It might entertain but it would too long detain us to repeat Smith's
information, probably all secondhand, about this barbarous region. We
must confine ourselves to the fortunes of our hero. All his hope of
deliverance from thraldom was in the love of Tragabigzanda, whom he
firmly believed was ignorant of his bad usage. But she made no sign.
Providence at length opened a way for his escape. He was employed in
thrashing in a field more than a league from the Tymor's home. The
Bashaw used to come to visit his slave there, and beat, spurn, and
revile him. One day Smith, unable to control himself under these
insults, rushed upon the Tymor, and beat out his brains with a thrashing
bat--“for they had no flails,” he explains--put on the dead man's
clothes, hid the body in the straw, filled a knapsack with corn, mounted
his horse and rode away into the unknown desert, where he wandered many
days before he found a way out. If we may believe Smith this wilderness
was more civilized in one respect than some parts of our own land, for
on all the crossings of the roads were guide-boards. After traveling
sixteen days on the road that leads to Muscova, Smith reached a
Muscovite garrison on the River Don. The governor knocked off the iron
from his neck and used him so kindly that he thought himself now risen
from the dead. With his usual good fortune there was a lady to take
interest in him--“the good Lady Callamata largely supplied all his
wants.”
After Smith had his purse filled by Sigismund he made a thorough tour of
Europe, and passed into Spain, where being satisfied, as he says, with
Europe and Asia, and understanding that there were wars in Barbary, this
restless adventurer passed on into Morocco with several comrades on a
French man-of-war. His observations on and tales about North Africa
are so evidently taken from the books of other travelers that they
add little to our knowledge of his career. For some reason he found no
fighting going on worth his while. But good fortune attended his
return. He sailed in a man-of-war with Captain Merham. They made a few
unimportant captures, and at length fell in with two Spanish men-of-war,
which gave Smith the sort of entertainment he most coveted. A sort of
running fight, sometimes at close quarters, and with many boardings and
repulses, lasted for a couple of days and nights, when having battered
each other thoroughly and lost many men, the pirates of both nations
separated and went cruising, no doubt, for more profitable game. Our
wanderer returned to his native land, seasoned and disciplined for the
part he was to play in the New World. As Smith had traveled all over
Europe and sojourned in Morocco, besides sailing the high seas, since he
visited Prince Sigismund in December, 1603, it was probably in the
year 1605 that he reached England. He had arrived at the manly age of
twenty-six years, and was ready to play a man's part in the wonderful
drama of discovery and adventure upon which the Britons were then
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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