quite incompetent; so that, in fact, the whole care and management of affairs fell into the hands of Smith. And well was it for the colony that so it was.
The fortifications were repaired; conspiracies set on foot by Wingfield and others were crushed; and winter, as it approached, furnished plenty of game and wild fowl. Smith now set out to explore the Chickahominy, a tributary which entered James River a little above Jamestown. This was in obedience to a command which required, with singular ignorance as to the breadth of the continent, that a communication should be sought with the South Sea, by ascending some stream that flowed from the north-west. Surprised by the Indians while on this expedition, Smith was made prisoner: his presence of mind did not forsake him: he so astonished the Indians with a pocket compass, and with accounts of its marvellous powers, that he was conducted by them with mingled triumph and fear from tribe to tribe, as a remarkable being, whose character and designs they were unable to penetrate, in spite of all the incantations of their seers. At length he was brought into the presence of the aged Powhatan. The politic chief, seated in the midst of his women, received him with a display of barbaric ceremony; and whilst he was feasted they proceeded to deliberate upon his fate. Their fears dictated the policy of his destruction; he was suddenly dragged forward, his head placed upon a large stone, and the club already uplifted to dash out his brains, when Pocahontas, "the king's most deare and well-beloved daughter a child of tenne or twelve years of age," after unavailing and passionate entreaties for the life of the white man, so noble a being to her youthful imagination, ran forward and clung to him with her arms, and laying her head upon his own, disarmed the savage fury of his executioners. The life of the wondrous stranger was preserved, and his open and generous character won the heart of the youthful Pocahontas. By the promise of "life, liberty, land, and women," they now sought to engage Smith in an attack upon the colonists, but his address and influence turned them from the project, and he was, after seven weeks' captivity, dismissed with promises of support and amity. Like a tutelary genius, the loving Indian girl, after saving the life of their chief, "revived the dead spirits" of the colonists by her attention to their wants, bringing every day with her attendants, baskets of provisions, so that, the enmity of the savages disarmed, and a supply of food obtained, "all men's fear was now abandoned."
On his return to Jamestown, Smith found the colony on the brink of ruin, and only at the risk of his life succeeded in preventing the desertion of the forty persons yet remaining. Newport soon after arrived with supplies and a hundred and twenty emigrants. These, however, proved not only of no service to the colony, but positively injurious, for, being chiefly vagabond gentlemen and goldsmiths, they stirred up the old thirst for gold; and Newport, was
