n 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