My chivalrous friend, John Esten Cooke, the Virginia historian, takes the liberty, after the manner of latter-day society reporters, of arraying the lady he describes according to his own taste. He has dressed Pocahontas on the occasion of Captain Smith's reception in a robe of doe-skin, lined with down from the breast of the wood pigeon, with coral ear-rings, coral bracelets on wrists and ankles, and a white plume in her hair, the badge of royal blood. Thus my friend saw her, casting his eyes backward two hundred and seventy-five years; but John Smith, who saw her face to face, has, in his picture of the scene which made her famous, presented her clad in her own charms and in these alone. Before the age of thirteen, the early historians[31] tell us, Indian children wore no garments. Their mothers rubbed into their skins ointments which rendered them proof against "certaine biting gnats such as the Greekes called _scynipes_ that swarm within the marshe,"--our snipelike long-billed mosquitoes,--and also against extremes of heat and cold. The paint-pot could furnish the little maid with a new dress every day, if she desired it--red, white, or even black! I am afraid the little princess whose statue is to adorn the Jamestown Park, fared like the rest of her people, unless the severe cold constrained her to encumber her active limbs with a "mantell of feathers." When a loud shout announced the approach of the escort conducting the distinguished prisoner, Powhatan made haste to put himself into position to receive them. Forty or fifty of his tallest warriors stood without and formed a lane through which the captive was conducted. Within, the emperor was discovered lying in an easy Oriental fashion before a great fire, and upon a dais a foot high covered with ten or twelve mats. "He[32] was hung with manie chaynes of great Pearles about his neck, and covered with a great covering of raccoon skins and all the tayles hanging by. On either hand did sit a young wench of 16 or 18 years, and along on each side the house two rowes of men and behind them as many women with all their heads and shoulders painted red, many of their heads bedecked with the white down of birds but every one with something; and a great chayne of white beads about their necks. Powhatan held himself with such a grand majesticall countenance as drave me into admiration to see such state in a naked savage. He is of personage a tall, well-proportioned man with a sower looke. His head is somewhat gray, his beard so thinne it seemeth none at all. His age neare 60,[33] of a very able and hardy body to endure any labour. This King will make his own robes, shooes, pots, bowes, and arrows; and plant, hunt, or doe anything as well as the rest."