never-changing Trinity". The Virginians, on the other hand, fell
heir to the ignorance, and "fearful and superstitious instinct of
nature" of Ham (p. 40). Ahone, therefore, is not invented by
Strachey to bolster up a theory (held by Strachey), of an inherited
revelation, or of a sensus numinis which could not go wrong.
Unless a proof be given that Strachey had a theory, or any other
purpose, to serve by inventing Ahone, I cannot at present come into
the opinion that he gratuitously fabled, though he may have
unconsciously exaggerated.

What were Strachey's sources? He was for nine months, if not more,
in the colony: he had travelled at least 115 miles up the James
River, he occasionally suggests modifications of Smith's map, he
refers to Smith's adventures, and his glossary is very much larger
than Smith's; its accuracy I leave to American linguists. Such a
witness, despite his admitted use of Smith's text (if it is really
all by Smith throughout) is not to be despised, and he is not
despised in America.[1] Strachey, it is true, had not, like Smith,
been captured by Indians and either treated with perfect kindness
and consideration (as Smith reported at the time), or tied to a
tree and threatened with arrows, and laid out to have his head
knocked in with a stone; as he alleged sixteen years later!
Strachey, not being captured, did not owe his release (1) to the
magnanimity of Powhattan, (2) to his own ingenious lies, (3) to the
intercession of Pocahontas, as Smith, and his friends for him, at
various dates inconsistently declared. Smith certainly saw more of
the natives at home: Strachey brought a more studious mind to what
he could learn of their customs and ideas; and is not a convicted
braggart. I conjecture that one of Strachey's sources was a native
named Kemps. Smith had seized Kemps and Kinsock in 1609. Unknown