were three Turks' heads borne over and beneath a chevron. The cognizance
of "Moors' heads," as we have said, was not singular in the Middle Ages,
and there existed recently in this very church another tomb which bore
a Moor's head as a family badge. The inscription itself is in a style of
lettering unlike that used in the time of James I., and the letters are
believed not to belong to an earlier period than that of the Georges.
This bluish-black stone has been recently gazed at by many pilgrims from
this side of the ocean, with something of the feeling with which the
Moslems regard the Kaaba at Mecca. This veneration is misplaced, for
upon the stone are distinctly visible these words:

"Departed this life September....
....sixty-six....years....
....months...."

As John Smith died in June, 1631, in his fifty-second year, this stone
is clearly not in his honor: and if his dust rests in this church, the
fire of 1666 made it probably a labor of wasted love to look hereabouts
for any monument of him.

A few years ago some American antiquarians desired to place some
monument to the "Admiral of New England" in this church, and a memorial
window, commemorating the "Baptism of Pocahontas," was suggested. We
have been told, however, that a custom of St. Sepulcher's requires a
handsome bonus to the rector for any memorial set up in the church which
the kindly incumbent had no power to set aside (in his own case) for
a foreign gift and act of international courtesy of this sort; and the
project was abandoned.

Nearly every trace of this insatiable explorer of the earth has
disappeared from it except in his own writings. The only monument to his
memory existing is a shabby little marble shaft erected on the southerly
summit of Star Island, one of the Isles of Shoals. By a kind of irony
of fortune, which Smith would have grimly appreciated, the only stone to
perpetuate his fame stands upon a little heap of rocks in the sea; upon
which it is only an inference that he ever set foot, and we can almost
hear him say again, looking round upon this roomy earth, so much of
which he possessed in his mind, "No lot for me but Smith's Isles, which
are an array of barren rocks, the most overgrowne with shrubs and sharpe
whins you can hardly passe them: without either grasse or wood but three
or foure short shrubby old cedars."

Nearly all of Smith's biographers and the historians of Virginia have,
with great respect, woven h