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Brief Apologia as Envoy
It is the prerogative of professional critics to find fault. Smith's True Travels
has long provided an opportunity for the exercise of that prerogative. While
was pure prevarication. To these critics, the editor would pose a number of
questions, among them the following:
If Smith never set foot in eastern Europe, where was he from 1600 to
1605? Where did he learn how to handle men on trips such as his explorations
of Chesapeake Bay? If he had had no experience, why was Smith
chosen in London for the local council in Virginia? Where did Smith learn
rare Italian military terms? Where did he meet an obscure French count?
Who gave Smith the Russian phrase do Zvyahel (Smith's "Duzihell")? Where
did he learn about signposts in the "Wilderness" (Dikoye Polye) of the southern
Ukraine? Where did he learn about the extraordinary discipline imposed on
those being trained for the Ottoman civil service? Where did he read about
a sea battle in the Mediterranean or the nearby Atlantic?
As Edward Arber wrote regarding a single incident, so it could be said
of the whole True Travels: "To deny the truth of the Pocahontas incident is
to create more difficulties than are involved in its acceptance."
1. Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas His Pilgrimes ... (London, 1625), II, 1361–
1370. (A modern edition of the Pilgrimes was published in 20 vols. by James MacLehose and Sons
[Glasgow, 1905–1907].)
2. Because the editor had two versions to work with, it is possible here to present the True
Travels in the same fashion as Smith's other works in this edition, while reserving for the footnotes
to the Purchas version (printed as Fragment J, below) careful scrutiny of all "illustrative material"
and discussion of surmises, circumstantial evidence, and hypotheses.
4. See Philip L. Barbour, "Captain John Smith and the London Theatre," Virginia Magazine
of History and Biography, LXXXIII (1975), 277–279.
6. See William Huse Dunham, Jr., "'The Books of the Parliament' and 'The Old Record,'
1396–1504," Speculum, LI (1976), 695.
9. See Philip L. Barbour, The Three Worlds of Captain John Smith (Boston, 1964), 374, 483–
484, n. 2.
1. Lewis L. Kropf, "Captain John Smith of Virginia," Notes and Queries, 7th Ser., IX (1890),
1–2, 41–43, 102–104, 161–162, 223–224, 281–282; with a rebuttal by Dr. Laura Polanyi Striker,
"The Hungarian Historian, Lewis L. Kropf, on Captain John Smith's True Travels: A Reappraisal,"
VMHB, LXVI (1958), 22–43.
2. During the mid-1970s the editor studied the terrain around both Upper and Lower Limbach,
as well as southern Transylvania. For bibliographical references, see the footnotes to the
Smith text, below. On the fall of Nagykanizsa, see Günther Cerwinka, "Die Eroberung der Festung
Kanizsa durch die Türken im Jahre 1600," in Alexander Novotny and Berthold Sutter, eds.,
Innerösterreich 1564–1619 (Graz, [1968]), 409–511.
5. Eudoxiu de Hurmuzaki, comp., Documente privitóre la istoria Românilor (Bucharest, 1887–
1922), VIII, 229–254.
7. See the pertinent footnotes and the comments on the sea fight at the end of the editor's
Introduction to Fragment J.
9. Philip L. Barbour, ed., The Jamestown Voyages under the First Charter, 1606–1609 (Hakluyt
Society, 2d Ser., CXXXVI–CXXXVII [London, 1969]), I, 231.
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