no comment, except
that Smith had a facility for unlucky adventures unequaled among the
uneasy spirits of his age. Yet he was as buoyant as a cork, and emerged
from every disaster with more enthusiasm for himself and for new
ventures. Among the many glowing tributes to himself in verse that Smith
prints with this description is one signed by a soldier, Edw. Robinson,
which begins:

"Oft thou hast led, when I brought up the Rere,
In bloody wars where thousands have been slaine."

This common soldier, who cannot help breaking out in poetry when he
thinks of Smith, is made to say that Smith was his captain "in the
fierce wars of Transylvania," and he apostrophizes him:

"Thou that to passe the worlds foure parts dost deeme
No more, than ewere to goe to bed or drinke,
And all thou yet hast done thou dost esteeme
As nothing.

"For mee: I not commend but much admire
Thy England yet unknown to passers by-her,
For it will praise itselfe in spight of me:
Thou, it, it, thou, to all posteritie."

XVI. NEW ENGLAND'S TRIALS

Smith was not cast down by his reverses. No sooner had he laid his
latest betrayers by the heels than he set himself resolutely to obtain
money and means for establishing a colony in New England, and to this
project and the cultivation in England of interest in New England he
devoted the rest of his life.

His Map and Description of New England was published in 1616, and he
became a colporteur of this, beseeching everywhere a hearing for his
noble scheme. It might have been in 1617, while Pocahontas was about
to sail for Virginia, or perhaps after her death, that he was again
in Plymouth, provided with three good ships, but windbound for three
months, so that the season being past, his design was frustrated, and
his vessels, without him, made a fishing expedition to Newfoundland.

It must have been in the summer of this year that he was at Plymouth
with divers of his personal friends, and only a hundred pounds among
them all. He had acquainted the nobility with his projects, and was
afraid to see the Prince Royal before he had accomplished anything, "but
their great promises were nothing but air to prepare the voyage against
the next year." He spent that summer in the west of England, visiting
"Bristol, Exeter, Bastable? Bodman, Perin, Foy, Milborow, Saltash,
Dartmouth, Absom, Pattnesse, and the most of the gentry in Cornwall and
Devonshire, giving them book