University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.

I commend me right worshipfully to my worthy
countrymen, and most especially to my lovely
country-women, hoping that not one of them hath
forgotten the famous old times of gallantry and adventure,
when the sprightly springalls of the old
world, stimulated by the example, and aided by the
purse of the great Sir Walter Raleigh, (whose
memory God long preserve,) turned their eyes to
the glowing west, and placed their hopes in a new

hemisphere. The history of an honourable ancestry,
is at all times a precious, and delightful contemplation;
and what ancestry can be more honourable
than ours? Brave and gallant spirits,
resolved to mend their fortunes, at the risk of their
lives; and pious, unconquerable pilgrims, clothed
in the armour of faith, which no weapon can
pierce, seeking in the wilderness, among savage
pagans that free exercise of opinion which was not
only denied them, but punished with stripes and
imprisonment in civilized countries, among Christians.
Assuredly those who have read of the
perils encountered and overcome by these daring
soldiers of fortune, and these invincible followers
of the faith, can never become in all the vicissitudes
of life, from youth to age, from the cradle to
the grave, indifferent to their memory and their
actions. If any one whose heart is too hard, and
his understanding too obtuse to feel the force of
such impressions, should perchance take up this
my story, let him lay it down again forthwith. It
is not for him, for, as one of our writers has truly
observed,—“Nothing now remains of James Town,
the cradle of the new world, but a few simple
ruins; a few tomb stones, marking the spot where
was interred, somebody—we know not whom, for
the name has become illegible. But the spot is well
known; and every century, while like a river, it
carries millions of light wonders to the ocean of
oblivion, will only render it the more interesting
and illustrious. It is closely connected with the
first links of a great chain of causes and effects,
that have already changed the destiny of the new,
and will probably change that of the old world.
He therefore, who cannot feel the inspiration of
such spots as James Town, and Plymouth Rock,
need not take the pains to go to Rome or Athens,
for he may rest assured that the fine and subtile
spirit which lives, and moves, and hath its being in
the past and the future alone, is not an inmate of
his mind.”

It chanced one bright spring morning, in the
year 1611, that a young gentleman of the name of
Percie[1] was seen reclining against an old live oak
tree that spread its broad arms over the borders
of the famous Powhatan, now called James River.
The hour was about sunrise, and the scene exceedingly
fair. The river spread into a wide basin,
several miles across, over which, glided from
time to time, flocks of those aquatic birds, that love
to skim the surface of the salt water. On the left
was a grove of stately trees of primeval growth, encumbered
with vines and wild flowers; and on the
right a little village, of rather rude huts, enclosed
with a stockade, and defended by some poorly constructed
fortifications. The whole had an appearance

of rural beauty that contrasted strongly
with the absence of that life and noise, which is
characteristic of the crowded habitations of men, of
a blithe summer morning. Not a single female, or
child was to be seen; nor any domestic animals,
save a few half-starved melancholy curs, rawboned
and moody, prowling about with hungry
avidity, or lying gaping in the morning sun, or
whining in their sleep, as if their dreams were
troubled.

Percie, Robert Percie—that was his name—
stood leaning against the tree, contemplating the
birds as they flitted down the river to the ocean,
not far distant. His thoughts accompanied them
in their flight towards England, and he communed
with his heart in something like the following
soliloquy.

“How swift they fly! They seem in haste to
visit the far distant, sea-girt Isle, from whence love
and hate have banished me. My imagination outsoars
them in their swift flights, and bears me
to where the happy hopes of my youth, sunned
into life a thousand blooming flowers, since
overcast and withered by the clouds of manhood.
Would I were there! No; would a thousand
worlds, unknown erewhile, like this which I inhabit
—a thousand untracked seas, whose virgin bosoms,
never daring keel wounded with its swift passage,
rolled between me and my native country. Distance,
like time, is kinsman to oblivion.”

He then turned his face towards an old grey-headed
man, sitting at a little distance, and dressed
like the better sort of followers of cavaliers in
those days, and exclaimed, “Gilbert!”

“Master, here am I,” quoth Gilbert, “and yet
in strictness of sound logic, such as is learned at
Oxford, here am I not; unless your philosophy
can convict me that a man can be where that
which constitutes his being is not.”

“What, still dealing in quips, Gilbert,” replied
the other, with a languid, indulgent smile, which
indicated that the old man had earned by past
fidelity, a privilege of being familiar.

“In good truth, sir,” said the greybeard, “I
have, within the last half hour, emigrated to a
certain, snug little paradise in the North Country,
of which I would draw your honour such a picture!”

“'Tis better not, Gilbert. I know it well. We
must forget these things, if possible,” said the
other, with a deep sigh. “The past must be as
nothing, the future every thing to you, and most
of all to me. The old world must give place to
the new. From this time forward, we must look
right forward, nor think of the past but as a lesson
for the time to come.”

“But must I never talk of home, dear master?”

“No, not even think of it.”

“And may I not sit on a bench of a summer
day like this, under the clambering vines—that is

to say, if I am not shortly starved to death—and
talk to myself of old times, old friends, christmas
frolics, and foaming nut-brown ale?”

“'Twill only make you the sadder,” replied the
other.

“And if it does, 'fore heaven. I'd rather cry
over such matters, than laugh at the best jest, or
merry tale, that ever was, or will be broached in
this new world, which, the fiend take Columbus
for finding out, say I.”

“And so say not I, good Gilbert. Already the
poor and wretched, those who have no home, or
to whom their home is misery, begin to look this
way with longing eyes, as to a place of refuge, or
oblivion. The world is in want of a sanctuary,
where kingly pride and priestly rule, may no
longer create beggars and bigots. I see it coming,
Gilbert.”

“Three score and ten can't live on distant hopes,
my master. They are the next year's harvest, or
rather the next year's ships, to us poor, perishing
adventurers. Before either arrives, we shall be
gone hence, unless the savages make friends, and
come in with a supply.”

“Well, well; so you don't talk to me of these
old times, I am content.”

“I accept your terms, my dear young master.
I'll to the bank yonder, where there is a fine echo,
and there we'll discourse of days of yore. Talk
of the Percies; your old, honoured father; your

good brother Harry—a plague take him though
for a— and she, the most beauteous of all beauties,
the Rose of Beverly. Hey! master of mine!”

“Silence! old croaking raven!” cried Percie,
making a motion as if to collar the old man.
“Thou hast named three names, each dearer than
the other; each more cruel, than famine, plague,
and pestilence, all combined. Had I three hearts,
they would have broke them all. In the name of
God, leave me, or leave off prating.”

“My honoured master, forgive me!”

“Go to the woods, old Gilbert, and howl there;
or let me go. There is not a beast that roams
these irksome solitudes, but has some tie of nature,
some dear affection, some attachment to
blood, or place. I may learn of them, perhaps
some new affections. Those I had are broken,
and cannot knit again.”

“I knew nothing of this, my dear master. You
may remember I was absent, a prisoner to the
Borderers, when you left home. When I returned,
I heard you had gone the Virginia voyage, and
followed as fast as I could, without knowing why
you left home.”

“I remember, so you did,” replied the other,
affectionately. “Forgive me, good Gilbert. So
true a friend deserves to know all. Hear, but
never speak. While you were absent, the curse
of younger brotherhood, which is to be beggared
in fortune, and despised in love, fell upon me.
The father I revered, spoiled me of my inheritance

to enrich my elder brother, who tempted her to
whom I was betrothed, whom I loved as my own
immortal soul, whom I had twined to my heart of
hearts, and who had grown to be part of my
being—tempted her by his riches and my poverty,
to forsake her beggar for a wealthy heir.”

“The unnatural brother!” exclaimed old Gilbert,
furiously.

“That brother! you know, Gilbert, he had
played with me through boyhood; studied, travelled,
warred with me in youth; was my companion,
my friend, my confidant. He knew all, and
he betrayed me, Judas like, with kissing. I saved
his life when he was drowning, and he plunged me
in the waters of bitterness.”

“No more, no more, dear master,” rejoined the
other, “now that I know your griefs, I will never
talk of home again.”

“Nay,” replied Percie, “now the ice is broke
you shall know all, that hereafter eternal silence
may be between us. Outraged in every feeling
of nature and humanity; all the early ties of my
youth broken to atoms; my affection for my father
changed to a sense of his injustice; my early
love for my brother, turned into a feeling of violated
friendship and betrayed confidence; my devotion
for Rose curdled into despair, horror, madness
and jealousy—I sought this new world, and
you followed me, old Gilbert. I shall never see
my native country more. But see! our president,

Captain Smith is coming this way, apparently in
contention with Master Vere and Master Harrington.
Leave me, and let your lips be like the
sepulchre.”

Ed.