rnor. The "Lady Rebecca" received great attentions at court and from
all below it. She was entertained by the Lord Bishop of London, and at
court she was treated with the respect due to the daughter of a monarch.
The silly King James was angry because one of his subjects dared marry a
lady of royal blood! And Captain Smith, for fear of displeasing the royal
bigot, would not allow her to call him "father," as she desired to do,
and her loving heart was grieved. The king, in his absurd dreams of the
divinity of the royal prerogative, imagined Rolfe or his descendants
might claim the crown of Virginia on behalf of his royal wife, and he
asked the Privy Council if the husband had not committed treason![1]
Pocahontas remained in England about a year; and when, with her husband
and son she was about to return to Virginia, with her father's chief
councillor, she was seized with small-pox at Gravesend, and died in June,
1617. Her remains lie within the parish church-yard at Gravesend. Her
son, Thomas Rolfe, afterward became a distinguished man in Virginia, and
his descendants are found among the most honorable citizens of that
commonwealth.

[1] Lossing.

Between the lines of the story of Pocahontas can be found the key to much
of the early history of Virginia and other colonies. Even before regular
settlements were attempted on these shores the Indians had learned by
bitter experience to dread and hate the strangers in the big canoes.
Slave-traders and adventurers made prey of the natives, and many a
depredating visit was doubtless paid to America that is not recorded in
the annals of those times. Argall's abduction of Pocahontas ended
fortunately, but it might have brought on a terrible Indian war and the
destruction of the Virginia colony. Had such been the result the
civilized world would never have known the red man's side of the story,
and Powhatan's just vengeance would have been set down to the barbarous
and savage nature of the Indian.

The scarcity of women in the Virginia colony has already been alluded to
in connection with the marriage of Rolfe and Pocahontas. Of the early
immigrants very few were women, and there could be no permanent colony
without the home and family. The London Company, at the instance of their
treasurer, Edwin Sandys, proposed, about twelve years after the first
settlement, to send one hundred "pure and uncorrupt" young women to
Virginia at the expense of the corporation, to be wives t