The Birmingham age-herald., 1902-11-02
THE LADY REBECCA.
BY A. E. cAFFEE.

1 a most faithful guide. stith seems to
 have been singnlarly faithful and de- voted to his subject. Beverly, as stated
 by Burke and other colonial students, re- gard him as a mere annalist of petty in- cidents, without grace of style or other recommendation. Sir W. Keith, probably
 a.a uI.4ase than Beverly-more graceful and reiiable-attends no more to detail. John Smith. the hero, was appointed to
 write History of those stirring times, but that true historian, John Burke, in inmates that Smiths chronicles Is a sort i epic history of romance, where the
 author, like Ossian, the son of Fingal. recounts Ills own achievements in the spirit with which he fought; but 1t Is
 valuable as a piece of rare and curious
 antiquity.
 It is from the dusty pages of these old l books of memories that 1 secured the l facts herein narrated of Pocahontas; 1 hence none of the rainbow romances of
 our school boy days will appear
 That Powhatan was "a man among
 men, of his day, gave conclusive tes-
 timony last week, and 1t is now of Po-
 cahontas as she appeared under the se- 1 verest trials, and afterwards as a peer 1 ess among the courtly high-rouged danes | of James's court that now write. Every l school boy knows that Pocahontas saved the life of Captain Smith when the bloody war-club of her fierce father was raised above his head. Many now believe that she married Captain Smith, so care lessly have these records been preserved; and fewer still of this generation ever heard of her as the Lady Rebecca at the English court.
 As affirmed last week, there was no other aboriginal chief on American soil to whom Powhatan might be compared on equal ground. His character is no more the character of Tecumseh than the character of Ulysses Is that of Nester or Agamemnon; and in the lofty and amia- ble and moral Pocahontas we find na- ture so sublimely above and different from all other Indian women, that one unacquainted with her history must place her among a people where the light of virtue and amiable simplicity were rapid- ly taught from infancy. The personality of this beauteous woman of the forest, as 1t stands in all the concurrent ac- counts of the aforementioned chroniclers
 is not surpassed by any in the whole range of history. and especially for those i qualities which do homage to our na- l ture As a lovely maiden of an humane i and feeling heart, an ardor and unshaken 1 constancy in her attachments, she Is al- l most without rival. It is not in their
 prosperity that she displays her friend l snip TOT the WHlle ptOple. one was hob
 awed by their greatness, nor did she fear
 their resentment. It was amidst their | direst distresses, when their most cele-
 brated captain was a captive, and was
 dragged through the country as sport
 and spectacle for the derision of her peo- | pie. that she stands out boldly between l them and destruction. Burk says: 'The 1 spectacle of Pocahontas in an attitude of l entreaty, with her hair loose, and her 1 eyes streaming with tears, supplicating
 her enraged father for the life of Captain | Smith, when he was about to crush the head of his prostrate victim with a war i club, is a situation equal to the genius of Raphael And, truly, it may be add ed that when the royal savage directed his ferocious glance for a moment from victim to child-softened by her poignant grief, his eye losing its fierceness, the deadly club cast away-the captive given to tears-then, indeed, will the most sub lime painter or sculptor that ever lived drop his brush or chisel and look to heaven to supply the deficiency in the exercise of his talents. The authorities