The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-11-28
Smith and Pocahontas

Albert Bushnell Hart in Harper's Mag azine.
 To the student of lies the interesting question about John Smith is whether his life was or was not saved by Poca~ hontas. Upon that point he had the | best of opportunities to tell thrilling | tale in his book, The True Relation"
 written in Virginia and published in England in 1908.
 Among his thrilling experience he ! there describes a little excursion to the Chicl1ahominy, where he falls in with hostile Indians, becomes the target for | 20 or 30 arrows, and is captured by | 200 men only because he gets mired in a swamp. Being brought before their | Indian king, although Smith knows not a word of his language he says, T pre- setend him with compasse diall, de- scribing by my best means the use | thereof, whereat he so amazedly ad- | mired, as he suffered me to proceed in | a discourse of the roundness of the earth, the course of the sunne, moone, | starres and planets" Eventually he is
 brought before their emperor" the
 great Opechan Conough, commonly
 called Powhatan. Efforts are made to kill him by Indians whose relatives he has slain, but the guards save him. In due course of time Smith is sent home
 with four men, one carrying his "gonne and knapsacks,' while the other two were 'loded with bread"
 I Elsewhere in the book he mentions 1 the Princess Pocahontas, daughter of Powhatan. This lady was only girl--- perhaps ? years old-and another con- temporary Strachey, tells curious tales of the mailden's fondness for turning
 cart wheels through the streets of Jamestown. About the time Pocahontas y1a tItn Inn fo fD
 land G616), Smith published little
 book in which he says:
 After some six weeks (elsewhere he
 makes it four weeks) fatting amongst
 these salvage countries at the minute
 of my execution. she hazarded thS
 beating out of her own brains to save
 mine
 Then in 1924 Smith published another
 book. the General Historic" in which
 his memory seems suddenly to have un-
 limbered, for he rewrtes his narrative,
 adds hundred to his earlier enumer- ation of 200 adversaries; additionally
 remembers that the Indians brought out
 a bag of gunpowder which they pro-
 posed to plant next spring; and is
 brought before Powhatan. With many new details he describes that potentate,
 and at last comes to the most exciting scene in the drama. You can see it all Pocahontas, l.. C., the hero before the foot lights, bound but undaunted, his eyes flashing defiance.
 "A long consultation was held, but the conclusion was two great stones were brought before Powhatan; then as many
 as could layed hands on him. dragged him to them and thereon laid his head and being ready with their clubs, to
 beate out his brains. Pocahontas, the kings dearest daughter, when no en
 treaty could prevail, got his head in her arms, and laid her owne upon his
 to save him from death; whereat the emperour was contented he should live " | No sympathetic person would ask why 1 the eyewitness and the chief person in | this wondrcus episode should have neg lected for eight years to put it into his l publications or why it should have taken him Is years more to recall the affecting details. Prof Edward Chan. ming impaes John smith on the barbed sentence. "The utter unreliability ol