fine and beautiful strawberries, four times bigger and better than ours in England." The northern point at the entrance of Chesapeake Bay they named Point Comfort, because they found there deep water for anchorage, "which put them in good comfort." Landing on this point on the fourth day after their arrival, they saw five Indians, who were at first alarmed at the sight of the English, "until they saw the captain lay his hand upon his heart," upon which they came boldly up and invited them to Kecoughtan, their town. This invitation they accepted; and on arriving at the village they were kindly entertained by the Indians, who gave them corn-bread, tobacco, and pipes, and expressed their welcome by a dance. Four days afterwards, they were kindly entertained by the chief of the Pashiphay tribe, and received an invitation from the chief of the Rappahannas to come and visit him. He sent them a messenger to guide them to his habitation, and stood on the banks of the river to meet them as they landed, "with all his train," (says the writer,) "as goodly men as any I have seen of savages or Christians, the Werowance * coming before them, playing on a flute made of a reed, with a crown of deer's hair, colored red, in fashion of a rose, fasten

* A name by which the chiefs of tribes in Virginia and its neighborhood were designated.

ed about his knot of hair, and a great plate of copper on the other side of his head, with two long feathers in fashion of a pair of horns placed in the midst of his crown. His body was painted all with crimson, with a chain of beads about his neck; his face painted blue, besprinkled with silver ore, as we thought; his ears all behung with bracelets of pearl, and in either ear a bird's claw through it, beset with fine copper or gold. He entertained us in so modest a proud fashion, as though he had been a prince of civil government, holding his countenance without laughter or any such ill behavior. He caused his mat to be spread on the ground, where he sat down with a great majesty, taking a pipe of tobacco, the rest of his company standing about him. After he had rested a while, he rose and made signs to us to come to his town. He went foremost, and all the rest of his people and ourselves followed him up a steep hill, where his palace was settled. We passed through the woods in fine paths, having most pleasant springs which issued from the mountains. We also went through the goodliest corn-fields that ever were seen in any country. When we came to Rappahanna town, he entertained us in good humanity."

On the 8th day of May they went farther up the river. They went on shore in the country belonging to the tribe of Apamatica, where

they were met by a large body of Indians armed "with bows and arrows in a most warlike manner, with the swords at their backs beset with sharp stones and pieces of iron, able to cleave a man in sunder." But, on making signs of peace, they were suffered to land without molestation. On the 13th day of May, they pitched upon the place of their settlement, which was a peninsula on the north side of James River, about forty miles from the mouth, to which they gave the name of Jamestown. The shore was so bold, that their ship could be in six fathoms of water, and be moored to the trees on the land. *

From this date the history of the United States of America begins, after a lapse of one hundred and ten years from the discovery of the continent by Sebastian Cabot, and twenty two years after the first attempt to colonize it by Sir Walter Raleigh. Who can look back and compare the past with the present without reflections of the most serious and interesting cast? In this little

This slight sketch of their proceedings, after their arrival in James River, and before they settled in Jamestown, is taken from a Narrative in Purchas (Vol. IV. p. 1685), written by George Percy, the brother of the Earl of Northumberland, one of the early settlers, and as distinguished for high character as for high birth. He succeeded Captain Smith as governor. His Narrative is comprised in six folio pages, and is very interesting.

handful of men, occupying a strip of land in the southeastern corner of Virginia, surrounded by pathless woods and savage men, we behold the "seminal principle" of a mighty people, destined to subdue the vast continent to the mild sway of civilization, letters, and Christianity, and to connect two oceans by a living and unbroken chain. Owing their political existence to the charter of a tyrant, which deprived them of some of the most valuable privileges of Englishmen, the colonists laid the foundations of a state, in which the sternest and fiercest spirit of liberty was to be developed, and which was destined to break out, in little more than a century and a half, in deadly opposition to that mother-country, to whose ample robe they had so long clung for support; not so much to obtain redress for actual oppressions, as in denial of the right to oppress, and in defence of those principles of truth, freedom, political equality, and natural justice, which descended to them with their Saxon blood and Saxon speech. The tree of liberty was first planted in the soil of America by despotic hands. The results which followed the settlement of this country were such, as the most sagacious wisdom could not have foreseen, nor the most visionary enthusiasm have hoped. History, no less than revelation, teaches us our dependence upon a higher Power, whose wise and good plans we can as little comprehend

as oppose, who is ever bringing real good out of seeming evil, and who, in the discipline with which he tries both men and nations, is ever making misfortune, discouragement, and struggle, the elements of unbounded growth, progress, and prosperity.

CHAPTER IV.

Early Struggles of the Colony.- Active Exertions of Captain Smith in Providing Food and Suppressing Insubordination.

BEFORE going any further it will be proper to give the reader a short account of the original inhabitants of the soil, as their history becomes almost immediately blended with that of the colony. At the time of the first settlement by the Europeans, it has been estimated that there were not more than twenty thousand Indians within the limits of the state of Virginia. Within a circuit of sixty miles from Jamestown, Captain Smith says, there were about five thousand souls, and of these scarce fifteen hundred were warriors. The whole territory between the mountains and the sea was occupied by more than forty tribes, thirty of whom were united in a confederacy under