WHEN I went first to Virginia, I well remember we did hang an awning――which is an old sail――to three or four trees to shadow us from the sun. Our walls were rails of wood, our seats unhewed trees till we cut planks, our pulpit a bar of wood nailed to two neighboring trees. In foul weather we shifted into an old rotten tent, for we had few better; and this came by the way of adventure[327] for new. This was our church till we built a homely thing like a barn, set upon crotchets, covered with rafts, sedge, and earth: so was also the walls. The best of our houses [were] of the like curiosity,[328] but the most part far much worse workmanship, that could neither well defend[329] wind nor rain; yet we had daily common prayer morning and evening, every Sunday two sermons, and every three months the holy communion, till our minister died. But our prayers daily, with an homily on Sundays, we continued two or three years after, till more preachers came.... Notwithstanding, out of the relics of our miseries, time and experience had brought that country to a great happiness, had they not so much doted on their tobacco, on whose fumish[330] foundation there is small stability; there being so many good commodities besides. XIII.――CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH’S RECOLLECTIONS OF HIS OWN LIFE. [Also written in the last year of his life,――1631.] THE wars in Europe, Asia, and Africa, taught me how to subdue the wild savages in Virginia and New England in America.... Having been a slave to the Turks, prisoner amongst the most barbarous savages; after my deliverance commonly discovering and ranging those large rivers and unknown nations, with such a handful of ignorant companions, that the wiser sort often gave me for lost; always in mutinies, wants, and miseries; blown up with gunpowder; a long time prisoner among the French pirates, from whom escaping in a little boat by myself, and adrift all such a stormy winter night, when their ships were split, more than an hundred thousand pound lost, we had taken at sea, and most of them drowned upon the Isle of Ree,[331] not far from whence I was driven on shore in my little boat, &c.; and many a score of the worst of winter months lived in the fields; yet to have lived near thirty-seven years in the midst of wars, pestilence, and famine, by which many an hundred thousand have died about me, and scarce five living of them went first with me to Virginia, and see the fruits of my labors thus well begin to prosper,――though I have but my labor for my pains, have I not much reason both privately and publicly to acknowledge it, and give God thanks, whose omnipotent power only delivered me to do the utmost of my best to make his name known in those remote parts of the world, and his loving mercy to such a miserable sinner? BOOK XII. CHAMPLAIN ON THE WAR-PATH. (A.D. 1609.)