Captain John Smith

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I His Boyhood and First Journey .... 3 II Smith as Hermit, Traveler, and Sailor . . 16

III Smith's Cruise with Captain La Roche —

Introduction

The beginning of the United States, the very foundation of our great Enghsh-speaking nation, was laid in Virginia at Jamestown. Here was the first community that actually made its home within our land, and proved to the world that America might grow into a nation.

The Virginian settlement was made only after many efforts — after more than one disastrous failure, and at the cost of many lives. It had to fight against famine, pestilence, and enemies, and in its fight it had many leaders. One by one these were tried and found wanting, until the rise to power of Captain John Smith, who proved victorious against every foe.

What he was and how he had succeeded we shall see in reading his life. Many have told his story, and each tells it in a different way, as is

INTRODUCTION right. Unless each writer tried to give his own view, we might all rest satisfied to read Captain Smith's own story. But that is not enough. When Smith wrote, he was writing to the men of his own day. They knew the surroundings, and did not need to be told many things that we must learn if we would understand why the subjects of Queen Elizabeth felt as they did about America, about Spain and Holland— if we would learn what they hoped and what they feared.

The lives of Captain Smith, therefore, all add much to the story as told by the brave sailor, soldier, and author himself. It would seem, however, that there is room for another telling of his career— one in which, taking Smith's own book as the basis, as all must do, nothing is added without giving the reader warning, nothing is taken away without explaining why it is omitted; an account made clear and plain in its language, but accurate in its facts and told without an attempt to paint Smith either white or black.

The reading of his own story gives a certain impression of the man to each reader, and that

INTRODUCTION XI

impression must color a writer's account of him; but, nevertheless, it is possible to refrain from purposely making him either better or worse.

John Smith certainly was not simply a selfsacrificing hero who offered his life for the future of his race and his fatherland, and neither was he a self-seeking adventurer whose only motive was his own fortune or his own fame. He was a plucky, clear-sighted, resourceful Englishman; an able soldier, a brave man, a man whose strength of will, courage, and belief in America's future saved the Virginian colony from ruin, and thus laid truly and firmly the foundationstone upon which has been erected the great Republic whose eighty millions of people may say, in the brave words of the haughty German chancellor: ''We fear God; we fear naught else."

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH'S COAT-OF-ARMS

Chapter I

IN the introduction to his own account of his adventures John Smith says that some of his critics complained that he wrote too much about his own deeds— as he put it, " Envie hath taxed me to have writ too much; and done too Httle "; but in our day we find his story too short and too sHght. He leaves out so much we should like to know, and puts into a few short words the events of years. Of his boyhood, especially, he tells little. As to the date of his birth, he gives only the year, 1579. This may mean our year 1580, since his baptism was in January, and they began each year with March. He records the name of his native town, Willoughby in Lincolnshire, and adds only that he was a scholar in two free schools at Alford and at Louth. Except for a single sentence recording his descent from the Smiths of Crudley (sometimes spelled Curdley or Cuardley) in Lancashire and the Rickands (or Rickards) of Yorkshire, that is all he tells us of the first thirteen years of his life. All that others have added relating to his own doings is pure invention.

By piecing together other bits of knowledge about him we can make guesses, that may be right, about his boyhood. We know that his native town was in the flat lands, a marshy and sometimes foggy district within walking distance of the sea-coast; that it was an ancient place — possibly mentioned by the Roman Emperor Antoninus as '' Margidunum,'' and that shepherds and farmers thereabouts often found Roman coins in its soil; that his father was a farmer fairly prosperous, and an owner of horses; that there were in the family another boy, Francis, younger than John, and also a still younger sister, Alice.

Then, by consulting books of history, we can know what was going on during his boyhood, and the general state of England and the rest of the world at that time, and thus make another guess or two about the talk little John Smith probably heard among his friends and neighbors. We may be sure that there was not a bright boy in England at the time who had not heard the story of King PhiHp of Spain and his great Armada, which, as is so stirringly told in Kingsley's '' Westward Ho!" was met and defeated in the year 1588, when John Smith was eight— just old enough to have an idea of what that fight meant to his native land.

Why could n't he have written us what rejoicings he saw? Why could n't he have told us of the fright when the ready-laid beacons of warnings were set aflame, and of the joy over the other bonfires that betokened victory? We learn from him only that he was determined to go to sea, and from this may argue that he knew of the worldwide exploits of Drake, of Hawkins, of Frobisher, of Howard, and all the commanders who were winning from Spain the empire of the sea, and thereby the empire of the world, for the English

race.

Indeed, the wonderful deeds of these sailors and of the soldiers of the '' tight little island " have made it hard to write books that shall interest their descendants. Modern boys live in a time so wonderful that they have become a little indifferent to marvels. They have learned to expect them every few days. So it is not strange that their elders complain of a lack of curiosity, that they find in them less of the faculty of wonder that made their grandfathers find in books of travel and adventure a charm they cannot quite understand.

When John Smith was a small boy in Lincolnshire, the world was a different place. His world was small, and news from outside came rarely and traveled slowly. When it came, it came in a dull and unsatisfactory form— without much detail, and with few pictures, and those roughly drawn from crude sketches or mere descriptions: such pictures as are reprinted here from Captain Smith's story of his own adventures. Wonderfully truthful in some things, in others they were absurd.

In order that one may learn to look at the world with the eyes of the Lincolnshire boy of the sixteenth century, one must imagine all railroads to vanish, all the steam-vessels to be removed from the sea, all telegraph wires, electric lights, telephones, autonjobiles, bicycles, even newspapers— all the modern inventions we know so well— to be as if they were never to exist. There must be almost no coaches in the streets— the first were made in England the year John Smith was born ; the roads are rough, full of pitfalls and unfinished; the country places often wild and neglected. Towns and cities must shrink to a fraction of their present size, and the villages become mere hamlets. One must suppress all but the scantiest remnant of the books that now bring knowledge to every home, and must imagine the greater part of the globe to be veiled in mystery. In literature, England could claim among distinguished poets only Gower, Chaucer, Sidney, Spenser, Marlowe, — for Shakspere was just at his beginning; in science. Friar Bacon, William Gilbert, and Francis Bacon; in art, no one of great importance.

It would be easy to fill pages with notes of the diiTerences between the sixteenth century and the twentieth ; but let the hint be sufficient to remind us that the England of that day bore little likeness to the England of our times, and that John Smith could not have imagined anything at all resembling the world we know.

Yet we can imagine certain likenesses with our own times. We know that the boys upon the farms of those past days enjoyed much the same pastimes as boys of to-day : they ran races, swam in the rivers, fished, rode the horses, and tended the cattle. They played ball, jackstones, odd or even, checkers, backgammon, chess. They built bonfires, played soldiers, went to school, or " played hooky,'' and were just plain boys after all; and John Smith undoubtedly was much like the rest, so far as the neighbors could see.

But he was not an ordinary boy, and he wished to be more than an ordinary man. He resolved to become a sailor, to see something of the wonders of which he heard hints in the ballads and the rude books of the time. There was a wonderful new land far in the Western seas, a land from which the Spaniards were bringing ship-loads of gold and treasure— the wealth that made them able to build and fit out the great galleons of the Armada. There were, to the eastward, the lands of the great nations of Europe, and beyond these the fierce Turks, and the roving Muscovites, marvelous Cathay and the golden Indies. Southward lay Africa, full of the wonders Mandeville had described, — wonders incredible yet fascinating, — and northward was the region where Frobisher hoped to find the northwest passage to the spicecountries, and where Davis was seeking for treasure and finding endless ice-floes.

The whole world of salt water was open to the English sailors; and John Smith meant to see something of its glories. No wonder the little fellow, full of enterprise, as we know he must have been, sold all he had, — his books and satchel, — so that he could make his way to the sea-coast and begin his career. A few school-books and a satchel in exchange for a world of new lands, new scenes, adventure, and possibly fame and wealth! — what ambitious boy of thirteen would have hesitated to make the bargain? To whom they were sold, and whether the boy made a wise or foolish exchange, Smith does not tell us, nor is it important.

But in dreaming their dreams and making their plans, small boys do not reckon upon the accidents of life. George Smith, John's father, fell sick and died. His will being dated March 30, 1596, his death took place somewhere about that time, and he was buried in the following April. To his elder son he left some property, including seven acres of pasture land ; but John did not think himself capable of managing or caring for it, wherefore he '' little regarded it." The mother was dead also, and John's guardians, according to his own remark, were more particular about the care lO CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH

of his estate than of his future, and so he had '' Hberty enough, though no means, to get beyond the sea."

The next information he gives us says that he was bound an apprentice to '' Thomas Sendall of Linney [Lynn], the greatest merchant of those parts," when he was about fifteen years old; but there is some blunder about the date, possibly, for apparently this was before his father's death in 1596, and yet the guardians of his estate are spoken of before this, as neglecting him. Still, it is of little importance when the apprenticeship began, for it ended almost at once. Some writers of Smith's life have taken it for granted that John ran away; but there is no hint of such a thing. The merchant apparently let John alone, and John let him alone. All that Smith says is in these words : . . . " but because he [Sendall] would not presently send him [Smith] to sea, he [Smith] never saw his master in eight years after." It would seem that Smith as an apprentice ashore was not worth his salt, for if he had not kept the terms of his agreement, Sendall, under the laws of the day, might easily have had him severely punished and forced to return to his work until the apprenticeship expired.

HIS BOYHOOD AND FIRST JOURNEY II

Again expressing himself so vaguely that we cannot fix the date, Smith tells us that he '' at last found means to attend Master Peregrine Barty into France."

Peregrine Barty was the second son of the nobleman from whom the Smiths held their farm — Lord Willoughby, a worthy and distinguished soldier, and one to w^hom John's father had left his best two-year colt, as a token of esteem, at the same time charging and commanding John to honor and love Lord Willoughby during /his life. We can only guess in what capacity young Smith went with Peregrine Barty, then a boy four years younger than himself; but it would seem that he was a sort of page or attendant. At all events, we may believe that the party set out from London, for Smith upon leaving that city applied to his guardians for money, and received ten shillings — worth at that time as much as ten or twelve dollars now— out of his own property. At another place in Smith's writings, in giving the prices of things needed by colonists, a suit of frieze (cloth) is reckoned at ten shillings, which gives us a measure of value. Smith considered his guardians' gift stingy, for he says, " such oft is the share of fatherless children," and considered that it was given '' to be rid of him." Certainly it does not seem generous.

He stayed at Orleans in France for a month or six weeks, being kindly treated; but, his '' service being needless," he was sent back to his friends, with money to pay his way to England. No doubt this was proper enough, for Smith considered that he had reason to be grateful.

But there was nothing to attach him to his native land, and he visited Paris, ever upon the lookout for an adventurous career. Of his life in that city he says nothing except that he made friends with a Scotchman named David Hume, and allowed him " some use of his purse." In return, the Scotchman gave Smith letters to friends in Scotland, recommending the young Englishman to King James, who was to be the successor of Queen Elizabeth. Here again some writers of Smith's life have spoken slightingly or sneeringly of Hume as an imposer upon his friend's good nature, and of Smith as a dupe. But it will be seen later that the letters proved useful to some extent, and we have no reason to think Smith was defrauded or deceived, or that Hume used much of Smith's small store of cash.

From Paris the young adventurer went to

Rouen, and there found himself short of funds. It will be remembered that, so far as we know, he had in addition to the ten shillings from his guardians only the money to pay his way to England, and that with these resources he had gone to Paris, aided Hume, and then traveled to Rouen — the larger part of the journey homeward. From Rouen he continued down the Seine to its mouth, to Havre-de-Grace, and there, as he tells us, '' began to learn the life of a soldier." He was then about sixteen years old.

It was now near the end of the year 1596, and the King of France, who had been waging civil war, — the famous Henry of Navarre, he of the " white plume " made famous by Macaulay's " Battle of Ivry,"— had succeeded in restoring peace to the kingdom. This was no doubt a blessing heartily welcomed by those of his subjects who had managed to keep out of the almost constant battles and skirmishes that had lasted for an entire generation ; but it threw out of employment the stout soldiers of fortune of all nations to whom war was a business and peace was a dull trade. These soldiers at once took their way to the nearest land where there was a good market for stout arms and tried weapons. Probably it was with a leader of men of this sort that the young EngHsh adventurer enHsted; at all events, he says " he went with Captain Joseph Duxbury into the Low Countries," and served three or four years in fighting the Spaniards on behalf of the sturdy Dutch, for we may assume from his name that Duxbury was English, and therefore engaged on the side of Holland against Spain.

We do not know why Smith abandoned this service, but it may be because the Dutch commander. Prince Maurice of Orange, about this time carried the war into Germany; and Smith and his commander may not have cared to follow the Dutch out of their own country. We are told only that Smith went next to Scotland, intending to make use of the letters given him in Paris by Hume about four years before, which strikes a modern reader as being a long interval between receiving and using letters of recommendation. If the letters had proved entirely worthless, it would not seem quite fair to hold their writer responsible after four years !

He set sail from " Ancusan,'' identified by modern writers with Enkhuizen, on the Zuyder Zee, some twenty miles north of Amsterdam, meaning to land at Leith, the port of Edinburgh, only a mile and a half from that city, and then surrounded by a strong wall. But he was shipwrecked and lay sick for a while in the Holy Isle, a few miles south of Berwick, and after his recovery went into Scotland. He was kindly entertained by the " honest Scots " at Ripweth and Broxmouth, — the latter town being on the coast near Dunbar, — but finding " neither money nor means to make him a courtier," he returned to his home in Willoughby. Although the letters from David Hume had secured for the young wanderer only a kind reception, the Humes seem to have been people of consequence in that part of Scotland, for King James, in 15 15, only eighty years before, had made George Hume Earl of Dunbar; and the earls of Hume owned Dunglass, on the sea-coast not far away, as is recorded in Camden's '' Britannia."

Chapter II Smith As Hermit, Traveler, And Sailor

WHEN Smith had come back to his native town he soon found himself " glutted with too much company." He was not yet twenty years old, and had seen enough of the world to be an object of interest to the country people of the neighborhood. Perhaps he had too many questions put to him about his adventures in France, Holland, and Scotland; certainly he preferred to be left in peace, for he *' retired himself into a little woody pasture, a good way from any town," and surrounded by deep woods. Here beside a brook he built himself a shelter of boughs, and remained there, sleeping in his clothes. For books he studied Machiavelli's " Art of War," and " The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius." The " Art of War " had been written in 1520, about eighty years before that time, and was a handbook upon the use of troops and a discussion of

HERMIT, TRAVELER, AND SAILOR 1/

the value of fortresses, and so on ; and the second book, a volume of pure philosophy, is too well known to need description. Certainly neither is the sort of book that would have been chosen by a heedless, thoughtless, adventurous young fellow who longed only to exchange a life of farming ashore for the wandering career of a soldier and sailor.

Of his life in the woods Smith tells us only that he exercised by tilting at a ring, and hints that he hunted deer, and was supplied with what he needed by a serving-man.

But his friends at home thought this hermitlife a mistake, and they requested an Italian gentleman in the service of the Earl of Lincoln to go into the woods, gain young Smith's friendship, and persuade him to abandon his solitude. This was easily done, and Smith went with him to stay awhile at Tattersall, where, since the Italian was " rider " to the earl, — that is, had charge of the training and keeping of his horses, — Smith may have picked up a knowledge of horsemanship that was to prove useful in the wars. For he did not mean to stay in England, and therefore he returned before long to Elolland in search of active employment.

It is natural that we should hear little of Smith's early soldiering in France and the Netherlands, since he was then learning the profession of arms— to ride, to care for and to handle his weapons; and as he was still less than twenty years old he could not expect to be more than an unimportant figure in camp or battle. But after his short rest in England he again set out " to see more of the world, and try his fortune against the Turks,'' who were then fighting in Hungary and Transylvania against the forces of the German emperor, Rudolph 11. The " Turks,'' of whom Smith speaks as natural enemies of Christian powers, were not the people whom to-day we know by that name, but were a number of races who, arising in various parts of Asia, had been united by the religion of Mohammed, and had extended their power by the sword until they threatened to overrun Europe. The advance of these Moslems had been checked by Charles Martel in the great battle of Tours, and then as Europe grew in strength the Turks had been gradually expelled from the greater part of European territory.

But at the end of the sixteenth century, when Smith set out for the wars, " lamenting and re-

HERMIT, TRAVELER, AND SAILOR IQ

penting to have seen so many Christians slaughter one another,'' the Turks were still in Hungary and seemed in no hurry to take leave.

Smith went to the Netherlands, meaning to cross over into the German Empire and thence go southwest to the seat of war. But a boy of nineteen traveling by himself in those days was likely to fall in with thieves ; and the young English adventurer soon attracted the attention of four unscrupulous Frenchmen. They saw he was well dressed and had money in his pockets, — for he seems to have secured a part of his inheritance while at Willoughby, — and so they told him that he had better come with them to France. They said they were going to the Duchess of Mercury, whose husband was a general in the emperor's service in Hungary.

Smith thought himself lucky to have fallen in with these friends, and went aboard a vessel with them to make the voyage to France, meanwhile building castles in the air. They arrived at night in the broad and shallow inlet of St. Valery, off the mouth of the river Somme in Picardy. Then the Frenchmen went to the captain of their ship and arranged with him to take Smith's trunk and their own baggage ashore. They were to go in the boat, while Smith was persuaded to wait for a second trip.

When the captain came back it was late the next day, and he excused the delay by saying that the sea had been too rough for him to come earlier. He told Smith that the Frenchmen had gone on to Amiens and would wait for him there. The other passengers seemed to know that these men were swindlers, for they threatened to punish the ship's captain, and. Smith says, " would have run away with the ship, had they known how."

Smith landed with only a carralne, a small coin said to be worth only an English penny, and had to sell his cloak to pay for his passage onward. On the ship Smith had made friends with an old soldier named Curzianvere, who told him that the four Frenchmen, instead of being a nobleman and his attendants as they had pretended, were only young fellows of no claims to distinction unless as arrant knaves. Curzianvere invited Smith to travel with him, promising that he would take him to Lower Brittany, where he could meet people who knew the reputation of these swindlers, and perhaps recover some of his property. As Smith was penniless, Curzianvere supplied his most

HERMIT, TRAVELER, AND SAILOR 21

pressing needs, and they went to Dieppe, Caudebec, Honfleur, Pont Audemer, and came to Caen, and finally to Mortagne, the home town of the Frenchmen who had undertaken the care of Smith's baggage.

Arrived here, Smith found his errand fruitless, for Curzianvere was a banished man and did not dare be seen in public, and Smith was a stranger without friends or witnesses to prove he had been robbed. The story of his misfortune, however, caused him to be kindly received, and he might have spent some time pleasantly in visits to these courteous Normandy people. But he says '' his restless spirit " would not let him receive favors he could not return, and so he set himself the task of finding some means of livelihood. He went from one port to another along the coast until his money and strength were exhausted, and then, '' near dead with grief and cold," he was found by a rich farmer, and taken care of until he had recovered his strength.

Not long after. Smith was passing through a wood, when he suddenly met one of the Frenchmen who had swindled him. Smith calls this man " more miserable than himself,'' but does not explain whether he means in health or in goods.

simply saying that as soon as they saw one another it was a matter of drawn swords and single combat.

The honest man overthrew the thief and left him to the care of the country folk who had viewed the duel from a ruined tower near by. There must have been some good in the fellow, for he at once related to them how Smith had been robbed, though claiming he had been innocent in the matter; and he also told of the swindlers' quarrels over the spoils when it came to dividing them, claiming that he received nothing.

Soon after this encounter Smith's luck seems to have mended, for he came upon a powerful friend who gave him what he needed. This friend was the Earl of Ployer, who had been brought up in England, and probably there knew something of Smith's family or circumstances. Whatever the reason, this earl and his family enabled Smith to go with them throughout southern France and to visit the most noted towns. It may be that Smith entered their service in some capacity, but it is impossible to tell from his few brief words what was the relation between them. Nor need we care, since Smith was merely sight-seeing, and learning those pieces of useful knowledge that

HERMIT, TRAVELER, AND SAILOR 23

change an inexperienced boy into a ready, resourceful man of the world, such as Smith was soon to become.

His next progressive step was to set sail from Marseilles for Italy, probably intending to cross the Adriatic wSea into Hungary, so that he might carry out his plan of waging war against the infidels.

But the weather was stormy, and in those days this meant that little vessels must make for harbor until a quieter season; so they put into the port of Toulon for a while. Again venturing out, they were once more forced to come to anchor " close aboard the shore under the little Isle of St. Mary, against Nice in Savoy.'' And then came a happening that reminds us that we are reading of three centuries ago. The ship was full of pilgrims on their way to Rome, and they blamed Smith for the failure of the voyage, because he was the only " heretic " aboard. Beginning with hard words against all the English as '^ pirates,'' and against Queen Elizabeth, they soon convinced themselves there would be no fair weather so long as this Jonah was on the ship, and, consequently, they promptly threw him overboard.

Instead of a friendly whale, there was the neighboring little island of St. Mary, and Smith swam ashore to find it inhabited only by cattle and goats. Here he spent the night, and in the morning was rescued by Captain La Roche of St. Malo, master of two little vessels that also had come in for shelter from the storm.

Chapter III

smith's cruise with captain la ROCHE- HE ENLISTS AGAINST THE TURKS

ALL this took place about the year 1600, when L Shakspere was a young man of thirty-six, Raleigh forty-eight, and Bacon thirty-nine ; when the East India Company was formed to trade with the East for spices and silks and ivory ; when America was yet a wilderness along the eastern coast, though explorers and settlers were working to gain a foothold for their own race, and though the Spanish had founded a settlement in the south and southwest. As yet the English race had not even a colony in the New World, and Smith, the man who was to make England the mistress of a new continent, was on his way to risk his life among the Turks in Hungary.