It has been said that Pocahontas died of smallpox. We know nothing from printed record or parish register except that she was buried in the chancel of the church at Gravesend in the County of Kent; that the church was destroyed by fire in 1727, and a new church, St. George's, erected upon the site of the old one; and that the Rev. John H. Haslam, later rector, placed a commemorative tablet in the chancel recording all that careful investigation has yielded of the spot where her ashes lie. One could wish that she might have found her last resting-place under the skies of her native country; that from her "unpolluted flesh violets"--the lovely wild violets of Virginia--might "spring" with every return of summer. The infant son of Pocahontas, Thomas Rolfe, was placed under the care of Sir Lewis Stukely, Vice Admiral of Devon; and here again the story of the Indian girl touches that of Sir Walter Raleigh.[82] It was this Stukely who afterwards basely betrayed his friend, Sir Walter, and by this treachery covered himself with infamy. The son of Pocahontas did not long breathe the atmosphere polluted by this traitor. He was removed to London and educated by his uncle, Henry Rolfe. Thomas Rolfe's immediate descendants married into the families of Bolling, Randolph, Gay, Eldridge, and Murray. No trace of the Indian in feature or character survives in those highly esteemed Virginia families. The haughty, vindictive spirit of the cruel Powhatan may have burnt itself out in the veins of John Randolph of Roanoke, who left no descendants. Pocahontas will always be interesting to the student of colonial history. The story of her life was a strange one, and stranger the story to its end. Her father and her kindred were consigned to the tomb with the rites and lamentations of the savage, and with wild heathenish invocations to the Devil of their imaginations. She, alone of all her tribe, simply as a consequence of one noble act, received Christian burial, in hallowed Christian soil, and is embalmed forever in grateful Christian hearts. CHAPTER XXII The time is at hand when the curtain must be rung down upon the scenes I have tried to present. I was constrained to follow the fortunes of John Smith and Pocahontas, for do what we will we cannot eliminate them from an all-important place in the early history of Virginia. Others were just as deserving, but the historians of their day failed to leave us material regarding them. Like my great favourite, the modest, brave George Percy, who lived long at Jamestown, they quietly slipped back into the shadows from which they only emerged to suffer and toil awhile for the common good.