Chap. IV.} 1608 |
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which Smith had inspired, now resolved to receive him
as a friend, and to make him a partner of their councils.
They tempted him to join their bands, and lend assistance in an attack upon the white men at Jamestown; and when his decision of character succeeded in changing the current of their thoughts, they dismissed him with mutual promises of friendship and benevolence.
Thus the captivity of Smith did itself become a benefit to the colony; for he had not only observed with care the country between the James and the Potomac, and had gained some knowledge of the language and manners of the natives, but he now established a peaceful intercourse between the English and the tribes of Powhatan; and, with her companions, the child who had rescued him from death, afterwards came every few days to the fort with baskets of corn for the garrison.1
Returning to Jamestown, Smith found the colony reduced to forty men; and of these, the strongest were again preparing to escape with the pinnace.
This third attempt at desertion he repressed at the hazard of his life.2 Thus passed the first few months of colonial existence in discord and misery; despair relieved and ruin prevented, by the fortitude of one man, and the benevolence of an Indian girl.
Meantime, the council in England, having received an increase of its numbers and its powers, determined to send out new recruits and supplies; and Newport had hardly returned from his first voyage, before he was again despatched with one hundred and twenty
1 Smith, i. 158—162, and II. 29—33. The account is fully contained in the oldest book printed on Virginia, in our Cambridge library. It is a thin quarto, in black letter, by John Smith printed in 1608—‘A True Relation of such occurrences and accidents of note, as hath hapned in Virginia since the first planting of that Collony, which is now resident in the South part thereof, till the last returne.’
2 Smith i. 163, 164.
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1859.
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