ue morocco, it being the
first Bible and one of the first books ever printed in America. Two
hundred copies were made, and a second edition contained a dedication
to Charles II. of England, praising him for his goodness in
distributing the word of God among his colonies, which had not
yielded him gold and silver as the Spanish colonies had yielded their
sovereign, but which would nevertheless redound to his immortal glory
as the first-fruits of Christianity among those heathen tribes. The
dedication took up two pages, which was about all the English the
old book contained, the rest being in that curious, half-musical,
half-guttural tongue of the Mohegans, which Cotton Mather said had
been growing since the time of the confusion of tongues at the Tower
of Babel. Certainly some of the words are of such mighty length and
awful sound that we may well believe the same old preacher when he
says that he knew from personal knowledge that demons could understand
Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, but that they were utterly baffled by the
speech of the American Indians.

Very few of these Bibles now exist, and those are of priceless value
to lovers of old books.

One of the earliest books that may be claimed as belonging to American
letters was a volume descriptive of the early settlements in Virginia
by Captain John Smith. It has great value as a representation of
Indian life before its contact with white civilization. Smith had
followed the army of England through the greater part of Europe and
Asia and knew the life of a soldier of fortune. He had fought with
Turks, hunted Tartars, and had always been the hero of the occasion.
The Indian to him was but another kind of heathen to subdue, and the
book is full of adventures, in which he describes himself as always
intrepid and victorious. This is the earliest book that brings the
Indians of the colonies closely before our eyes, and its style is
good, and shows that strong, terse, English fibre which characterized
the writings of the adventurous Englishman of that time. In another
book Smith gives a charming description of inland Virginia, whose
birds, flowers, wild animals, rivers, and scenery are discussed in
a poetic fashion that throws a new light on the character of
the adventurous soldier. There is in both volumes a richness of
description in the details of Indian life that possesses a rare value
to the student. The story of Smith's visit to Powhatan, the father
of Pocahontas, rea