One morning, shortly after the episode of the medicine men, Captain Smith learned, to his great relief, that commands had been received for his removal at once to the capital. He had no idea what, if any fate had been determined upon for him, but he was heartily tired of the weary wanderings and suspense of the past weeks and ready to face the worst rather than prolong the uncertainty. Werowocomico, the principal seat of the “Emperor” Powhatan, was short of a day’s journey distant, and Opechancanough, with his illustrious prisoner, reached the town as the early winter night was setting in. The capital of the Werowance consisted of about thirty large wigwams, or “houses,” as the earlier writers called them, and a number of smaller ones. These for the nonce were reinforced by the tepees, or tents, of the many Indians who had come in from distant villages for the occasion which was no ordinary one. The large wigwams were made in the form of the rounded tops of the wagons called “prairie schooners,” which in the days before railroads were used upon the continent of North America for long-distance travel. These wagon tops were sometimes taken off and placed upon the ground to serve as tents, when the occupants would be lying in a contrivance exactly like the ancient wigwam in shape. The latter was commonly big enough to contain a whole family and sometimes harbored an entire band of fifty or sixty natives. In that case it had two rows of apartments running along the sides and a common hall in the middle. The structure was composed of a framework of boughs covered with the bark of trees or with skins--sometimes a combination of both. Smith’s captors approached the capital in triumphal fashion, chanting their song of victory and flourishing their weapons in exultant pride. The town was prepared to give them the reception usually accorded to victorious warriors returning from battle. Great fires burned at frequent points illuming the scene with a garish light in which the bedaubed and bedizened savages looked doubly hideous. Chiefs and people were attired in all their fantastic finery and even the children made some show of tawdry ornament. The women had prepared food with even more than ordinary profusion and had laid the mats in anticipation of the prospective feasting. A double line of fully armed and foully painted warriors--“grim courtiers,” Smith calls them--formed an avenue to the “King’s house” along which the captive passed into the presence of the great Werowance, whilst the spectators “stood wondering at him as he had been a monster.”