Smith, withheld by prudence and the etiquette he understood better than she-despite Master Rolfe's drilling-from approaching her, longed to say to her in her native tongue what he would not have others hear. He could, he felt, have won her from her seemingly inclement "humour," if only he had not boasted of her proficiency in English. And he must again stab the faithful heart by refusing this token of his remembrance of their former intimacy. We can imagine that he listened, embarrassed with down-dropt lids, as she gained in steadfast composure.

"With a well-set countenance, she said: Were you not afraid to come into my father's Countrie, and caused feare in him and all his people (but me) and feare you here I should call you "father?"' (i. e., here you are afraid to have me call you father.) 'I tell you, then, I will, and you shall call me childe, and so I will bee forever and ever your Countrieman. They did tell us alwaies you were dead, and I knew no other till I came to Plimoth; yet Powhatan did command Vitamatomakkin' (one of Powhatan's council, who accompanied her to England) 'to see you, and know the truth-because your Countriemen will lie much!'"

The sigh of disillusion is in every sentence; the last is a sharp cry of pain. Who had

deceived her? and why? Had Rolfe's "solicitude and passion" and the proselyting diplo macy of his lord and patron, conspired to get her ideal Englishman off the stage of her imagination that the widower might have a clear field? Conjecture cannot but be busy here and, after all, confess itself conjecture. still.

There is little more to tell. "Formall and civill" in outward seeming, she was at heart homesick. The winter tried her semi-tropical constitution severely; she fell ill with rapid consumption; preparations were hastily made for her return to Virginia-somewhat oddly, in Captain Argall's vessel. On the day before the good ship George was to sail, the Lady Rebecca died suddenly.

"It pleased God at Gravesend to take this young lady to his mercie, where shee made not more sorrow for her unexpected death than joy to the beholders to heare and see her make so religious and godly an end.”

Thus the chapter, signed, "Samuel Argall, John Rolfe."

Tradition has it that she died sitting in an easy-chair, by an open window, her eyes fixed wistfully upon the western ocean.

"Her little child, Thomas Rolfe, was left at Plimouth, with Sir Lewis Stukly, that desired the keeping of it."

She was but twenty-two years old. Travelled and erudite Purchas writes of her last days:

"She did not only accustom herself to civilitie, but still carried herself as the daughter of a King, and was, according respected, not only by the Company which allowed provision for herself and son; but of divers particular persons of honor in their hopeful zeal for her to advance Christianity. I was present when my honorable and reverend patron, the Lord Bishop of London, Dr. King, entertained her with festival, and state and pomp, beyond what I have seen in his great hospitalitie afforded to other ladies. At her return towards Virginia, she came to Gravesend to her end and grave."

Hon. William Wirt Henry, whose Life and Letters of Patrick Henry rank him among the most accomplished historiographers of our country, has paid a more eloquent tribute to Our Lady of the James:

Pocahontas, who, born the daughter of a savage king, was endowed with all the graces which become a Christian princess; who was the first of her people to embrace Christianity, and to unite in marriage. with the English race; who, like a guardian angel,

watched over and preserved the infant colony which has developed into a great people, among whom her own descendants have ever been conspicuous for true nobility; and whose name will be honored while this great people occupy the land upon which she so signally aided in establishing them."

IN

XIX

JAMESTOWN AND WILLIAMSBURG

the by-gone time in which the tide of Southern travel flowed up the Potomac River, the custom prevailed of tolling the bell as each steamer passed Mount Vernon. At the sound the passengers gathered upon the forward deck to gaze with bared heads upon the enclosure in which are the ashes of Washington. Sadder and not less reverent might be the toll with which river-craft should announce the approach to the ruined tower upon a low headland of the James.

Here on May 13, 1607, was set the first rootlet of English dominion in the vast Virginia plantation that was to outlive pestilence. and famine and savage violence. The bounds of what an old writer calls a "mighty mighty empire" are thus defined: