* Those who would strike John Smith from the list of
historians will commend the author's caution to the reader
before she lets the Captain tell his own tale. Whatever
Smith may not have been, he was certainly a consummate
raconteur. He belongs with the renowned story-tellers of the
world, if not with the veracious chroniclers.--Editor.

In December, rather autumn than winter in this region, he starts with
the shallop and a handful of men up a tributary river that they have
learned to call the Chickahominy. He is going for corn, but there is
also an idea that he may hear news of that wished-for South Sea.

The Chickahominy proved itself a wonderland of swamp and tree-choked
streams. Somewhere up its chequered reaches Smith left the shallop with
men to guard it, and, taking two of the party with two Indian guides,
went on in a canoe up a narrower way. Presently those left with the
boat incautiously go ashore and are attacked by Indians. One is taken,
tortured, and slain. The others get back to their boat and so away, down
the Chickahominy and into the now somewhat familiar James. But Smith
with his two men, Robinson and Emry, are now alone in the wilderness, up
among narrow waters, brown marshes, fallen and obstructing tree trunks.
Now come the men-hunting Indians--the King of Pamaunck, says Smith, with
two hundred bowmen. Robinson and Emry are shot full of arrows. Smith
is wounded, but with his musket deters the foe, killing several of the
savages. His eyes upon them, he steps backward, hoping he may beat them
off till he shall recover the shallop, but meets with the ill chance of
a boggy and icy stream into which he stumbles, and here is taken.

See him now before "Opechancanough, King of Pamaunck!" Savages and
procedures of the more civilized with savages have, the world over, a
family resemblance. Like many a man before him and after, Smith casts
about for a propitiatory wonder. He has with him, so fortunately, "a
round ivory double-compass dial." This, with a genial manner, he would
present to Opechancanough. The savages gaze, cannot touch through the
glass the moving needle, grunt their admiration. Smith proceeds,
with gestures and what Indian words he knows, to deliver a scientific
lecture. Talking is best anyhow, will give them less time in which to
think of those men he shot. He tells them that the world is round, and
discourses about the sun and moon and stars and the alternation of d