le, 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 industry and good conduct: "to rectify a commonwealth with
debauched p