re 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 a