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 to receive him, joining earnestly, with bent heads, in this act of worship. The prayer over, eager greetings were exchanged between the new-comers and those whom they had rescued; Lord De la Warre read his commission, and Sir Thomas Gates resigned his power into the hands of his superior officer.

A new era now began for Virginia: peace was made with the Indians, and cemented by the marriage of the far-famed Pocahontas with an Englishman named John Rolfe, who in 1616 visited England with his bride. The story goes that Pocahontas, whose heart had long ago been given to John Smith, was only induced to marry Rolfe after being carried off from her home by force by a Captain Argall; and that, on her presentation at the court of King James, she caught sight of her old hero among the crowd, covered her face with her hands, and burst into tears. However that may be, it seems certain that Pocahontas was converted to Christianity, and baptized under the name of Rebecca, before she left Virginia. She remained in England for a year, and died—after giving birth to a son, from whom some of the best families in Virginia claim descent—just as she was about to embark on her return to her native country.

After the arrival of Lord De la Warre in Virginia, in 1610, the colony enjoyed a long period of prosperity. The mouth of the river, named after its first governor, was discovered by the Captain Argall already mentioned, in one of many exploring expeditions up the coast; while inland, the huts of the colonists gradually replaced the wigwams of the natives on the Potomac, the Ohio, the Shenandoah, the Rappahannock, etc. In 1619 took place two events, pregnant in results, not only to Virginia, but to the whole of the future Republic of America—the first cargo of slaves was landed at Jamestown, and the first Legislative Assembly met in the same town. In 1622, the growth of the colony was suddenly checked by a terrible disaster, in the shape of a general massacre of the whites at the instigation of the chief Opechancanough, who had then succeeded his brother Powhatan as the leader of the dusky tribes whose homes had been appropriated by the English intruders.

No suspicion of the awful fate awaiting them appears to have dawned upon the unlucky colonists, who, scattered up and down in their farms, were engaged in their usual peaceful avocations, when, on the morning of the 22d March, 1622, the house of every white man was visited by a few armed savages, who, having put to death with horrible tortures all its in