e world.

"John Smith writ this with his owne hand."

The extent to which Smith retouched his narrations, as they grew in his
imagination, in his many reproductions of them, has been referred to,
and illustrated by previous quotations. An amusing instance of his care
and ingenuity is furnished by the interpolation of Pocahontas into his
stories after 1623. In his "General Historie" of 1624 he adopts, for the
account of his career in Virginia, the narratives in the Oxford tract
of 1612, which he had supervised. We have seen how he interpolated the
wonderful story of his rescue by the Indian child. Some of his other
insertions of her name, to bring all the narrative up to that level,
are curious. The following passages from the "Oxford Tract" contain in
italics the words inserted when they were transferred to the "General
Historie":

"So revived their dead spirits (especially the love of Pocahuntas) as
all anxious fears were abandoned."

"Part always they brought him as presents from their king, or
Pocahuntas."

In the account of the "masques" of girls to entertain Smith at
Werowocomoco we read:

"But presently Pocahuntas came, wishing him to kill her if any hurt were
intended, and the beholders, which were women and children, satisfied
the Captain there was no such matter."

In the account of Wyffin's bringing the news of Scrivener's drowning,
when Wyffin was lodged a night with Powhatan, we read:

"He did assure himself some mischief was intended. Pocahontas hid him
for a time, and sent them who pursued him the clean contrary way to seek
him; but by her means and extraordinary bribes and much trouble in three
days' travel, at length he found us in the middest of these turmoyles."

The affecting story of the visit and warning from Pocahontas in the
night, when she appeared with "tears running down her cheeks," is not
in the first narration in the Oxford Tract, but is inserted in the
narrative in the "General Historie." Indeed, the first account would by
its terms exclude the later one. It is all contained in these few lines:

"But our barge being left by the ebb, caused us to staie till the
midnight tide carried us safe aboord, having spent that half night with
such mirth as though we never had suspected or intended anything, we
left the Dutchmen to build, Brinton to kill foule for Powhatan (as by
his messengers he importunately desired), and left directions with our
men to give Powhatan all the content they