But the companions of his second voyage were by no means of this stamp: the bulk of them were "gentlemen," who had no familiarity with hard fare and hard work, and expected nature to provide for them in the wilderness as bountifully as the London caterers had done at home. To the accident which brought Gosnold to a southerly instead of a northerly port on this occasion may be due the fact that Virginia instead of Massachusetts became the home of the emigrant cavaliers. Had they, as well as the Puritans, chosen New England for their abiding place, an amalgamation might have taken place which would have vitally modified later American history. But destiny kept them apart in place as well as in sentiment and training; and it is only in our own day that Reconstruction, and the development of means of intercommunication, bid fair to make a homogeneous people out of the diverse elements which for so many generations recognized at most only an outward political bond. Captain John Smith, fortunately, was neither a cavalier nor a simple mariner, but a man in a class by himself, and just at that juncture the most useful that could possibly have been attached to this adventure. His career even before the present period had been so romantic that, partly for that reason, and partly because he himself was his own chief chronicler, historians have been prone to discredit or modify many of its episodes. But what we know of Smith from other than a Smith source tallies so well with the stories which rest upon his sole authority that there seems to be no sound cause for rejecting the latter. After making all deductions, he remains a remarkable personage, and his influence upon the promotion of the English colonial scheme was wholly beneficial. He was brave, ingenious, indefatigable, prudent and accomplished; he knew what should be done, and was ever foremost in doing it He took hold of the helpless and slow-witted colonists as a master carpenter handles blocks of wood, and transformed them into an efficient and harmonious structure, strong enough to withstand the first onsets of misfortune, and to endure until the arrival of recruits from home placed them beyond all danger of calamity.