Here John Smith steps forward as leader.
There begins a string of adventures of that hardy and romantic individual.
How much in Smith's extant narrations is exaggeration, how much is
dispossession of others' merits in favor of his own, it is difficult now to
say.* A thing that one little likes is his persistent depreciation of his
fellows. There is but one Noble Adventurer, and that one is John Smith. On
the other hand evident enough are his courage and initiative, his
ingenuity, and his rough, practical sagacity. Let us take him at something
less than his own valuation, but yet as valuable enough. As for his
adventures, real or fictitious, one may see in them epitomized the
adventures of many and many men, English, French, Spanish, Dutch, blazers
of the material path for the present civilization.
* Those who would strike John Smith from the list of historians will
commend the author's caution to the reader before she lets the Captain tell
his own tale. Whatever Smith may not have been, he was certainly a
consummate raconteur. He belongs with the renowned story-tellers of the
world, if not with the veracious chroniclers.--Editor.
In December, rather autumn than winter in this region, he starts with the
shallop and a handful of men up a tributary river that they have learned to
call the Chickahominy. He is going for corn, but there is also an idea that
he may hear news of that wished-for South Sea.
The Chickahominy proved itself a wonderland of swamp and tree-choked
streams.
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