ardent
nature.

Riding up the forest tracks, a company of planters from the threatened
neighborhood gathered together. "Let us make a troop and take fire and
sword among them!" There lacked a commander. "Mr. Bacon, you command!"
Very good; and Mr. Bacon, who is a born orator, made a speech dealing
with the "grievances of the times." Very good indeed; but still there
lacked the Governor's commission. "Send a swift messenger to Jamestown
for it!"

The messenger went and returned. No commission. Mr. Bacon had made an
unpleasant impression upon Sir William Berkeley. This young man,
the Governor said, was "popularly inclined"--had "a constitution not
consistent with" all that Berkeley stood for. Bacon and his neighbors
listened with bent brows to their envoy's report. Murmurs began and
deepened. "Shall we stand idly here considering formalities, while the
redskins murder?" Commission or no commission, they would march; and in
the end, march they did--a considerable troop--to the up-river country,
with the tall, young, eloquent man at their head.

News reached the Governor at Jamestown that they were marching. In a
tight-lipped rage he issued a proclamation and sent it after them. They
and their leader were acting illegally, usurping military powers that
belonged elsewhere! Let them disband, disperse to their dwellings, or
beware action of the rightful powers! Troubled in mind, some disbanded
and dispersed, but threescore at least would by no means do so. Nor
would the young man "of precipitate disposition" who headed the troop.
He rode on into the forest after the Indians, and the others followed
him. Here were the Falls of the Far West, and here on a hill the Indians
had a "fort." This the Virginia planters attacked. The hills above the
James echoed to the sound of the small, desperate fray. In the end the
red men were routed. Some were slain; some were taken prisoner; others
escaped into the deep woods stretching westward.

In the meantime another force of horsemen had been gathered. It was
headed by Berkeley and was addressed to the pursuit and apprehension
of Nathaniel Bacon, who had thus defied authority. But before Berkeley
could move far, fire broke out around him. The grievances of the people
were many and just, and not without a family resemblance to those that
precipitated the Revolution a hundred years later. Not Bacon alone, but
many others who were in despair of any good under their present masters
were rea