r of the earth has
disappeared from it except in his own writings. The only monument to
his memory existing is a shabby little marble shaft erected on the
southerly summit of Star Island, one of the Isles of Shoals. By a
kind of irony of fortune, which Smith would have grimly appreciated,
the only stone to perpetuate his fame stands upon a little heap of
rocks in the sea; upon which it is only an inference that he ever set
foot, and we can almost hear him say again, looking round upon this
roomy earth, so much of which he possessed in his mind, "No lot for
me but Smith's Isles, which are an array of barren rocks, the most
overgrowne with shrubs and sharpe whins you can hardly passe them:
without either grasse or wood but three or foure short shrubby old
cedars."

Nearly all of Smith's biographers and the historians of Virginia
have, with great respect, woven his romances about his career into
their narratives, imparting to their paraphrases of his story such an
elevation as his own opinion of himself seemed to demand. Of
contemporary estimate of him there is little to quote except the
panegyrics in verse he has preserved for us, and the inference from
his own writings that he was the object of calumny and detraction.
Enemies he had in plenty, but there are no records left of their
opinion of his character. The nearest biographical notice of him in
point of time is found in the "History of the Worthies of England,"
by Thomas Fuller, D.D., London, 1662.

Old Fuller's schoolmaster was Master Arthur Smith, a kinsman of John,
who told him that John was born in Lincolnshire, and it is probable
that Fuller received from his teacher some impression about the
adventurer.

Of his "strange performances" in Hungary, Fuller says: "The scene
whereof is laid at such a distance that they are cheaper credited
than confuted."

"From the Turks in Europe he passed to the pagans in America, where
towards the latter end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth [it was in the
reign of James] such his perils, preservations, dangers,
deliverances, they seem to most men above belief, to some beyond
truth. Yet have we two witnesses to attest them, the prose and the
pictures, both in his own book; and it soundeth much to the
diminution of his deeds that he alone is the herald to publish and
proclaim them."

"Surely such reports from strangers carry the greater reputation.
However, moderate men must allow Captain Smith to have been very
instrumenta