Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/190

 174 SMITH [JOHN. books, and all he had, intending secretly to get to sea, but that his father's death stayed him. But now the guardians of his estate more regarding it than him, he had liberty enough, though no means, to get beyond the sea. About the age of fifteen years, he was bound an apprentice to Master Thomas Sendall of [King's] Lynn, the greatest merchant of all those parts ; but, because he would not presently send him to sea, he never saw his master in eight years after." The second period, 1596-1604, is that of his adventures in Europe, Asia, and Africa. He first went to Orleans in attendance on the second son of Lord Willoughby. Thence he returned to Paris, and so by Rouen to Havre, where, his money being spent, he began to learn the life of a soldier under Henry IV. of France. On the conclusion of the peace with the League he went with Captain Joseph Duxbury to Holland and served there some time, probably with the English troops in Dutch pay. By this time he had gained a wide experience in the art of war, not merely as an infantry officer, but also in those more technical studies which are now followed by the Royal Engineers. At length he sailed from Enkhuisen to Scotland, and on the voyage had a narrow escape from shipwreck upon Holy Island near Berwick. After some stay in Scotland he returned home to Willoughby, "where, within a short time being glutted with too much company, wherein he took small delight, he retired himself into a little woody pasture, a good way from any town, environed with many hundred acres of other woods. Here by a fair brook he built a pavilion of boughs, where only in his clothes he lay. His study was Machiavelli's Art of War and Marcus Aurelius ; his exercise a good horse with his lance and ring ; his food was thought to be more of venison than anything else; what [else] he wanted his man brought him. The country wondering at such a hermit, his friends per- suaded one Signior Theadora Polaloga, rider to Henry, earl of Lincoln, an excellent horseman and a noble Italian gentleman, to insinuate [himself] into his woodish acquaint- ances, whose languages and good discourse and exercise of riding drew Smith to stay with him at Tattersall. . .. Thus, when France and the Netherlands had taught him to ride a horse and use his arms, with such rudiments of war as his tender years, in those martial schools, could attain unto, he was desirous to see more of the world, and try his fortune against the Turks, both lamenting and repenting to have seen so many Christians slaughter one another." Next came his wanderings through France from Picardy to Marseilles. There he took ship for Italy in a vessel full of pilgrims going to Rome. These, cursing him for a heretic, and swearing they would have no fair weather so long as he was on board, threw him, like another Jonah, into the sea. He was able to get to a little uninhabited island, from which he was taken off the next morning by a Breton ship of 200 tons going to Alexandria, the captain of which, named La Roche, treated him as a friend. In this ship he visited Egypt and the Levant. On its way back the Breton ship fought a Venetian argosy of 400 tons and captured it. Reaching Antibes (Var) later on, Captain La Roche put Smith ashore with 500 sequins, who then proceeded to see Italy as he had already seen France. Passing through Tuscany he came to Rome, where he saw Pope Clement VIII. at mass, and called on Father R. Parsons. Wandering on to Naples and back to Rome, thence through Tuscany and Venice, he came to Gratz in Styria. There he received information about the Turks who were then swarming through Hungary, and, passing on to Vienna, entered the emperor's service. In this Turkish war the years 1601 and 1602 soon passed away ; many desperate adventures did he go through, and one in particular covered him with great honour. At Regal (Stuhlweissenburg), in the presence of two armies, as the champion of the Christians, he fought on horseback and killed three Turkish champions in suc- cession. On 18th November 1602, at the battle of Rothen- thurm, a pass in Transylvania, where the Christians fought desperately against an overpowering force of Grim Tatars, Smith was left wounded on the field of battle. His rich dress saved him, for it showed that he would be worth a ransom. As soon as his wounds were cured he was sold for a slave and then marched to Constantinople, where he was presented to Charatza Tragabigzanda, who fell in love with him. Fearing lest her mother should sell him, she sent him to her brother Timor, pasha of Nalbrits, on the Don, in Tartary. " To her unkind brother this kind lady wrote so much for his good usage that he half suspected as much as she intended ; for she told him, he should there but sojourn to learn the language, and what it was to be a Turk, till time made her master of herself. But the Timor, her brother, diverted all this to the worst of cruelty. For, within an hour after his arrival, he caused his ' drubman ' to strip him naked, and shave his head and beard so bare as his hand. A great ring of iron, with a long stalk bowed like a sickle, was riveted about his neck, and a coat [put on him] made of ulgry's hair, guarded about with a piece of an undressed skin. There were many more Christian slaves, and nearly a hundred forsados of Turks and Moors, and he being the last was the slave of slaves to them all." While at Nalbrits the English captain kept his eyes open, and his account of the Grim Tatars is careful and accurate. " So long he lived in this miser- able estate, as he became a thresher at a grange in a great field, more than a league from the Timor's house. The pasha, as he oft used to visit his granges, visited him, and took occasion so to beat, spurn, and revile him, that for- getting all reason Smith beat out the Timor's brains with his threshing bat, for they have no flails, and, seeing his estate could be no worse than it was, clothed himself in the Timor's clothes, hid his body under the straw, filled his knapsack with corn, shut the doors, mounted his horse, and ran into the desert at all adventure." For eighteen or nineteen days he rode for very life until he reached a Muscovite outpost on the river Don ; here his irons were taken off him, and the Lady Callamata largely supplied all his wants. Thence he passed, attracting all the sym- pathy of an escaped Christian slave, through Muscovy, Hungary, and Austria until he reached Leipsic in Decem- ber 1603. There he met his old master, Prince Sigismund, who, in memory of his gallant fight at Regal, gave him a grant of arms and 500 ducats of gold. Thence he wandered on, sightseeing, through Germany, France, and Spain, until he came to Saffi, from which seaport he made an excursion to the city of Morocco and back. While at Saffi he was blown out to sea on board Captain Merham's ship, and had to go as far as the Canaries. There Merham fought two Spanish ships at once and beat them off. Smith came home to England with him, having a thousand ducats in his purse. The third period, 1605-1609, is that of Captain Smith's experiences in Virginia. Throwing himself into the colon- izing projects which were then coming to the front, he first intended to have gone out to the colony on the Oyapok in South America ; but, Captain Ley dying, and the reinforcement miscarrying, " the rest escaped as they could." Hence Smith did not leave England on this account. But he went heartily into the Virginian project with Captain Bartholomew Gosnold and others. He states that what he got in his travels he spent in colon- izing. " When I went first to these desperate designs, it cost me many a forgotten pound to hire men to go, and