indulgent audience.

But other exiles in Virginia were skillful with the pen. William
Strachey's "True Reportory of the Wrack of Sir Thomas Gates, Kt.,
vpon and from the islands of the Bermudas" may or may not have
given a hint to Shakespeare for the storm-scene in "The Tempest."
In either case it is admirable writing, flexible, sensitive,
shrewdly observant. Whitaker, the apostle of Virginia, mingles,
like many a missionary of the present day, the style of an
exhorter with a keen discernment of the traits of the savage
mind. George Percy, fresh from Northumberland, tells in a
language as simple as Defoe's the piteous tale of five months of
illness and starvation, watched by "those wild and cruel Pagans."
John Pory, of "the strong potations," who thinks that "good
company is the soul of this life," nevertheless comforts himself
in his solitude among the "crystal rivers and odoriferous woods"
by reflecting that he is escaping envy and expense. George
Sandys, scholar and poet, finds his solace during a Virginia
exile in continuing his translation of Ovid's "Metamorphoses."
Colonel Norwood, an adventurer who belongs to a somewhat later
day, since he speaks of having "read Mr. Smith's travels," draws
the long bow of narrative quite as powerfully as the redoubtable
Smith, and far more smoothly, as witness his accounts of
starvation on shipboard and cannibalism on shore. This Colonel is
an artist who would have delighted Stevenson.

All of these early tellers of Virginia tales were Englishmen, and
most of them returned to England, where their books were printed
and their remaining lives were passed. But far to the north east
of Virginia there were two colonies of men who earned the right