him before he 

 can complete it. This was the case with Smith, who 

 never returned to Virginia after he left if, wounded 

 and discouraged, in 1609. To New England he went, 

 and had much to do with the constitution of the 

 northern colony; but though during the rest of his 

 life he never wearied in strenuous advertisement of 

 the Virginian settlement, he did not re-visit it. 



The picture of the people of Wingandacoa which 

 Smith gives us is well known. Powhatan the 

 " mighty emperour " and his werowances or chiefs ; 

 Pocahontas his daughter, who saved Smith's life 

 when he was a prisoner and her father would have 

 tortured him to death, that Pocahontas who, after 

 Smith left, married Master Rolfe, came to England, 

 was presented at Court, and died when leaving to 

 re-visit her home; the marvellous incidents of Smith's 

 imprisonment and the discoveries of himself and his 

 men ; his descriptions of all these have been known 

 to many generations of lovers of tales of adventure, 

 and have furnished much material to the modern 

 writers of them. Yet to read Smith's own narrative 

 again, with its naif comments on men and things, 

 its quaint spelling, and its Wegg-like " droppings 

 into poetry," by himself and his friends, mostly very 

 bad and merelj' inserted " seeing there is thus much 

 Paper here to spare, that you should not be altogether 

 cloyed with Prose " — is always amusing, and in the 

 present vear most interesting. So we may thank 

 Messrs. Maclehose for their reprint, which includes, 

 besides the timelv "Generall Historic,'' also Smith's 

 story of his own adventurous life in other lands than 

 America, and his very curious " Sea-Grammar," 

 which may well have supplied Swift with some of the 

 material for his utterly unintelligible description of a 

 storm in Gulliver's "Voyage to Brobdingnag " ! 



The book is a handsome one, and the paper and 

 type have an air of archaism which well suits the 

 subject. Smith's own maps are reproduced, and the 

 famous portrait of Pocahontas, called " Matoaka alias. 

 Rebecca filia potentiss : princ : Powhatani Imp : 

 Virginiae," or " Emperour of Ananoughkomouck, 

 alias Virginia," besides the original illustrations of 

 Smith's adventures among the "salvages." 



