“A Description of New England,” etc., London, 1616.

“New England’s Trials,” etc., London, 1620.  Second edition, enlarged, 1622.

“The Generall Historie,” etc., London, 1624.  Reissued, with date of title-page altered, in 1626, 1627, and twice in 1632.

“An Accidence:  or, The Pathway to Experience,” etc., London, 1626.

“A Sea Grammar,” etc., London, 1627.  Also editions in 1653 and 1699.

“The True Travels,” etc., London, 1630.

“Advertisements for the Unexperienced Planters of New England,” etc., London, 1631.

Other authorities are: 

“The Historie of Travaile into Virginia,” etc., by William Strachey,
Secretary of the colony 1609 to 1612.  First printed for the Hakluyt
Society, London, 1849.

“Newport’s Relatyon,” 1607.  Am.  Ant.  Soc., Vol. 4.

“Wingfield’s Discourse,” etc., 1607.  Am.  Ant.  Soc., Vol. 4.

“Purchas his Pilgrimage,” London, 1613.

“Purchas his Pilgrimes,” London, 1625-6.

“Ralph Hamor’s True Discourse,” etc., London, 1615.

“Relation of Virginia,” by Henry Spelman, 1609.  First printed by J. F. Hunnewell, London, 1872.

“History of the Virginia Company in London,” by Edward D. Neill, Albany, 1869.

“William Stith’s History of Virginia,” 1753, has been consulted for the charters and letters-patent.  The Pocahontas discussion has been followed in many magazine papers.  I am greatly indebted to the scholarly labors of Charles Deane, ll.D., the accomplished editor of the “True Relation,” and other Virginia monographs.  I wish also to acknowledge the courtesy of the librarians of the Astor, the Lenox, the New York Historical, Yale, and Cornell libraries, and of Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull, the custodian of the Brinley collection, and the kindness of Mr. S. L. M. Barlow of New York, who is ever ready to give students access to his rich “Americana.”

C. D. W.
Hartford, June, 1881

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH

BIRTH AND TRAINING

Fortunate is the hero who links his name romantically with that of a woman.  A tender interest in his fame is assured.  Still more fortunate is he if he is able to record his own achievements and give to them that form and color and importance which they assume in his own gallant consciousness.  Captain John Smith, the first of an honored name, had this double good fortune.

We are indebted to him for the glowing picture of a knight-errant of the sixteenth century, moving with the port of a swash-buckler across the field of vision, wherever cities were to be taken and heads cracked in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and, in the language of one of his laureates—­

     “To see bright honor sparkled all in gore.”

But we are specially his debtor for adventures on our own continent, narrated with naivete and vigor by a pen as direct and clear-cutting as the sword with which he shaved off the heads of the Turks, and for one of the few romances that illumine our early history.