honour more than she can imagine, for being so kind to your servants and subjects, would sc ravish her with content, as endeare her dearest blood to effect that your Majestie and all the king's honest subjects most earnestly desire. And so I humbly kisse your gracious hands."

This letter, earnest as it is, is not written with the usual eloquence and ease of our adventurer. Big with his subject, and writing to a Queen, he seems to have been struggling with his own conceptions, and to have been overcome by them. His thoughts are clumsily uttered, and never came to their full proportion in delivery. But he evidently wrote from his feelings, and may be believed when he asserts that, though his statement might be presented from “a more worthy pen," it could not come "from a more honest heart.” We are not told whether it was to this address that Pocahontas was indebted for those attentions which the Queen of England, as well as her consort, bestowed upon her. She was kindly and honorably entertained at court, though the tradition is that her husband Rolfe was frowned upon for his presumption in intermarrying with royal blood. The Scottish Solomon, whose tenacious sense of legitimacy was probably the one principle to which he more religiously adhered than to any other, is said to have held the proceeding as little less than treason or misdemeanor. It is fortunate that John Rolfe's ears did not pay the penalty of his ambition. Smith did not content himself with simply writing to the queen in behalf of the Lady Rebecca, for such was the name she bore in England. Though earnestly engaged in his preparations for the voyage to New England, he hurried with several of his friends to see her at Brentford, whither she had been removed from London. At this time Smith was probably at Plymouth. We have the account of the interview from himself.

It was

highly touching, but unsatisfactory. His salutation was probably reserved and cautious, and she was in a strange land. She expected the warmest signs of attachment from one whom she had regarded with the devotion of a child; and he was governed by those fears of offending the suspicious pedant who sat upon the throne of England, of whose opinion, in this very instance, our captain was probably aware. The untutored damsel of the Virginian forests could not understand his reserve, though the real motive of his caution was that she might not prejudice her claims to the patronage of the crown. She felt his coldness, but not his policy. She cared nothing, perhaps, for any countenance but his. "After a modest salutation," such is Smith's statement, "without any word she turned about, obscured her face, as not seeming well contented." How much spirit was in that silence! What feelings were stirring in that untutored but noble bosom, which could thus move her to shroud and turn away her face! She had calculated largely, no doubt, upon this meeting with the great warrior of the pale-faces, who had first impressed her with the greatness of his people. And to be encountered thus, as if he had never been plucked from death by her embrace-as if she had never wandered through the midnight woods to save him-as if she had not brought him food when he hungered, and taught her maidens to dance about him in strange forest movements, the better to beguile his weariness. In her secret heart she reproached him with want of gratitude-at the very moment when he acknowledged no other feeling.

Smith had told his friends that she spoke the English, and now regretted having done so, for she refused to speak. In this mood they left her for some hours; when they rejoined her, a more indulgent spirit informed her thoughts. She now spoke, and spoke freely. They spoke together

of the past, and she thus reminded him of her former love to the English, and what she had done for them.

"You did promise Powhatan," said she, "that what was yours should be his, and he made a like promise unto you. You, being in his land a stranger, called him father, and by the same right I will call you so.”

Smith would have objected to this "because she was a king's daughter," and having a fear of King James in his eyes; but, "with a well-set countenance she said, 'Were you not afraid to come into my father's country, and cause fear in him and all his people but myself, and do you fear that I should call you father here? I tell you that I will call you father, and you shall call me child, and so shall it be for ever. They did always tell us that you were dead, and I knew not otherwise until I came to Plymouth. Yet Powhatan believed it not, because your countrymen will lie much, and he commanded Uttomatomakkin* to seek you out and know the truth.'”

* “This salvage, one of Powhatan's counsell, being amongst them held an understanding fellow, the king purposely sent him, as they say, to number the people here, and informe him well what wee were and our state. Arriving at Plymouth, according to his directions he got a long sticke, whereon by notches hee did think to have kept the number of all the men hee could see, but he was quickly wearied of this task."(a)-Smith's Narrative.

This cunning savage denied to Smith that he had seen the king (James), though it was known that he had. He argued that, as the king had given him nothing, it could not be a king he had seen. "You gave a white dog to Powhatan,” said he to Smith, "yet to me, that am better than a white dog, your king has given nothing."

This shrewd savage is sometimes called Tomoccomo, anu sometimes Uttomaccomach. His accounts of England were unfriendly, and he was disgraced on his return to Virginia.

(a.) When he returned to Virginia, and was asked the number of the people, he answered, "Count the stars in the sky, the leaves of the forest, and the sands of the seashore-such is the number of the people of England.”—Stith.

Smith frequently visited her, and enjoyed, with a no unbecoming satisfaction, the astonishment of those "divers courtiers and others, my acquaintances," whom she delighted by her natural gifts, and the happy manner in which she received them. "They did thinke God had a great hand in her conversion, and they have seene many English ladies worse favored, proportioned and behaviored."

But the career of the Indian princess was short in England. She sickened and died at Gravesend, early in 1617, as she was preparing to return to Virginia. The event was unexpected, but it did not find her unprepared. She presented to the sorrowing spectators the sweetest example of Christian resignation and fortitude. She left one son, Thomas Rolfe, who was educated by his uncle, Henry Rolfe, in England, and who afterwards became a person of distinction and fortune in Virginia. From an only daughter, whom he left,* some of the first families of Virginia trace their descent, with a just and honorable pride. Among these we may mention a recent and distinguished instance, in the person of John Randolph of Roanoke.

* He left behind him an only daughter, who was married to Col. Robert Bolling, by whom she left an only son, the late Major John Bolling, who was father to the present Col. John Bolling and several daughters, married to Col. Richard Randolph, Col. John Fleming, Dr. William Guy, Mr. Thomas Eldridge and Mr. James Murray. So that the remnant of the imperial family of Virginia, which long ran in a single person, is now increased, and branched out into a very numerous progeny.-Stith, 146.

CHAPTER V.

To attempt any analysis of the character of Pocahontasto offer any eulogy upon her virtues, so equally delicate and decided as they were, would only result in unnecessary declamation. As there is nothing to question in the propriety of her conduct, so there is nothing which needs. defence; as there can be no doubt of the extraordinary courage which she brought to the support of a benign humanity, equally extraordinary, so nothing is necessary to the full comprehension of her virtues beyond the actual facts in her history. As these virtues were not of the time or the people among whom she was born and nurtured, so they denote a degree of excellence which lifts. her beyond her race and period, and links her name and reputation with those of the few noble spirits, like herself, of whom the universal heart everywhere keeps a tenacious memory. A more incomparable creature never did honor to her sex. A more feminine spirit never was sent to earth for the purposes of humanity.

Powhatan did not long survive his daughter. He lived long enough to lament her. He died in April, 1618, and was succeeded by Itopatin. For a time Opechancanough seems to have submitted to his sway; and a hollow amnesty lulled the colonists of Virginia into full confidence in their treacherous neighbors. They were warned of this impolicy, but treated the warning with contempt-the population of the colony increasing annually, and the adventurers scattering themselves, with few precautions, throughout the forests. But the complete government of