The next allusion to her is in the fourth chapter of the narratives which are appended to the “Map of Virginia,” etc.  This was sent home by Smith, with a description of Virginia, in the late autumn of 1608.  It was published at Oxford in 1612, from two to three years after Smith’s return to England.  The appendix contains the narratives of several of Smith’s companions in Virginia, edited by Dr. Symonds and overlooked by Smith.  In one of these is a brief reference to the above-quoted incident.

This Oxford tract, it is scarcely necessary to repeat, contains no reference to the saving of Smith’s life by Pocahontas from the clubs of Powhatan.

The next published mention of Pocahontas, in point of time, is in Chapter X. and the last of the appendix to the “Map of Virginia,” and is Smith’s denial, already quoted, of his intention to marry Pocahontas.  In this passage he speaks of her as “at most not past 13 or 14 years of age.”  If she was thirteen or fourteen in 1609, when Smith left Virginia, she must have been more than ten when he wrote his “True Relation,” composed in the winter of 1608, which in all probability was carried to England by Captain Nelson, who left Jamestown June 2d.

The next contemporary authority to be consulted in regard to Pocahontas is William Strachey, who, as we have seen, went with the expedition of Gates and Somers, was shipwrecked on the Bermudas, and reached Jamestown May 23 or 24, 1610, and was made Secretary and Recorder of the colony under Lord Delaware.  Of the origin and life of Strachey, who was a person of importance in Virginia, little is known.  The better impression is that he was the William Strachey of Saffron Walden, who was married in 1588 and was living in 1620, and that it was his grandson of the same name who was subsequently connected with the Virginia colony.  He was, judged by his writings, a man of considerable education, a good deal of a pedant, and shared the credulity and fondness for embellishment of the writers of his time.  His connection with Lord Delaware, and his part in framing the code of laws in Virginia, which may be inferred from the fact that he first published them, show that he was a trusted and capable man.

William Strachey left behind him a manuscript entitled “The Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britanica, &c., gathered and observed as well by those who went first thither, as collected by William Strachey, gent., three years thither, employed as Secretaire of State.”  How long he remained in Virginia is uncertain, but it could not have been “three years,” though he may have been continued Secretary for that period, for he was in London in 1612, in which year he published there the laws of Virginia which had been established by Sir Thomas Gates May 24, 1610, approved by Lord Delaware June 10, 1610, and enlarged by Sir Thomas Dale June 22, 1611.

The “Travaile” was first published by the Hakluyt Society in 1849.  When and where it was written, and whether it was all composed at one time, are matters much in dispute.  The first book, descriptive of Virginia and its people, is complete; the second book, a narration of discoveries in America, is unfinished.  Only the first book concerns us.  That Strachey made notes in Virginia may be assumed, but the book was no doubt written after his return to England.