hough that honeymoon was almost three centuries gone, and there was
nothing left at Varina to tell of it, yet somehow our thoughts
quickened and Gadabout's engines slowed as we sailed along the romantic
site.

To be sure, to keep up the spirit of romance one has to overlook a good
deal. The fact that John Rolfe had been married before and the report
that Pocahontas had been too, somewhat discouraged sentiment. And then,
was it love, after all, that built the rude little home of that strange
pair somewhere up there on the shore? Or, had Cupid no more to do with
that first international marriage in our history than he has had to do
with many a later one? Can it be that politics and religion drew John
Rolfe to the altar? and that a broken heart led Pocahontas there?

Poor little bride in any event! A forest child--wrapped in her doe-skin
robe, the down of the wild pigeon at her throat, her feet in moccasins,
and her hair crested with an eagle's feather; bravely struggling with
civilization, with a new home, a new language, new customs, and a new
religion.

How many times, when it all bore heavy on her wildwood soul, did she
steal down to this ragged shore, push out in her slender canoe, and
find comfort in the fellowship of this turbulent, untamable river! And
how often did she turn from her home to the wilderness, slipping in
noiseless moccasins back into the narrow, mysterious trails of the red
man, where bended twig and braided rush and scar of bark held messages
for her!

Then came the time when the river and the forest were lost to her. The
princess of the wilderness had become the wonder of a day at the Court
of King James. Almost mockingly comes up the old portrait of her,
painted in London when she had "become very formall and civill after
our English manner." The rigid figure caparisoned in the white woman's
furbelows; the stiff, heavy hat upon the black hair; the set face, and
the sad dark eyes--a dusky woodland creature choked in the ruff of
Queen Bess.

When Varina was left behind, we fell to berating the tortuous river
again. Of course we did not think for a moment that the troublesome
curlicues we were finding had always been there. When the river was the
old, savage Powhatan, we may be sure it never stooped in its dignity of
flow to such frivolity. These kinks were silly artificialities that
came when the noble old barbarian was civilized and named in honour of
a vain and frivolous foreign king.

Now