Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/342

Rh I shall now remain quietly here till after the University examination, when I shall return to Richmond; and after two days' stay there, pay a visit to Harper's ferry, one of the most romantic and beautiful tracts, it is said, in Virginia, at the union of the two rivers Potomac and Schenandoah—that lively little river which dances past Weiher's Grotto.

I intend to be ready to leave America by the end of August; and I must, therefore, give up the desire which I had to see more of the mountain districts of Virginia. Besides the journey by diligence is too fatiguing for me, and by carriage, too expensive. And after all, Virginia has no mountains which can be compared in grandeur to the White Mountains, and those I shall visit.

Whilst I linger in this beautiful and peaceful home—in which a good young couple make each other happy, and participate in the enjoyment of life's pleasures with a circle of friends—I read the early history of Virginia, and picture it to myself.

The earliest known history of Virginia is rendered remarkable by a poetical incident so beautiful and so affecting that I must transcribe it here for you, and copy for you also the portrait of its heroine, the young Indian girl, Matoaka or Pocahontas.

The accounts which the early English navigators brought home of the beautiful and fertile country lying on the eastern shores of North America, which they were the first to examine during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, so enchanted that monarch that she resolved to connect this new country more closely with herself, by giving to it the name which she herself loved to bear, that of Virginia. Virginia became the symbolic name of the new virgin-soil; and England first knew it under this name. Even the pilgrims from Leyden, who were borne by stress of wind and waves to the shore of Massachusetts, thought