THE FATE OF THE COLONY.

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be that they had already perished of want or by massacre; perhaps they had made their way inland and were lost in the vast continent. Several attempts were made to find them; and Raleigh, after he had given up his design of colonising Virginia, spent much of his own money on this object, but in vain. It has been conjectured that, believing themselves abandoned, they were received into a tribe of the natives, whose descendants have been thought to show marks of European blood. But the fate of little Virginia Dare and her companions is buried in mystery. No certain trace of them was ever found beyond the ruins of the fort where English civilization had again failed to gain a footing on the shores of America.

JOHN SMITH.

I.

THUS far, the attempts to colonise Virginia have been like a fire lighted among a heap of green sticks, where it flashes up, splutters, smoulders and dies out with a little thin smoke, leaving only a few charred marks, soon to be hidden by moss and mould. We now come to the story of a man through whose diligence and ability it seems to have mainly happened that the flame, again kindled, was able to take firmer hold, and after many doubtful struggles with adverse conditions at last made head against them, and gathering fresh strength as it grew, began from this nucleus to spread its wholesome power through rank forests and rotting swamps.

It is surprising that the life of John Smith should be so little known in proportion to his merits and achievements. A former generation was familiar with the old chap-book tale which dwelt with such gusto upon his fight with the terrible Turk, Bonny Mulgro, and his unexpected good fortune when already in the hands of Powhatan's executioners. But probably half of his young countrymen, who nowadays so greedily devour fictitious narratives of absurd and impossible adventures, have never even heard the name of this hero; and nine out of

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ten of them are unacquainted with the story of his wonderful career, abounding as it does in incidents more strange than fiction. So strange indeed are some parts of this record, that it is hard to believe they can be true; certainly no inventions could be more dramatic and exciting. In America, where he is a more familiar name, there appears a disposition to exalt his claims as a romancer at the expense of his credit as an historian. This sceptical age, which laughs at the tableau of Alfred and the cakes, which makes a popular myth of William Tell's great shot, and which even disbelieves that Wellington at Waterloo cried "Up guards and at them!" is now asked to give up its faith in the most celebrated and striking feature of Smith's career. Matter of fact writers are found to give us reasons for treating with suspicion his own account of his rescue by Pocahontas, hitherto received as one of the effective scenes of history. But there is so little twilight in American annals that we cannot desire to abate our respect for this touching episode, and are not willing to inquire too closely how much it owes to the kindled imagination of the gallant adventurer. The man having undoubtedly gone through so many moving incidents and done so much real work, it seems hard to grudge him a little play of fancy in purely personal affairs. And in matters relating to the colony with the foundation of which his fame is identified, we may in the main accept his own narrative, written and published during the lifetime of many who were best able and by no means unwilling to correct him.

Our hero was evidently of a romantic disposition. We can guess that at the free schools of Alford and Louth he had often to smart for neglecting grammar and grave history to pore over the black-letter volume containing the "ancient, honourable, famous and delightful history of Huon of Bourdeaux," or the good old rhyme of Sir Bevis of Southampton, as well as the new narratives of travel which were beginning to supplant these chivalrous stories in their power of inflaming the imagination of daring youth. He surely had his head a little turned by the former class of literature when he built himself a pavilion of boughs in the Lincolnshire woods, and lived. there in solitude, amusing himself by hunting and tilting at a ring. And it must be confessed that some of the early adventures which he narrates are fashioned quite upon the conventional patterns of chivalrous romance. He goes to the East and fights the Turks; overthrows three redoubtable champions successively in single tourney; is taken prisoner and favoured by the Turkish princess, Tragabigzanda, according to the received precedents of Esclarmonde and Josyan; is equally ill treated by her brother the bashaw, whom of course he kills and in due time escapes back to Christendom. All this is just what we should expect in a fictitious tale by such a writer, so that we are sometimes inclined to ask if the worthy captain may not have confused his actual experiences with the dreams of his youth. Certainly his account of his early life savours much of that kind of romance which the author of Don Quixote was about to explode, and to the general neglect of

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which Smith himself contributed so much by opening out a new field of real adventures as exciting as the absurd ones of chivalric fiction.

The age of chivalry had long been passing into the realms of imagination, and though this youth's character had a vein of romantic sentiment, it was mainly in harmony with the spirit of practical enterprise which now began to influence active minds. In his tourney under the walls of Regall, when, "the ramparts all beset with fair dames and men in arms,' the champions galloped into the lists to the sound of hautboys, the fighting is done with lances, battleaxes, and pistols. Gunpowder had put an end to the resistless prowess of Lancelot and Amadis. John Smith, in his hermitage, no longer reads the "Arbre des Batailles" with its long winded precepts and institutions of chivalry, but Machiavelli's "Art of War." Beset by the Indians he challenges their chief, perhaps with a reminiscence of the famous story of Roland and Oliver, to decide their quarrel upon an island by single combat with equal arms; but with an eye to business in the needy state of his colony he proposes that the adversary shall bring baskets of corn, against which he shall stake the value in copper, and " our game shall be, the conqueror take all."

Even in youth his head was as full of resources and stratagems as of adventurous fancies. At the siege of Olympagh he contrived a system of telegraphing by torches, such as he may have read of in the classics during his school days, and such as is now proposed to be adapted to the Morse