To add to the misery of the time, Wingfield, their president, a selfish, unprincipled man, was found to have appropriated the best stores to his own use, himself living luxuriously, whilst the others were starving. On his detection, he attempted to escape to the West Indies, in a bark which had been left for the use of the colonists, but was prevented and expelled from the council. A new president was appointed, but one wholly inadequate to the exigencies of the colony, and by a sort of law of necessity, rather than by general consent, the management of all fell into the hands of Smith, the only man whose wisdom and energy were sufficient to retrieve their desperate affairs. Smith was possessed of a spirit of heroic daring. He had set out on brave adventures when a boy, and though not yet thirty, had been a champion in the service of humanity and Christianity. In his youth he had fought for the independence of the Batavian republic, in the wars of the Low Countries. He had travelled through France, had visited Egypt, and returned by Italy. Again, eager for action and glory, he had fought against the followers of Mahomet on the borders of Hungary, and during these combats had distinguished himself, both with the Christians and infidels, by his magnanimity and bravery. His extraordinary courage had attracted the notice and gained for him the favour of the unfortunate Sigismund Bathori, Prince of Transylvania. At length, being overcome in a sudden skirmish among the wild valleys of Wallachia, he was left on the field of battle severely wounded. Being now taken captive he was sold as a slave in Constantinople. But here his romantic fortune by no means deserted him. A Turkish lady had compassion on his youth and sufferings, and wishing to befriend him sent him to a fortress in the Crimea. The intentions of his protectress were, however, defeated for some time; he fell into the hands of a savage taskmaster, whom however he killed, and then seizing a horse, gallopped away to freedom on the confines of Russia. Here again, the kindness of woman aided him in his extreme need; and thence, travelling across the country to Transylvania, he bade farewell to his brothers in arms, resolving to return “to his own country.” On his way home, however, tidings of civil war in northern Africa drew his steps aside, and he had many a perilous adventure in the realms of Morocco. Reaching England, he heard of the projected colonisation of North America, a scheme so entirely consonant with his nature, that he entered into it at once, with all the energy and enthusiasm of his character. And now here he was, as we have seen, in the autumn of 1607, the sole hope and support of the infant colony of Virginia, which, without his integrity and force of character, his cheerful temperament and sagacity, must have miserably perished.