promotion of the English colonial scheme was wholly beneficial. He was
brave, ingenious, indefatigable, prudent and accomplished; he knew what
should be done, and was ever foremost in doing it He took hold of the
helpless and slow-witted colonists as a master carpenter handles blocks of
wood, and transformed them into an efficient and harmonious structure,
strong enough to withstand the first onsets of misfortune, and to endure
until the arrival of recruits from home placed them beyond all danger of
calamity.

Smith was born in England in 1579, and was therefore only twenty-eight
years of age when he embarked with Gosnold. Yet he had already fought in
the Netherlands, starved in France, and been made a galley-slave by the
Moslem. He had been shipwrecked at one time, thrown overboard at another,
and robbed at a third. Thrice had he met and slain Turkish champions in
the lists; and he had traversed the steppes of Russia with only a handful
of grain for food. He was not a man of university education: the only
schooling he had had was in the free schools of Alford and Louth, before
his fifteenth year; his father was a tenant farmer in Lincolnshire, and
though John was apprenticed to a trade, he ran away while a mere
stripling, and shifted for himself ever after. An adventurer, therefore,
in the fullest sense of the word, he was; and doubtless he had the
appreciation of his own achievements which self-made men are apt to have.
But there was sterling pith in him, a dauntless and humane soul, and
inexhaustible ability and resource. Such a man could not fail to possess
imagination, and imagination and self-esteem combined conduce to
highly-colored narrative; but that Smith was a liar is an unwarranted
assumption, which will not be countenanced here.

The Gosnold colony had provided itself with a charter, granted by King
James, and as characteristic of that monarch as was his treatment of