ed to your Majestic, what at
your best leasure our approved Histories will account you at large,
and done in the time of your Majesties life, and however this might
bee presented you from a more worthy pen, it cannot from a more
honest heart, as yet I never begged anything of the State, or any,
and it is my want of abilitie and her exceeding desert, your birth,
meanes, and authoritie, her birth, vertue, want and simplicitie, doth
make mee thus bold, humbly to beseech your Majestic: to take this
knowledge of her though it be from one so unworthy to be the
reporter, as myselfe, her husband's estate not being able to make her
fit to attend your Majestic: the most and least I can doe, is to tell
you this, because none so oft hath tried it as myselfe: and the
rather being of so great a spirit, however her station: if she should
not be well received, seeing this Kingdome may rightly have a
Kingdome by her meanes: her present love to us and Christianitie,
might turne to such scorne and furie, as to divert all this good to
the worst of evill, when finding so great a Queene should doe her
some honour more than she can imagine, for being so kinde to your
servants and subjects, would so ravish her with content, as endeare
her dearest bloud to effect that, your Majestic and all the Kings
honest subjects most earnestly desire: and so I humbly kisse your
gracious hands."

The passage in this letter, "She hazarded the beating out of her owne
braines to save mine," is inconsistent with the preceding portion of
the paragraph which speaks of "the exceeding great courtesie" of
Powhatan; and Smith was quite capable of inserting it afterwards when
he made up his

"General Historie."

Smith represents himself at this time--the last half of 1616 and the
first three months of 1617--as preparing to attempt a third voyage to
New England (which he did not make), and too busy to do Pocahontas
the service she desired. She was staying at Branford, either from
neglect of the company or because the London smoke disagreed with
her, and there Smith went to see her. His account of his intercourse
with her, the only one we have, must be given for what it is worth.
According to this she had supposed Smith dead, and took umbrage at
his neglect of her. He writes:

"After a modest salutation, without any word, she turned about,
obscured her face, as not seeming well contented; and in that humour,
her husband with divers others, we all left her two or th