by the first white man, probably, who ever saw her, and in whose behalf, at the above date, she displayed the tenderness and true grandeur of her

nature.

The colonists, writes Mr. Hildreth, in his new History of the United States, "were specially instructed to seek for a passage to the South Sea; and it was thought that possibly the Chickahoming might lead thither. Having ascended as high as he could in his barge, Captain Smith followed up the stream in a canoe, with two colonists and two Indians for companions; and when the canoe would float no longer, he left the two colonists to guard it, and struck inland with a single Indian as a guide. Set upon unexpectedly by a large party of natives, who had already surprised and killed the two men left to guard the canoe, Smith bound his Indian guide to his arm as a buckler, and made a vigorous defence, killing three of the assailants; but as he retreated backward, he presently sank into a miry swamp, and was taken prisoner. His captors would have killed him, but he amused them with a pocket compass. Carried in a sort of triumph through several villages, he was taken before Powhatan, the same chief whom he had visited in company with Newport. An attempt was made to engage his services at least so Smith understood it—in surprising the colonists at Jamestown. Having failed in this, after much consultation, it was resolved to put him to death. He was drag ged to the ground and his head placed upon a stone;

Powhatan raised a club to dash out his brains"and now view the highly dramatic scene which follows, as pictured by Mrs. Sigourney in a few lines of masterly coloring:

The sentenced captive see-his brow how white!
Stretched on the turf, his manly form lies low,
The war club poises for its fatal blow,

The death-mist swims before his darkened sight;
Forth springs the child, in tearful pity bold,

Her head on his reclines, her arms his neck enfold,

"The child! what madness fires her? Hence! Depart!
Fly, daughter, fly! before the death-stroke rings;
Divide her, warriors! from that English heart."
In vain, for with convulsive grasp she clings: *
She claims a pardon from her frowning sire;
Her pleading tones subdue his gathered ire,
And so, uplifting high his feathery dart,
That doting father gave the child her will,

And bade the victim live and be his servant still.

After Smith had been an inmate of Powhatan's wigwam awhile, he was permitted to leave the Indians. Sometime after this the savages, becoming alarmed by witnessing Smith's wonderful feats, "laid a plan to get him into their power under the pretence of wishing an interview with him in their territory. But Pocahontas, knowing the desire of the warriors, left the wigwam after her father had gone to sleep, and ran more than nine miles through the woods to inform her friend Captain Smith of the danger that awaited him, either by stratagem or attack."

Subsequently the colony at Jamestown was threatened with famine, when, accompanied by a few companions, she was accustomed to go to the fort

every day or two with baskets of corn, and thus

her

"6 'generous hand vouchsafed its tireless aid To guard a nation's germ."

At the age of seventeen or eighteen, Pocahontas married a pious young English officer, named Thomas Rolfe, and went with him to England, where she was baptized and called Rebecca, and where she soon died. Well may it be said of her, in the language of the poet, slightly altered,

It is not meet such names should moulder in the grave.

HANNAH DUSTIN.

Experience teaches us

That resolution 's a sole help at need;

And this, my lord, our honor teacheth us,
That we be bold in every enterprise.

SHAKSPEARE,

On the fifteenth of March, 1697, a band of Indian prowlers broke into the house of Mr. Dustin, of Haverhill, Massachusetts, and captured his wife, her nurse, and a babe about one week old. The last was killed before leaving the town. The other two were marched through the wilderness for several days till they came to a halt on an island in the Merrimac river about six miles above Concord, New Hampshire. There they were placed in a wigwam occupied by two men, three women, seven children of theirs, and an English boy who had been captured about a year previous at Worcester, Massachusetts. The captives remained there till the thirtieth of that month before they planned escape. On that day the boy was requested by Mrs. Dustin to ask his master where to strike "to kill instantly;"

*Mrs. Mary Neff.

and the savage was simple enough to tell, and also instructed him in the art of scalping. "At night," to use the concise language of Mr. Bancroft, "while the household slumbers, the captives, each with a tomahawk, strike vigorously, and fleetly, and with division of labor, and of the twelve sleepers, ten lie dead; of one squaw the wound was not mortal; one child was spared from design. The love of glory next asserted its power; and the gun and tomahawk of the murderer of her infant, and a bag heaped full of scalps were choicely kept as trophies of the heroine. -The streams are the guides which God has set for the stranger in the wilderness: in a bark canoe, the three descend the Merrimac to the English settlements, astonishing their friends by their escape, and filling the land with wonder at their successful daring."

Mrs. Dustin had the happiness of meeting her husband and seven children, who had escaped from the house before the savages entered, and the honor of a very handsome present from Colonel Nicholson, governor of Maryland, as a reward for her heroism.*

* Eleven years after the capture of Mrs. Dustin, a party of French and Indians from Canada made an attack upon the inhabitants of Haverhill, and killed and captured about forty persons. Several women exhibited on the occasion a remarkable degree of sagacity, courage and presence of mind. We condense from Mirick's History of Haverhill.

Ann Whittaker escaped the tomahawk by hiding in an apple chest under the stairs. — A negro servant, named Hagar, covered a couple of children with tubs in the cellar and then concealed herself behind some meat barrels. The Indians trod on a foot of one of the children and took meat from the barrel behind which Hagar had hidden,