The Life of Captain John Smith: The Founder of Virginia (Projects of the Simms Initiatives)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1867 edition. Excerpt: ...tender in the interview between that young Indian child and the stern warrior, whose heart, in frequent trials of the world's strife, had perhaps grown somewhat callous against most human weaknesses! Yet he betrays none of.this callosity while he treats with Pocahontas. Her gentle virtues, her eager, earnest interest in his behalf, her extreme youth and wonderful beauty, which made her the nonpareil of her race and country--these seem to hare always had their influence over his soul, when she is the subject of consideration. He speaks of her as the dearest daughter, the little daughter of Powhatan; and in such tender diminutives sufficiently declares the feelings of a man who was but too commonly accustomed to conceal them. That he holds her as a thing almost perfect, we gather from his passing and unaffected utterances. He does not speak of her ostentatiously. It is only when it belongs to the absolute business of the narration that he employs her name, and then only in such manner as to make us regret that he does not use it more frequently. A few more passages of this description, and the charactei of Smith, which must be allowed to have suffered somewhat from a certain harshness and hardness of outline, would have had the requisite softening, and we should then have been at some loss to discover its deficiencies. But Pocahontas has her influence upon him, and it is one of no equivocal character. For the power of the Indian sovereign, her father, his own fierce courage did not allow him to entertain much respect; and, seeing through his faithlessness, he already half despises him. Qpechancanough has his entreaties also, for some of the prisoners are his friends and subjects; and sending his presents, seeks an interview himself with...