University of Virginia Library

1. The engravings above, of Zsigmond Báthory's seal and of Smith's coat of arms,
are presumably included to attest to Smith's experience in "Warres in Europe, Asia, and
Affrica."For information on these heraldic devices, see the True Travels, AIv, 15, 16.

2. Trampled down, frustrated.

3. Followers of Robert Browne (1550?–1633?), the separatist Puritan regarded as
the founder of Congregationalism.

4. See the Errata, p. 40, below.

5. Splendor, ostentation.

6. "Think everything was delightful" (proverbial); see Joseph Swetnam, The
araignment of... women (London, 1615), iii.

7. Obsolete construction for "shoot with."

8. The type of sarcasm that follows is rare with Smith. Above, read: "beginnings
to be scorned."

9. I.e., the company had sent but one hogshead of claret in two or three years.

10. A noisy, riotous bully. Cf. the Generall Historie, 238, 238n.

11. I.e., "went broke."

1. Arber reads: "but those [that] were naught here and worse there"(Edward
Arber, ed., Captain John Smith ... Works, 1608–1631, The English Scholar's Library
Edition, No. 16 [Birmingham, 1884], 932), which seems hardly called for. "Naught," as
often, means "vicious, immoral."

2. As Ronald B. McKerrow points out, quotation marks were "frequently used at
the beginnings of lines to call attention" to side remarks, and therefore should not be
"closed" (An Introduction to Bibliography, 2d ed. [Oxford, 1928], 316–317).

3. A form of "waste" chiefly found in Scots.

4. The author was William Bradford; see the Generall Historie, 233n.

5. Cultivate; the only instance of this word cited in the OED.

6.Variant of "coil," a noisy disturbance, tumult.

7. The passage from here to the end of the chapter is reprinted from the Description of N.E.,
59–61.

8. The specific reference to 140 years is not in the Description of N.E. — more correctly,
139 years, 1492 to 1631.

9. Smith's plea for "charity to those poore salvages," i.e., uncivilized people, should
be noted.

1. This chapter is based on the Generall Historie, 204–205, 221–223, with minor
additions.

2. This chapter is also based on the Generall Historie, Bk. VI, but much condensed
and rearranged.

3. Smith's reason for listing the many aspects of Indian life that follow is not given
until the top of page 16: "of all these particulars you may reade at large in the generall
History of Virginia. ..."

4. Skcins, balls.

5. Worked, embellished.

6. Smith reworked New Englands Trials (1622) for this chapter.

7. Arber suggests "Colony's" for the unlikely "Colonels" (Smith, Works, 941), but
Richard Arthur Preston seems to see nothing wrong with the text as it is Gorges of
Plymouth Fort: A Life of Sir Ferdinando Gorges ... [Toronto, 1953], 401, n. 48). The correct
title would have been "Council's".

8. See New Englands Trials (1620), sig. B4rn, for a suggestion as to the meaning.

9. Smith's disparagement of the Pilgrims by use of the term "humorists" (persons
subject to humors) was equivalent to calling them fanatics.

1. The Fortune arrived at Cape Cod on Nov. 9, 1621.

2. Arber suggests "that" after "them" (Smith, Works, 941).

3. Mere.

4. "Bass."

5. Read: "though they wanted themselves; the which to requite them, destroyed.
..."

6. Chap. 8 is largely reworked from the Generall Historie, 247, and the True Travels,
46–47, with some new material.

7. The use of this phrase as a noun is recorded as early as c. 1592 in the OED, in the
works of Henry Smith, the Puritan divine, who died in 1591. Above, "within which
within" is probably a printer's error.

8. Smith has embellished what he published in New Englands Trials (1622), sig.
B4v, here adding the distance from Plymouth to Cape Cod ("nine leagues," or 27 statute
mi. — almost exactly the distance from Plymouth to Provincetown according to modern
maps).

9. This transitive use of "to agree" is now obsolete.

10. Read: "reported that the Fish and Bevers I brought home I had taken," etc.

1. Fleeced and cheated.

2. Everett Emerson cites the passage from here to the end of the paragraph as a
"vigorous expression" of Smith's outlook in 1631 (Captain John Smith [New York, 1971],
114).

3. Smith is closer here to the French name "Île de Ré" than he was in his previous
accounts.

4. From 1595 to early 1631 would be 37 years as elapsed time was counted in Smith's
day.

5. Three survivors of the original colonists, in addition to John Smith, can be
identified with some certainty: George Percy, esq., and John Martin, captain, both died
in 1632, while John Laydon, a laborer, lived on at least until 1636. Anthony Gosnold,
cousin of Bartholomew, is known to have been living in 1623 in England, but after that
he is lost sight of. For scholarly sources and discussion of the survival rate in early Virginia,
see Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia
(New York, 1975),115n, and Appendix, 396n.

6. Surely, "letters of marque."

7. Samuel Purchas may supply a clue to what Smith meant: Purchas spoke of
people who "with miserableness seeke a blessed life" (Purchas his Pilgrimage. Or Relations
Of The World ... [London, 1614], 2d ed., I, xiii, 74), which could have been applicable
to the Pilgrim fathers. If Smith had this in mind, by "husbandry" he surely meant
"management, administration."

8. Chap. 10 is completely new, as is a large part of the rest of the book.

9. The reference here is to Sir William Alexander's patent of 1621, covering Nova
Scotia and part of Canada, and to the map that accompanied his The Mapp and Description
of New-England (London, 1630), the New England section of which bears some resemblance
to John Smith's map of 1614. Charles M. Andrews describes Alexander as
"temperamental and imaginative," and the patent as "incredible" (The Colonial Period
of American History [New Haven, Conn., 1934–1938], 1, 314–315).

1. Since John Smith knew that seven degrees of latitude represented 420 nautical
mi. (see p. 28, below), the "560 miles" here must mean the distance along the coast. This,
however, would have been far greater than Smith could have estimated, due to his hazy
idea of the longitude of the places he had visited, and consequently of the easterly trend
of the Atlantic coast between New York Bay and Conception Bay, Newfoundland.

2. Now called Isles of Shoals, off the New Hampshire coast.

3. "Waste"; see p. 9n, above.

4. Supply ships, or storehouses.

5. Here the meaning of "by the halfes" probably is "in part."

6. For a modern summary of these events, see Frances Rose-Troup, John White, the
Patriarch of Dorchester [Dorset] and the Founder of Massachusetts, 1575–1648 (New York,
1930), 94–174.

7. Smith's aphorism on history seems to be his own, though it may have been
influenced by John Florio, commenting on Cicero: "History ... is the testimony of
Tyme, the light of veritie, the life of memory, the guide of tyme, the messenger of
antiquity" (Florio his Firste Fruites [London, 1578], 52).

8. Variant of "champaign," a common name for open country or a clearing.

9. Danbury is about five miles E of Chelmsford; Sir Humphrey Mildmay was a
royalist gentleman and a diarist, known for his hospitality; Smith may have met him
through Robert Bertie, whose wife was a niece of a first cousin of Sir Humphrey's (see
Philip Lee Ralph, Sir Humphrey Mildmay, Royalist Gentleman: Glimpses of the English Scene,
1633–1652 [New Brunswick, N.J., 1947]).

1. Here meaning "tool" or "instrument," as often in Smith. See the beginning of
the next paragraph.

2. No trace of this work has yet been found.

3. This "place" is now called Marblehead, but the "marble" is in reality gray
granite (The Origin of Massachusetts Place Names, United States Work Projects Administration
[New York, 1941], 29).

4. At or near modern Ipswich, c. 15 mi. (24 km.) N of Salem.

5. A kind of sharp-edged grass that cuts the hands of workers and the mouths of
cattle.

6. The reference is, of course, to the cattle.

7. Destroy. Smith goes on to describe the Indian technique of girdling.

8. Not in the OED; Smith most likely knew the Latin past participle of educare (to
bring up children, etc.), but did not know how to handle it. The meaning is obvious.

9. Read: "yet for all that," etc.

1. Smith's "New-England" was practically limited to the Atlantic coast between
41° and 45° N latitude, the "North cape of Spaine" [Cape Finisterre] lies at 42° 54' N,
and England stretches from 50° to nearly 56°, with London at 51° 31' N as against 41° 28'
for New London, Connecticut. The 10° involved do amount to 600 nautical mi., as Smith
observes, but what nobody of his day realized is that latitude has little to do with temperature
unless meteorological elements are taken into consideration.

2. This should read "pages 210–211."

3. Trickery, deception.

4. Here meaning, "fell by degrees into."

5. Tyrannical band; cf. Milton's Paradise Lost, XII, 38: "A crew ... to tyrannize."

6. Here meaning, "cast of mind."

7. Sc., 1630; Smith died eight months later.

8. This condition is a significant reflection of Smith's attitude toward the Indians.

1. Frugally [and unwisely].

2. Smith apparently disapproved of the slave trade, but shared the then common
scornfulness toward "Negroes."

3. The parentheses here are to indicate emphasis: "in any way whatsoever."

4. Here meaning, "punctilious."

5. This phrase is not in the OED; however, the meaning seems to be that when the
Devil's cheaters join with goodwilled men in worthy enterprises, they will maliciously
bring about internal dissension.

6. Begging pride not to laugh.

7. The tent supplied by the investors was supposed to be new but turned out instead
to be old.

8. Poles with forked tops.

1. Elegance-here, ironical.

2. Keep out.

3. Mundane, mundial, worldly.

4. The amount seems too large, but the dispensation for Hakluyt and Hunt does not
mention the stipend involved (see Philip L. Barbour, ed., The Jamestown Voyages under the
First Charter, 1606–1609 [Hakluyt Society, 2d Ser., CXXXVI-CXXXVII (Cambridge,
1969)], I, 62–64).

5. I.e., "to teach them how to be wary and how to choose men," etc.

6. This loosely constructed clause should probably read: "it is better off with those
slow proceedings than to have lost all."

7. I.e., reimbursed to the chief entrepreneur.

8. Biscayan.

1. For Italian "Sicilia," Sicily.

2. The passage from here to the end of the paragraph has been singled out by
Everett Emerson as Smith's greatest expression of his principles and practice (Captain
John Smith, 118).

3. Confused — in origin, a variant of "blunder." Below, in the same sentence, read:
"expresse my selfe to them who doth second them. ..."

4. Here, probably meaning "captains in name only."

5. Port Royal (now Annapolis Royal) is on the Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia.

6. Obviously modern Cape Breton.

7. John Lyly has, "Is it not the prey that enticeth the theefe to rifle" (Euphues. The
Anatomy of Wit [1579], ed. Edward Arber [Birmingham, 1868], 63), but the proverbial
phrasing seems to be Smith's.

1. John Haviland, the printer of the Advertisements, may well have been one of the
"friends." He had also printed the True Travels and had a hand in the Generall Historie.

2. It is noteworthy that Sir Walter Ralegh's name does not appear here, even after
a dozen years.

3. Concept.

4. Hernando de Soto.

5. Sir Richard Leveson; Smith's spelling is phonetic.

6. This is the fifth time Smith thus signed a work, or a part of a work. See the
Generall Historie, 39n.