nstructed in Christianitie, and was become very formal and civil
after our English manner; she had also by him a childe which she loved
most dearely and the Treasurer and Company tooke order both for the
maintenance of her and it, besides there were divers persons of great
ranke and qualitie had beene very kinde to her; and before she arrived
at London, Captaine Smith to deserve her former courtesies, made her
qualities knowne to the Queene's most excellent Majestie and her
Court, and writ a little booke to this effect to the Queene: An
abstract whereof followeth.

[Footnote 5: Under that name Pocahontas had been baptized in the
original Jamestown church. A legend has survived that an old font, now
preserved in the church at Williamsburg, is the one from which she was
baptized.]

"_To the most high and vertuous Princesse Queene Anne of Great
Brittanie._

"MOST ADMIRED QUEENE,

"The love I beare my God, my King, and Countrie hath so oft emboldened
me in the worst of extreme dangers, that now honestie doth constraine
mee presume thus far beyond my selfe, to present your Majestie this
short discourse: If ingratitude be a deadly poyson to all honest
vertues, I must bee guiltie of that crime if I should omit any meanes
to bee thankful. So it is, that some ten yeers agoe being in Virginia,
and taken prisoner by the power of Powhatan their chiefe King, I
received from this great Salvage exceeding great courtesie, especially
from his son Nantaquaus, the most manliest, comeliest, boldest spirit,
I ever saw in a Salvage, and his sister Pocahontas, the King's most
deare and well-beloved daughter, being but a childe of twelve or
thirteene yeers of age, whose compassionate pitiful heart, of
desperate estate, gave me much cause to respect her: I being the
first Christian this proud King and his grim attendants ever saw: and
thus inthralled in their barbarous power, I cannot say I felt the
least occasion of want that was in the power of those my mortal foes
to prevent, notwithstanding all their threats. After some six weeks
fatting among those Salvage Courtiers, at the minute of my execution,
she hazarded the beating out of her owne braines to save mine, and not
only that, but so prevaild with her father, that I was safely
conducted to James towne, where I found about eight and thirtie
miserable poore and sicke creatures, to keepe possession of all those
large territories of Virginia. Such was the weaknesse of this poore
Commonw