adornments sewed upon a shaggy garment, green in summer, flame-hued in
autumn, brown in winter, green and flower-colored in the spring. Nor was
the forest to any appreciable extent like much Virginian forest of today,
second growth, invaded, hewed down, and renewed, to hear again the sound of
the axe, set afire by a thousand accidents, burning upon its own funeral
pyres, all its primeval glory withered. The forest of old Virginia was
jocund and powerful, eternally young and eternally old. The forest was
Despot in the land--was Emperor and Pope.

With the forest went the Indian. They had a pact together. The Indians
hacked out space for their villages of twenty or thirty huts, their maize
and bean fields and tobacco patches. They took saplings for poles and bark
to cover the huts and wood for fires. The forest gave canoe and bow and
arrow, household bowls and platters, the sides of the drum that was beaten
at feasts. It furnished trees serviceable for shelter when the foe was
stalked. It was their wall and roof, their habitat. It was one of the Four
Friends of the Indians--the Ground, the Waters, the Sky, the Forest. The
forest was everywhere, and the Indians dwelled in the forest. Not
unnaturally, they held that this world was theirs.

Upon the three ships, sailing, sailing, moved a few men who could speak
with authority of the forest and of Indians. Christopher Newport was upon
his first voyage to Virginia, but he knew the Indies and the South American
coast. He had sailed and had fought under Francis Drake. And Bartholomew
Gosnold had explored both for himself and for Raleigh. These two could tell
others what to look for. In their company there was also John Smith. This
gentleman, it is true, had not wandered, fought, and companioned with
romance in America, but he had done so everywhere else. He had as yet no
experience with Indians, but he could conceive that rough experiences were
rough experiences, whether in Europe, Asia, Africa, or America. And as he