was gold. Soon nearly every one was hard at work digging it. Smith laughed at them, but they insisted on loading a ship with the worthless stuff and sending it to London. That was the last that was heard of it. 5 The people had wasted their time digging this shining dirt when they should have been hoeing their gardens. Soon they began to be in great want of food. The captain started off with a party of men to buy corn of the Indians. The Indians contrived a cunning plot to kill the whole 10 party. Smith luckily found it out; seizing the chief by the hair, he pressed the muzzle of a pistol against his heart and gave him his choice— "Corn, or your life!" He got the corn, and plenty of it. Captain Smith then set part of the men to planting corn, 15 so that they might raise what they needed. The rest of the settlers he took with him into the woods to chop down trees and saw them into boards to send to England. Many tried to escape from this labor, but Smith said, " Men who are able to dig for gold are able to chop." Then he made 20 this rule: "He who will not work shall not eat." Rather than lose his dinner the laziest man now took his ax and set off for the woods. But though the choppers worked, they grumbled. They liked to see the chips fly and to hear the great trees "thunder 25 as they fell," but the ax handles raised blisters on their fingers. These blisters made the men swear, so that commonly one would hear "a loud oath" at every third stroke of the ax. Smith said the swearing must be stopped. He had each man's oaths numbered. When the day's work was done, every offender was called up; his oaths were counted; then he was told to hold up his right hand, and 5 a can of cold water was poured down his sleeve for each oath. This new style of water cure did wonders; in a short time hardly an oath would be heard in a whole week — it was just chop, chop, chop, and the madder the men got, the more the chips would fly. Captain Smith had not been governor very long when he met with a terrible accident. He was out in a boat, and a bag of gunpowder he had with him exploded. He was so badly hurt that he had to go back to England to get proper treatment for his wounds. He returned to America a number of years later, explored the coast north of Virginia, and gave it the name of New England, but he never went back to Jamestown again. He died in London, and was buried in a famous old church in that city. QUESTIONS AND HELPS 1. Tell what you can about Elizabeth. 2. Who was Sir Walter Raleigh? 3. From what country did Raleigh send out his ships? 4. Where is Roanoke Island? 5. What kind of tree is a cedar? Did you ever see one? If so, where? 6. Where did the Indians get their turkeys? 7. What was the title of honor that Queen 10 15 20 20 Elizabeth gave to Raleigh, and why did she give it? 8. What two American plants did the emigrants send back to England, and how well did they grow in England and Ireland? 9. What happened to the first settlement in Virginia? 10. What can you tell about Virginia Dare? 11. What good came of Raleigh's attempt to settle Virginia? 12. What did King James do to Raleigh and why? 13. Who was Captain Smith, and what happened on his first voyage to America? 14. Where is Chesapeake Bay? 15. What did the emigrants call their settlement and why? What did they call the river up which they sailed? 16. For what purpose did most of them come to America, and what did Captain Smith want them to do in the new land? 17. What can you tell about Captain Smith's trial? 18. How did the Jamestown settlers live during the first few months? What can you say of their first church? What serious trouble did they have during the first summer? 19. What did some of them try to do, and what did Captain Smith do to stop them? 20. How did the Indians first receive the white men, and why did their feelings toward the white men change? 21. Tell what you can of the way in which the Indians lived, of their wigwams, of the work done by their men and women, of their arms, their hatchets and knives, their way of traveling, their boats. 22. What happened to Smith and his company when they started to look for the Pacific Ocean? Tell the story of Pocahontas. 23. To what office was Captain Smith appointed, and how did he treat the "gold-diggers"? 24. How did Smith get corn? 25. How did he make the men work? 26. How did he make them stop swearing? 27. Why did he go back to England? 28. What else can you tell about him? Mr. Montgomery, who wrote this story, is the author of several histories. His best-known book is "Leading Facts of American History." This story of the settlement of Virginia is taken from his "Beginner's American History." You will find in the same book other interesting stories from the history of our country. More about the early settlement of Virginia will be found in Cooke's "Stories of the Old Dominion" and Higginson's "Young Folks' Book of American Explorers." jury (ju'rỹ): a number of men chosen to try an accused person and to decide whether he shall be punished. rifle (rifle): a gun. explore (ex plōre'): to search carefully. oath (ōath): a swearing. offender (of fěn ́dër): one who does Raleigh (Raleigh). (For memorizing) Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise, The queen of the world, and the child of the skies! TIMOTHY DWIGHT AMERICA SAMUEL FRANCIS SMITH [The hymn "America" has been sung by millions of people. We always sing it when we meet together and wish to show how much we love our country. The tune is a very old one. Some say it came from France, some 5 say from England, but we know that a tune very much like it was sung in England more than two hundred years ago, with Latin words which also told how much the singer loved his country. Some one in England translated this Latin hymn into English, changing it a little and making 10 of it the English national hymn, "God save the King." Then some one in Germany wrote a hymn very much like it in the German language and the German people sing that in the same way. Russian words were also set to it and it was used for many years as a national hymn in 15 Russia, until the music of the present Russian hymn was written. Then in 1832 Samuel F. Smith, an American, found the tune in a German music book, and he wrote an American hymn to fit the music. It happened in this way: Mr. Smith had been out of college only about three 20 years. He had graduated from Harvard in the same class with Oliver Wendell Holmes, the poet, and was at that time reading and translating German. One day Lowell |