"I have not [he says] been so ill bred but I have tasted of plenty and pleasure, as well as want and misery; nor doth a necessity yet, nor occasion of discontent, force me to these endeavors; nor am I ignorant that small thank I shall have for my pains; or that many would have the world imagine them to be of great judgment, that can but blemish these my designs, by their witty objections and detractions; yet (I hope) my reasons and my deeds will so prevail with some, that I shall not want employment in these affairs to make the most blind see his own senselessness and incredulity; hoping that gain will make them affect that which religion, charity and the common good cannot.... For I am not so simple to think that ever any other motive than wealth will ever erect there a Commonwealth; or draw company from their ease and humours at home, to stay in New England to effect any purpose."

But lest the toils of the new settlement should affright his readers, our author draws an idyllic picture of the simple pleasures which nature and liberty afford here freely, but which cost so dearly in England. Those who seek vain pleasure in England take more pains to enjoy it than they would spend in New England to gain wealth, and yet have not half such sweet content. What pleasure can be more, he exclaims, when men are tired of planting vines and fruits and ordering gardens, orchards and building to their mind, than "to recreate themselves before their owne doore, in their owne boates upon the Sea, where man, woman and child, with a small hooke and line, by angling, may take divers sorts of excellent fish at their pleasures? And is it not pretty sport, to pull up two pence, six pence, and twelve pence as fast as you can hale and veere a line?... And what sport doth yield more pleasing content, and less hurt or charge than angling with a hooke, and crossing the sweet ayre from Isle to Isle, over the silent streams of a calme Sea? wherein the most curious may finde pleasure, profit and content."

Smith made a most attractive picture of the fertility of the soil and the fruitfulness of the country. Nothing was too trivial to be mentioned. "There are certain red berries called Alkermes which is worth ten shillings a pound, but of these hath been sold for thirty or forty shillings the pound, may yearly be gathered a good quantity." John Josselyn, who was much of the time in New England from 1638 to 1671 and saw more marvels there than anybody else ever imagined, says, "I have sought for this berry he speaks of, as a man should for a needle in a bottle of hay, but could never light upon it; unless that kind of Solomon's seal called by the English treacle- berry should be it."

Towards the last of August, 1614, Smith was back at Plymouth. He had now a project of a colony which he imparted to his friend Sir Ferdinand Gorges. It is difficult from Smith's various accounts to say exactly what happened to him next. It would appear that he declined to go with an expedition of four ship which the Virginia company despatched in 1615, and incurred their ill-will by refusing, but he considered himself attached to the western or Plymouth company. Still he experienced many delays from them: they promised four ships to be ready at Plymouth; on his arrival "he found no such matter," and at last he embarked in a private expedition, to found a colony at the expense of Gorges, Dr. Sutliffe, Bishop o Exeter, and a few gentlemen in London. In January 1615, he sailed from Plymouth with a ship Of 20 tons, and another of 50. His intention was, after the fishing was over, to remain in New England with only fifteen men and begin a colony.

These hopes were frustrated. When only one hundred and twenty leagues out all the masts of his vessels were carried away in a storm, and it was only by diligent pumping that he was able to keep his craft afloat and put back to Plymouth. Thence on the 24th of June he made another start in a vessel of sixty tons with thirty men. But ill-luck still attended him. He had a queer adventure with pirates. Lest the envious world should not believe his own story, Smith had Baker, his steward, and several of his crew examined before a magistrate at Plymouth, December 8, 1615, who support his story by their testimony up to a certain point.

It appears that he was chased two days by one Fry, an English pirate, in a greatly superior vessel, heavily armed and manned. By reason of the foul weather the pirate could not board Smith, and his master, mate, and pilot, Chambers, Minter, and Digby, importuned him to surrender, and that he should send a boat to the pirate, as Fry had no boat. This singular proposal Smith accepted on condition Fry would not take anything that would cripple his voyage, or send more men aboard (Smith furnishing the boat) than he allowed. Baker confessed that the quartermaster and Chambers received gold of the pirates, for what purpose it does not appear. They came on board, but Smith would not come out of his cabin to entertain them, "although a great many of them had been his sailors, and for his love would have wafted us to the Isle of Flowers."

Having got rid of the pirate Fry by this singular manner of receiving gold from him, Smith's vessel was next chased by two French pirates at Fayal. Chambers, Minter, and Digby again desired Smith to yield, but he threatened to blow up his ship if they did not stand to the defense; and so they got clear of the French pirates. But more were to come.

At "Flowers" they were chased by four French men-of-war. Again Chambers, Minter, and Digby importuned Smith to yield, and upon the consideration that he could speak French, and that they were Protestants of Rochelle and had the King's commission to take Spaniards, Portuguese, and pirates, Smith, with some of his company, went on board one of the French ships. The next day the French plundered Smith's vessel and distributed his crew among their ships, and for a week employed his boat in chasing all the ships that came in sight. At the end of this bout they surrendered her again to her crew, with victuals but no weapons. Smith exhorted his officers to proceed on their voyage for fish, either to New England or Newfoundland. This the officers declined to do at first, but the soldiers on board compelled them, and thereupon Captain Smith busied himself in collecting from the French fleet and sending on board his bark various commodities that belonged to her--powder, match, books, instruments, his sword and dagger, bedding, aquavite, his commission, apparel, and many other things. These articles Chambers and the others divided among themselves, leaving Smith, who was still on board the Frenchman, only his waistcoat and breeches. The next day, the weather being foul, they ran so near the Frenchman as to endanger their yards, and Chambers called to Captain Smith to come aboard or he would leave him. Smith ordered him to send a boat; Chambers replied that his boat was split, which was a lie, and told him to come off in the Frenchman's boat. Smith said he could not command that, and so they parted. The English bark returned to Plymouth, and Smith was left on board the French man-of-war.

Smith himself says that Chambers had persuaded the French admiral that if Smith was let to go on his boat he would revenge himself on the French fisheries on the Banks.

For over two months, according to his narration, Smith was kept on board the Frenchman, cruising about for prizes, "to manage their fight against the Spaniards, and be in a prison when they took any English." One of their prizes was a sugar caraval from Brazil; another was a West Indian worth two hundred thousand crowns, which had on board fourteen coffers of wedges of silver, eight thousand royals of eight, and six coffers of the King of Spain's treasure, besides the pillage and rich coffers of many rich passengers. The French captain, breaking his promise to put Smith ashore at Fayal, at length sent him towards France on the sugar caravel. When near the coast, in a night of terrible storm, Smith seized a boat and escaped. It was a tempest that wrecked all the vessels on the coast, and for twelve hours Smith was drifting about in his open boat, in momentary expectation of sinking, until he was cast upon the oozy isle of "Charowne," where the fowlers picked him up half dead with water, cold, and hunger, and he got to Rochelle, where he made complaint to the Judge of Admiralty. Here he learned that the rich prize had been wrecked in the storm and the captain and half the crew drowned. But from the wreck of this great prize thirty-six thousand crowns' worth of jewels came ashore. For his share in this Smith put in his claim with the English ambassador at Bordeaux. The Captain was hospitably treated by the Frenchmen. He met there his old friend Master Crampton, and he says: "I was more beholden to the Frenchmen that escaped drowning in the man-of-war, Madam Chanoyes of Rotchell, and the lawyers of Burdeaux, than all the rest of my countrymen I met in France." While he was waiting there to get justice, he saw the "arrival of the King's great marriage brought from Spain." This is all his reference to the arrival of Anne of Austria, eldest daughter of Philip III., who had been betrothed to Louis XIII. in 1612, one of the double Spanish marriages which made such a commotion in France.

Leaving his business in France unsettled (forever), Smith returned to Plymouth, to find his reputation covered with infamy and his clothes, books, and arms divided among the mutineers of his boat. The chiefest of these he "laid by the heels," as usual, and the others confessed and told the singular tale we have outlined. It needs no comment, except that Smith had a facility for unlucky adventures unequaled among the uneasy spirits of his age. Yet he was as buoyant as a cork, and emerged from every disaster with more enthusiasm for himself and for new ventures. Among the many glowing tributes to himself in verse that Smith prints with this description is one signed by a soldier, Edw. Robinson, which begins:

Oft thou hast led, when I brought up the Rere, In bloody wars where thousands have been slaine."

This common soldier, who cannot help breaking out in poetry when he thinks of Smith, is made to say that Smith was his captain "in the fierce wars of Transylvania," and he apostrophizes him:

Thou that to passe the worlds foure parts dost deeme No more, than ewere to goe to bed or drinke, And all thou yet hast done thou dost esteeme As nothing.

For mee: I not commend but much admire Thy England yet unknown to passers by-her, For it will praise itselfe in spight of me: Thou, it, it, thou, to all posteritie."

XVI

NEW ENGLAND'S TRIALS

Smith was not cast down by his reverses. No sooner had he laid his latest betrayers by the heels than he set himself resolutely to obtain money and means for establishing a colony in New England, and to this project and the cultivation in England of interest in New England he devoted the rest of his life.

His Map and Description of New England was published in 1616, and he became a colporteur of this, beseeching everywhere a hearing for his noble scheme. It might have been in 1617, while Pocahontas was about to sail for Virginia, or perhaps after her death, that he was again in Plymouth, provided with three good ships, but windbound for three months, so that the season being past, his design was frustrated, and his vessels, without him, made a fishing expedition to Newfoundland.

It must have been in the summer of this year that he was at Plymouth with divers of his personal friends, and only a hundred pounds among them all. He had acquainted the nobility with his projects, and was afraid to see the Prince Royal before he had accomplished anything, "but their great promises were nothing but air to prepare the voyage against the next year." He spent that summer in the west of England, visiting "Bristol, Exeter, Bastable? Bodman, Perin, Foy, Milborow, Saltash, Dartmouth, Absom, Pattnesse, and the most of the gentry in Cornwall and Devonshire, giving them books and maps," and inciting them to help his enterprise.

So well did he succeed, he says, that they promised him twenty sail of ships to go with him the next year, and to pay him for his pains and former losses. The western commissioners, in behalf of the company, contracted with him, under indented articles, "to be admiral of that country during my life, and in the renewing of the letters- patent so to be nominated"; half the profits of the enterprise to be theirs, and half to go to Smith and his companions.

Nothing seems to have come out of this promising induction except the title of "Admiral of New England," which Smith straightway assumed and wore all his life, styling himself on the title-page of everything he printed, "Sometime Governor of Virginia and Admiral of New England." As the generous Captain had before this time assumed this title, the failure of the contract could not much annoy him. He had about as good right to take the sounding name of Admiral as merchants of the west of England had to propose to give it to him.

The years wore away, and Smith was beseeching aid, republishing his works, which grew into new forms with each issue, and no doubt making himself a bore wherever he was known. The first edition of "New England's Trials"--by which he meant the various trials and attempts to settle New England was published in 1620. It was to some extent a repetition of his "Description" of 1616. In it he made no reference to Pocahontas. But in the edition of 1622, which is dedicated to Charles, Prince of Wales, and considerably enlarged, he drops into this remark about his experience at Jamestown: "It Is true in our greatest extremitie they shot me, slue three of my men, and by the folly of them that fled tooke me prisoner; yet God made Pocahontas the king's daughter the meanes to deliver me: and thereby taught me to know their treacheries to preserve the rest. [This is evidently an allusion to the warning Pocahontas gave him at Werowocomoco.] It was also my chance in single combat to take the king of Paspahegh prisoner, and by keeping him, forced his subjects to work in chains till I made all the country pay contribution having little else whereon to live."

This was written after he had heard of the horrible massacre of 1622 at Jamestown, and he cannot resist the temptation to draw a contrast between the present and his own management. He explains that the Indians did not kill the English because they were Christians, but to get their weapons and commodities. How different it was when he was in Virginia. "I kept that country with but 38, and had not to eat but what we had from the savages. When I had ten men able to go abroad, our commonwealth was very strong: with such a number I ranged that unknown country 14 weeks: I had but 18 to subdue them all." This is better than Sir John Falstaff. But he goes on: "When I first went to those desperate designes it cost me many a forgotten pound to hire men to go, and procrastination caused more run away than went." "Twise in that time I was President." [It will be remembered that about the close of his first year he gave up the command, for form's sake, to Capt. Martin, for three hours, and then took it again.] "To range this country of New England in like manner, I had but eight, as is said, and amongst their bruite conditions I met many of their silly encounters, and without any hurt, God be thanked." The valiant Captain had come by this time to regard himself as the inventor and discoverer of Virginia and New England, which were explored and settled at the cost of his private pocket, and which he is not ashamed to say cannot fare well in his absence. Smith, with all his good opinion of himself, could not have imagined how delicious his character would be to readers in after-times. As he goes on he warms up: "Thus you may see plainly the yearly success from New England by Virginia, which hath been so costly to this kingdom and so dear to me.

By that acquaintance I have with them I may call them my children [he spent between two and three months on the New England coast] for they have been my wife, my hawks, my hounds, my cards, my dice, and total my best content, as indifferent to my heart as my left hand to my right.... Were there not one Englishman remaining I would yet begin again as I did at the first; not that I have any secret encouragement for any I protest, more than lamentable experiences; for all their discoveries I can yet hear of are but pigs of my sowe: nor more strange to me than to hear one tell me he hath gone from Billingate and discovered Greenwich!"

As to the charge that he was unfortunate, which we should think might have become current from the Captain's own narratives, he tells his maligners that if they had spent their time as he had done, they would rather believe in God than in their own calculations, and peradventure might have had to give as bad an account of their actions. It is strange they should tax him before they have tried what he tried in Asia, Europe, and America, where he never needed to importune for a reward, nor ever could learn to beg: "These sixteen years I have spared neither pains nor money, according to my ability, first to procure his majesty's letters patent, and a Company here to be the means to raise a company to go with me to Virginia [this is the expedition of 1606 in which he was without command] as is said: which beginning here and there cost me near five years work, and more than 500 pounds of my own estate, besides all the dangers, miseries and encumbrances I endured gratis, where I stayed till I left 500 better provided than ever I was: from which blessed Virgin (ere I returned) sprung the fortunate habitation of Somer Isles." "Ere I returned" is in Smith's best vein. The casual reader would certainly conclude that the Somers Isles were somehow due to the providence of John Smith, when in fact he never even heard that Gates and Smith were shipwrecked there till he had returned to England, sent home from Virginia. Neill says that Smith ventured L 9 in the Virginia company! But he does not say where he got the money.

New England, he affirms, hath been nearly as chargeable to him and his friends: he never got a shilling but it cost him a pound. And now, when New England is prosperous and a certainty, "what think you I undertook when nothing was known, but that there was a vast land." These are some of the considerations by which he urges the company to fit out an expedition for him: "thus betwixt the spur of desire and the bridle of reason I am near ridden to death in a ring of despair; the reins are in your hands, therefore I entreat you to ease me."

The Admiral of New England, who since he enjoyed the title had had neither ship, nor sailor, nor rod of land, nor cubic yard of salt water under his command, was not successful in his several "Trials." And in the hodge-podge compilation from himself and others, which he had put together shortly after,--the "General Historie," he pathetically exclaims: "Now all these proofs and this relation, I now called New England's Trials. I caused two or three thousand of them to be printed, one thousand with a great many maps both of Virginia and New England, I presented to thirty of the chief companies in London at their Halls, desiring either generally or particularly (them that would) to imbrace it and by the use of a stock of five thousand pounds to ease them of the superfluity of most of their companies that had but strength and health to labor; near a year I spent to understand their resolutions, which was to me a greater toil and torment, than to have been in New England about my business but with bread and water, and what I could get by my labor; but in conclusion, seeing nothing would be effected I was contented as well with this loss of time and change as all the rest."

In his "Advertisements" he says that at his own labor, cost, and loss he had "divulged more than seven thousand books and maps," in order to influence the companies, merchants and gentlemen to make a plantation, but "all availed no more than to hew Rocks with Oister- shels."

His suggestions about colonizing were always sensible. But we can imagine the group of merchants in Cheapside gradually dissolving as Smith hove in sight with his maps and demonstrations.

In 1618, Smith addressed a letter directly to Lord Bacon, to which there seems to have been no answer. The body of it was a condensation of what he had repeatedly written about New England, and the advantage to England of occupying the fisheries. "This nineteen years," he writes, "I have encountered no few dangers to learn what here I write in these few leaves:... their fruits I am certain may bring both wealth and honor for a crown and a kingdom to his majesty's posterity." With 5,000, pounds he will undertake to establish a colony, and he asks of his Majesty a pinnace to lodge his men and defend the coast for a few months, until the colony gets settled. Notwithstanding his disappointments and losses, he is still patriotic, and offers his experience to his country: "Should I present it to the Biskayners, French and Hollanders, they have made me large offers. But nature doth bind me thus to beg at home, whom strangers have pleased to create a commander abroad.... Though I can promise no mines of gold, the Hollanders are an example of my project, whose endeavors by fishing cannot be suppressed by all the King of Spain's golden powers. Worth is more than wealth, and industrious subjects are more to a kingdom than gold. And this is so certain a course to get both as I think was never propounded to any state for so small a charge, seeing I can prove it, both by example, reason and experience."

Smith's maxims were excellent, his notions of settling New England were sound and sensible, and if writing could have put him in command of New England, there would have been no room for the Puritans. He addressed letter after letter to the companies of Virginia and Plymouth, giving them distinctly to understand that they were losing time by not availing themselves of his services and his project. After the Virginia massacre, he offered to undertake to drive the savages out of their country with a hundred soldiers and thirty sailors. He heard that most of the company liked exceedingly well the notion, but no reply came to his overture.

He laments the imbecility in the conduct of the new plantations. At first, he says, it was feared the Spaniards would invade the plantations or the English Papists dissolve them: but neither the councils of Spain nor the Papists could have desired a better course to ruin the plantations than have been pursued; "It seems God is angry to see Virginia in hands so strange where nothing but murder and indiscretion contends for the victory."

In his letters to the company and to the King's commissions for the reformation of Virginia, Smith invariably reproduces his own exploits, until we can imagine every person in London, who could read, was sick of the story. He reminds them of his unrequited services: "in neither of those two countries have I one foot of land, nor the very house I builded, nor the ground I digged with my own hands, nor ever any content or satisfaction at all, and though I see ordinarily those two countries shared before me by them that neither have them nor knows them, but by my descriptions.... For the books and maps I have made, I will thank him that will show me so much for so little recompense, and bear with their errors till I have done better. For the materials in them I cannot deny, but am ready to affirm them both there and here, upon such ground as I have propounded, which is to have but fifteen hundred men to subdue again the Salvages, fortify the country, discover that yet unknown, and both defend and feed their colony."

There is no record that these various petitions and letters of advice were received by the companies, but Smith prints them in his History, and gives also seven questions propounded to him by the commissioners, with his replies; in which he clearly states the cause of the disasters in the colonies, and proposes wise and statesman- like remedies. He insists upon (CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE, CLICK HERE)