l wood; others they drained all the springs and
ponds dry, yet like to famish for want of fresh water; some of the
danger of the ratell-snake." To compel all the Indians to furnish
them corn without using them cruelly they say is impossible. Yet
this "impossible," Smith says, he accomplished in Virginia, and
offers to undertake in New England, with one hundred and fifty men,
to get corn, fortify the country, and "discover them more land than
they all yet know."

This homily ends--and it is the last published sentence of the "great
Smith"--with this good advice to the New England colonists:

"Lastly, remember as faction, pride, and security produces nothing
but confusion, misery and dissolution; so the contraries well
practised will in short time make you happy, and the most admired
people of all our plantations for your time in the world.

"John Smith writ this with his owne hand."

The extent to which Smith retouched his narrations, as they grew in
his imagination, in his many reproductions of them, has been referred
to, and illustrated by previous quotations. An amusing instance of
his care and ingenuity is furnished by the interpolation of
Pocahontas into his stories after 1623. In his "General Historie" of
1624 he adopts, for the account of his career in Virginia, the
narratives in the Oxford tract of 1612, which he had supervised. We
have seen how he interpolated the wonderful story of his rescue by
the Indian child. Some of his other insertions of her name, to bring
all the narrative up to that level, are curious. The following
passages from the "Oxford Tract" contain in italics the words
inserted when they were transferred to the "General Historie":

"So revived their dead spirits (especially the love of Pocahuntas) as
all anxious fears were abandoned."

"Part always they brought him as presents from their king, or
Pocahuntas."

In the account of the "masques" of girls to entertain Smith at
Werowocomoco we read:

"But presently Pocahuntas came, wishing him to kill her if any hurt
were intended, and the beholders, which were women and children,
satisfied the Captain there was no such matter."

In the account of Wyffin's bringing the news of Scrivener's drowning,
when Wyffin was lodged a night with Powhatan, we read:

"He did assure himself some mischief was intended. Pocahontas hid
him for a time, and sent them who pursued him the clean contrary way
to seek him; but by her means and extraordinary brib