on farms all along the coast, sending their
fish to market the year round, and sleeping every night at home. It
seemed to him that here, in a hardy thrifty province which gold-seekers
and gentlemen adventurers might scorn, he could contentedly end his
days.

There was a pleasant inlet on the coast of a bold headland, north of
Cape Cod, which he thought would be his choice for his plantation. This
headland he had named Cape Tragabigzanda. There were three small round
islands to be seen far to seaward, which he called the Three Turks'
Heads. One Sunday, "a faire sunshining day," he climbed a green height
above Anusquam, and sitting on a huge boulder surveyed the bright and
peaceful landscape and chose the site for his house. Good stone there
would be in abundance, and mighty timbers that had been growing for him
since the days of Noah. In this Province of New England a strong and
fearless race would found new towns with the old names--Boston,
Plymouth, Ipswich, Sandwich, Gloucester. So he dreamed until the sun
went down under a canopy of crimson and gold, while the boat rocked in
the little bay where he would have his wharf.

In 1619, when English Puritans began preparations for the founding of a
new colony, he offered his services, but the older men would have none
of him. He was a "Church of England Protestant" and one of the
unregenerate with whom they had no fellowship. They took his map as a
guide, and settled, not on Cape Tragabigzanda, which Prince Charles had
re-named Cape Anne, but in the bay which he had called Plymouth. He
spent some years in London writing an account of his adventures, and
died in 1631 at the age of fifty-two--Captain John Smith, Admiral of New
England.

NOTE

The account of Captain John Smith's adventures among the Turks was at
one time considered apocryphal, but good authorities now see no reason
to regard his narrative of his own career as in any way inaccurate. The
perils and strange chances which an adventurous man encountered in such
times often seem almost incredible in a more peaceful age, but there is
really no more reason to doubt them than to discredit authentic accounts
of men like Daniel Boone, Francis Drake, or other men of similar
disposition.

THE DISCOVERIES

Through tangled mysteries of old romance
Knights, Latin, Celt or Saxon, pass a-dream,
Seeking the minarets of magic towers
Through the witched woods that gleam.

Stately in tra