Page:Pocahontas, and Other Poems.djvu/42

26

''The fragrant offspring of the genial morn They duly brought.''

"At the beginning of each day they assembled in the little church, which was kept neatly trimmed with the wild flowers of the country."—Bancroft, vol. 1, page 141.

"A great part of the new company, who came out in 1609," says the historian Stith, "consisted of unruly sparks, packed off by their friends, to escape worse destinies at home. The rest were chiefly made up of poor gentlemen, broken tradesmen, footmen, and such others as were much fitter to spoil and ruin a commonwealth than to help to raise and maintain one. 'When you send again,' Captain Smith was constrained to write to the Corporation in London, 'I entreat you, rather send but thirty carpenters, husbandmen, gardeners, fishermen, blacksmiths, masons, and diggers up of trees' roots, than a thousand of such as we have.

"The morning-star of the church was the Rev. Mr. Hunt, sent out by the London company in 1606, among the leaders of the infant colony. It was he who administered the sacrament of the Lord's supper for the first time in Virginia, at Jamestown, the first permanent habitation of the English in America, and the site of the first Christian temple. He was a man of a truly humble, meek, and peaceful spirit; and it is impossible now to estimate the value of the beneficent influence he exercised upon the fortunes of the colony. His kind offices, as peace-maker, were frequently interposed to harmonize differences which would have been fatal to the enterprise; and his example of suffering affliction, and of patience in sickness, in poverty, in peril, cheered his drooping companions—inspiring them with such fortitude, and stimulating them to such efforts, as, with the blessing of Providence, enabled them to maintain their difficult positions."—Rev. Philip Slaughter.

''The mighty monarch of the tribes that roam A thousand forests.''

Powhatan, the king of the country where the founders of