Page:Pocahontas, and Other Poems.djvu/45

Rh raged with bitterness was terminated, and the Red Rose of Lancaster, and the White Rose of York, ceased to be the unnatural symbols of bloodshed.

On the 12th of June, 1616, Mr. Rolfe, with his Indian wife, who, after her baptism, was known by the name of the Lady Rebecca, arrived in England. Her merits had preceded her, and secured for her the attentions and hospitality of persons of rank and influence. The queen of James I., the reigning monarch, treated her with affability and respect. "It pleased both the king's and queen's majesties," writes Captain Smith, "honourably to esteem her, accompanied with that honourable lady, the Lady Delaware, and that honourable lord, her husband, and divers other persons of good quality, both publicly, and at the masks and concerts, to her great satisfaction and content."

The mode of computation by cutting notches upon a stick prevailed among many of our aboriginal tribes. One of the council of Powhatan, who accompanied Pocahontas, was directed in this manner to mark the number of the people he might meet. He obtained a very long cane on his landing, and commenced the task. But he soon became weary of this manner of taking the census, and, on his return home, said to his king, "count the stars in the sky, the leaves on the trees, the sands on the seashore,—but not the people of England."

Early in the year 1617, while preparing to return to her native land, she was taken sick, and died, at the age of twenty-two. She was buried at Gravesend. Her firmness and resignation proved the sincerity of her piety; and, as Bancroft eloquently observes, "she was saved, as if by the hand of mercy, from beholding the extermination of the tribes from which she sprang, leaving a spotless name, and dwelling in memory under the form of perpetual youth."