.

It was a wonderful picture that the dark surrounding forest looked
upon--the group of gaily colored Indians facing the more soberly dressed
Europeans. Round them circled children, pushing, peering between their
elders that they might miss nothing. And through it all, running from
one group to the other, welcoming, explaining, smiling and laughing,
flitted the white-clad Pocahontas.

After their greeting, when Powhatan and Captain Newport eyed each other
appraisingly, the gifts were brought into the field where Pocahontas had
danced her masque and spread out before the curious gaze of the savages.
Pocahontas, in her white doeskin skirt and wearing many strings of white
and blue beads, went about among her new friends, and laid her hand into
that of Captain Newport, as Smith had told her was the manner in which
the English greeted one another. Some of the chieftains scowled at the
sight and did not relish the friendliness shown by her to the strangers.
Several even remonstrated with Powhatan who, however, would not restrain
her. After a few words with Smith, she rejoined Cleopatra and others of
her sisters at one side of the field.

"What is yon curious thing, Pocahontas?" they questioned of her superior
knowledge, as the wrappings were taken off a bedstead that Captain
Newport by means of signs presented solemnly to Powhatan.

"That," she answered, having had a glimpse of such furniture at
Jamestown, "that is a couch on which they sleep."

"Is it more comfortable than our mats?" asked Cleopatra. "I should fear
to fall out of it into the fire."

Plainly Powhatan, too, was at a loss to know what to do with it. The
next gifts, a basin and ewer, met with more enthusiasm. The squaws were
particularly interested in them when Pocahontas told them that they were
made of a substance which would not break as did their own vessels of
sun-baked pottery. But it was the red mantle of soft English cloth, in
shape like to the one, he was told. King James had worn at his
coronation at Westminster, that made Powhatan's grim features relax a
little with pleasure. Captain Newport placed it on the werowance's
shoulders and held a mirror that he might behold himself thus handsomely
apparelled.

Then they proceeded to the crowning. Newport would have liked to have
some words of ritual read, even though the principal of the ceremony had
not been able to understand them; but the chaplain pointed out that
neither the law nor the Prayer