he was stopped by the death of his father.

He was soon apprenticed to a merchant but he hated the counting-house. He longed to be free and go to sea. When he was about fifteen he could no longer stand being caged so he ran away. After a number of adventures he became a soldier in the Netherlands.

Some time later he went home on a visit to Lincolnshire, where he "lived a great deal in society." He soon tired of this way of life and retired to a wooded pasture where he built himself a shelter of boughs and became a hermit.

In the peace and solitude of the pasture he studied Machiavelli's Arte of Warre and the writings of Marcus Aurelius. He exercised with a good horse, a lance and a ring, and lived mostly on venison, which he took without worrying too much over the game laws. His other wants were supplied by a servant, his only contact with the world.

Because of his unusual mode of life news of John Smith traveled around the countryside but it did not worry him because "he provoked the wonder of the peasantry."

At length an Italian gentleman, who had become interested in what he had heard of John Smith, penetrated his forest hideout and persuaded him to come into society once more. After many more adventures and hairbreadth escapes in foreign lands he returned to England in 1604, in time for another adventure. He was still a young man, about twenty-five, but he was matured and hardened far beyond his years.

When the little band of colonists set sail for America from Blackwall, England in December 1606, John Smith was with them.

The voyage was a stormy one in more ways than one. By the time the little "sea-wagons" arrived in the West Indies Smith, who had been put in irons, came very near being hanged, according to tradition.

It was April when the ships with their bedraggled passengers entered the Chesapeake Bay. The fragrance of "pyne" reached them from the virgin forest that covered the face of the land. It was a New World in every sense of the meaning—new, fresh, untouched.

When the sealed orders of the King were opened it was found that John Smith had been named a member of the Council. He demanded trial for the charges preferred against him: "that he plotted on arrival in Virginia to murder the Council and make himself the king there." He was tried and acquitted by the first jury to serve in America. Smith was released but was not yet admitted to the Council.

As it turned out John Smith was the only man among them who was prepared to build a new country. In the beginning he warned the colonists that "no man is entitled to a place in America, he must make his own."

POWHATAN'S EMPIRE

When John Smith started exploring the region around the Chesapeake he found that it was inhabited by a number of small Indian tribes. These Indians were known as the Algonquians.

These tribes made up a confederation under the iron rule of a powerful "king" called Powhatan. At his command there were about twenty-five hundred warriors.

Smith made a map which shows a total of one hundred and sixty-one villages within Powhatan's "32 Kingdomes."

Indian villages were owned in common. The hunting grounds, and pieces of cleared land used for the cultivation of corn, tobacco and vegetables belonged to the tribe. A warrior owned nothing except his garments, tomahawks, bows and arrows.

The Algonquians had no written laws. Their customs were handed down through the old men around the campfires from generation to generation. These unwritten laws were well-defined and worked in a positive and forceful way.

The tribes between the Rappahannock and the Potomac Rivers belonged to the Powhatan confederacy. Their language was a variety of the Delaware Indian language.

CAPTAIN SMITH VISITS THE NECK

It was bitterly cold, "with frost and snow," when Captain John Smith first saw the land between the Rappahannock and the Potomac Rivers.

Captain Smith's first visit to the Neck was not one of pleasure or exploration. He came as a captive of the Indian chief, Opechacanough.

It was in the winter of 1607-08. During that year Smith made "3. or 4. journies and discovered the people of Chickahamania." It was on the last of these "journies" that he was taken prisoner, and led about in triumph and exhibited to the tribes of the Tidewater region, from the James to the Potomac.

Smith was carried to Tophanocke, "a kingdome upon a River northward." This river was the Rappahannock. Here they stopped at the village of the Nantaughtacunds.

Smith and his captors may have sped swiftly and silently through the forest but when they approached a village a triumphal procession was formed which was marked by "a barbarous sort of pomp."

Captain Smith was guarded on either side by a savage who kept fast hold upon his wrist. Opechacanough moved in the middle of the column and the swords, guns and pistols which had been taken from Smith and his companions were borne before the Indian chief.

Their approach was heralded by the songs and shrieks and dances of the warriors. Their yells of death and victory brought out the women and children to behold their triumph over this strange-looking creature from another world, after which there was great feasting.

Smith was feasted, too. He was fed so well "with bread and venison that would have served 20 men" that he believed that he was being fattened to be eaten later on.

From the Rappahannock the procession pushed on across the Neck until it reached the village of the Nominies,[1] near the Potomac. Here the same procedure was again repeated.

After their stay near the Potomac the parade turned back from whence it had come. The destination, now, was Powhatan's favorite spot on the York River, where that great chief was waiting to settle the fate of Captain John Smith.

When at length Smith was brought before Powhatan, he was received with all the formal pomp and state known to the savage court. A long consultation was held by the council there assembled.

Captain Smith knew what the decision was when two large stones were brought in by the warriors. His end was not yet, however, for Powhatan's daughter, Pocahontas, according to Smith, saved the day by thrusting herself between him and the up-raised club.

By the time Captain Smith reached Jamestown again nearly seven weeks had elapsed since his capture. Though his tour of the Tidewater country had been under humiliating conditions he had gathered by observation and from the Indians a large amount of useful knowledge.

"A PLAINE WILDERNES"

How did the Northern Neck look to Captain John Smith on his first visit there?

Just like the rest of the Chesapeake Bay country—"all over-growne with trees and ... being a plaine wildernes as God first made it."

The size of the trees impressed him most, and the lack of undergrowth beneath them.

"So lofty and erect," he wrote, "were many of these trees and so great their diameter that their trunks afforded plank twenty yards in length and two and a half feet square."

Freedom from undergrowth he found was due to the annual burnings of the Indians in their efforts to capture whole herds of deer by surrounding them with a belt of fire. These firings made no impressions upon the giant trees.

The trees were so far apart, Smith says, "... that a man may gallop a horse amongst these woods any waie, but where the creeks or Rivers shall hinder." (Other early writers say that a