e: all horned alike; the
rest every one with their several devises. These fiends with most
hellish shouts and cries, rushing from among the trees, cast
themselves in a ring about the fire, singing and dancing with most
excellent ill-varietie, oft falling into their infernal passions, and
solemnly again to sing and dance; having spent nearly an hour in this
Mascarado, as they entered, in like manner they departed.
"Having reaccommodated themselves, they solemnly invited him to their
lodgings, where he was no sooner within the house, but all these
Nymphs more tormented him than ever, with crowding, pressing, and
hanging about him, most tediously crying, 'Love you not me? Love you
not me?' This salutation ended, the feast was set, consisting of all
the Salvage dainties they could devise: some attending, others
singing and dancing about them: which mirth being ended, with fire
brands instead of torches they conducted him to his lodging."
The next day Powhatan arrived. Smith delivered up the Indian
Namontuck, who had just returned from a voyage to England--whither it
was suspected the Emperor wished him to go to spy out the weakness of
the English tribe--and repeated Father Newport's request that
Powhatan would come to Jamestown to receive the presents and join in
an expedition against his enemies, the Monacans.
Powhatan's reply was worthy of his imperial highness, and has been
copied ever since in the speeches of the lords of the soil to the
pale faces: "If your king has sent me present, I also am a king, and
this is my land: eight days I will stay to receive them. Your father
is to come to me, not I to him, nor yet to your fort, neither will I
bite at such a bait; as for the Monacans, I can revenge my own
injuries."
This was the lofty potentate whom Smith, by his way of management,
could have tickled out of his senses with a glass bead, and who would
infinitely have preferred a big shining copper kettle to the
misplaced honor intended to be thrust upon him, but the offer of
which puffed him up beyond the reach of negotiation. Smith returned
with his message. Newport despatched the presents round by water a
hundred miles, and the Captains, with fifty soldiers, went over land
to Werowocomoco, where occurred the ridiculous ceremony of the
coronation, which Smith describes with much humor. "The next day,"
he says, "was appointed for the coronation. Then the presents were
brought him, his bason and ewer, bed and furnit
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