adornments sewed upon a shaggy garment, green in summer, flame-hued in
autumn, brown in winter, green and flower-colored in the spring. Nor
was the forest to any appreciable extent like much Virginian forest of
today, second growth, invaded, hewed down, and renewed, to hear again
the sound of the axe, set afire by a thousand accidents, burning upon
its own funeral pyres, all its primeval glory withered. The forest of
old Virginia was jocund and powerful, eternally young and eternally old.
The forest was Despot in the land--was Emperor and Pope.

With the forest went the Indian. They had a pact together. The Indians
hacked out space for their villages of twenty or thirty huts, their
maize and bean fields and tobacco patches. They took saplings for poles
and bark to cover the huts and wood for fires. The forest gave canoe and
bow and arrow, household bowls and platters, the sides of the drum that
was beaten at feasts. It furnished trees serviceable for shelter when
the foe was stalked. It was their wall and roof, their habitat. It was
one of the Four Friends of the Indians--the Ground, the Waters, the Sky,
the Forest. The forest was everywhere, and the Indians dwelled in the
forest. Not unnaturally, they held that this world was theirs.

Upon the three ships, sailing, sailing, moved a few men who could speak
with authority of the forest and of Indians. Christopher Newport was
upon his first voyage to Virginia, but he knew the Indies and the South
American coast. He had sailed and had fought under Francis Drake. And
Bartholomew Gosnold had explored both for himself and for Raleigh. These
two could tell others what to look for. In their company there was also
John Smith. This gentleman, it is true, had not wandered, fought, and
companioned with romance in America, but he had done so everywhere else.
He had as yet no experience with Indians, but he could conceive that
rough experiences were rough experiences, whether in Europe, Asia,
Africa, or America. And as he knew there was a family likeness among
dangerous happenings, so also he found one among remedies, and he had a
bag full of stories of strange happenings and how they should be met.

They were going the old, long West Indies sea road. There was time
enough for talking, wondering, considering the past, fantastically
building up the future. Meeting in the ships' cabins over ale tankards,
pacing up and down the small high-raised poop-decks, leaning idle over
the side,