not take back his own; he made use of Smith's MS., not yet published, if
Mr. Arber and I rightly date Strachey's MS. at 1610-15, or 1611-12.
Why Strachey acted thus it is possible to conjecture. As a scholar well
acquainted with Virginia, and as Secretary for the Colony, he would have
access to Smith's MS. of 1608 among the papers of the Council, before
its publication. Smith professes himself "no scholer".(2) On the other
hand, Strachey likes to show off his Latin and Greek. He has a
curious, if inaccurate, knowledge of esoteric Greek and Roman religious
antiquities, and in writing of religion aims at a comparative method.
Strachey, however, took the trouble to copy bits of Smith into his own
larger work, which he never gave to the printers.

(1) Arber, p. 444.

(2) Arber, p. 442.

Now as to Ahone. It suits my argument to suppose that Strachey's account
is no less genuine than his description of the temples (illustrated by
a picture by John White, who had been in Virginia in 1589), and the
account of the Great Hare of American mythology.(1) This view of a
Virginian Creator, "our chief god" "who takes upon him this shape of a
hare," was got, says Strachey, "last year, 1610," from a brother of the
Potomac King, by a boy named Spilman, who says that Smith "sold" him
to Powhattan.(2) In his own brief narrative Spelman (or Spilman) says
nothing about the Cosmogonic Legend of the Great Hare. The story came
up when Captain Argoll was telling Powhattan's brother the account of
creation in Genesis (1610).

(1) Strachey, p. 98-100.

(2) "Spilman's Narrative," Arber, cx.-cxiv.

Now Strachey's Great Hare is accepted by mythologists, while Ahone is
regarded with suspicion. Ahone does not happen to suit anthropological
ideas, the Hare suits them rather better. Moreover, and more important,
there is abundant corroborative evidence for Oke and for the Hare,
Michabo, who, says Dr. Brinton, "was originally the highest divinity
recognised by them, powerful and beneficent beyond all others, maker of
the heavens and the world," just like Ahone, in fact. And Dr. Brinton
instructs us that Michabo originally meant not Great Hare, but "the
spirit of light".(1) Thus, originally, the Red Men adored "The Spirit of
Light, maker of the heavens and the world". Strachey claims no more than
this for Ahone. Now, of course, Dr. Brinton may be right. But I have
already expressed my extreme distrust of the philological processes
by which he