Captain John Smith eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 268 pages of information about Captain John Smith.

Captain John Smith eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 268 pages of information about Captain John Smith.

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 furniture set up, his scarlet cloke and apparel, with much adoe put on him, being persuaded by Namontuck they would not hurt him.  But a foule trouble there was to make him kneel to receive his Crown; he not knowing the majesty nor wearing of a Crown, nor bending of the knee, endured so many persuasions, examples and instructions as tyred them all.  At last by bearing hard on his shoulders, he a little stooped, and three having the crown in their hands put it on his head, when by the warning of a pistoll the boats were prepared with such a volley of shot that the king start up in a horrible feare, till he saw all was well.  Then remembering himself to congratulate their kindness he gave his old shoes and his mantell to Captain Newport!”

The Monacan expedition the King discouraged, and refused to furnish for it either guides or men.  Besides his old shoes, the crowned monarch charitably gave Newport a little heap of corn, only seven or eight bushels, and with this little result the absurd expedition returned to Jamestown.

Shortly after Captain Newport with a chosen company of one hundred and twenty men (leaving eighty with President Smith in the fort) and accompanied by Captain Waldo, Lieutenant Percy, Captain Winne, Mr. West, and Mr. Scrivener, who was eager for adventure, set off for the discovery of Monacan.  The expedition, as Smith predicted, was fruitless:  the Indians deceived them and refused to trade, and the company got back to Jamestown, half of them sick, all grumbling, and worn out with toil, famine, and discontent.

Smith at once set the whole colony to work, some to make glass, tar, pitch, and soap-ashes, and others he conducted five miles down the river to learn to fell trees and make clapboards.  In this company were a couple of gallants, lately come over, Gabriel Beadle and John Russell, proper gentlemen, but unused to hardships, whom Smith has immortalized by his novel cure of their profanity.  They took gayly to the rough life, and entered into the attack on the forest so pleasantly that in a week they were masters of chopping:  “making it their delight to hear the trees thunder as they fell, but the axes so often blistered their tender fingers that many times every third blow had a loud othe to drown the echo; for

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Captain John Smith from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.