landing on Jamestown Island, he was informed by Opechancanough that a salt sea was to be found within four or five days’ journey of the Falls. This statement was confirmed by Powhatan, who declared that some asserted that it was five days’, some six, some eight days’ journey from the Falls to the place where the salt waters, dashing in the fury of great storms against the boulders, among which the river had its fountain, had often caused that stream to be brackish in its flavor. Powhatan gave a description of the dress worn by the inhabitants of these countries towards the setting sun, and the ships in which they travelled, showing that they belonged to civilized nations. An Indian prisoner of Powhatan, who was probably one of the tribe of Monacans, occupying the territory above the Falls, also reported the presence of a salt sea in the West.[1] It might be supposed, at first, that the same spirit which, perhaps, led Smith to suppress, in his earliest account of his captivity, all allusion to the attempt of his captors to beat out his brains,[2] also
- ↑ Works of Capt. John Smith, pp. 17, 19, 20.
- ↑ The colonists of 1607 were specially instructed in the Orders in Council which they carried over to Virginia with them, not to transmit to England “any letter of anything that may discourage others.” Works of Capt. John Smith, p. xxxvii. It is not improbable that this is the explanation of the omission by Smith of all reference to his rescue by Pocahontas, in the Newes from Virginia, the only fact, coupled with the failure of contemporaneous writers to record, even casually, this striking incident, upon which any serious attack upon the truthfulness of Smith in his account of that incident in the True Relation, written at a later date, can rest. It is not necessary here to make a defence of Smith. That has been done with a degree of learning and ability by Mr. William Wirt Henry, the distinguished author of the Life of Patrick Henry, in his address before the Virginia Historical Society at their annual meeting, Feb. 24, 1882, which leaves but little to be said. This address has been published by the Society, and it is but one of the many grounds which entitle the author to the grateful appreciation of all who are interested in the history of Virginia. Special reference may also be made to
