It was all in vain so far as Smith’s fortunes were concerned.  The planting and subjection of New England went on, and Smith had no part in it except to describe it.  The Brownists, the Anabaptists, the Papists, the Puritans, the Separatists, and “such factious Humorists,” were taking possession of the land that Smith claimed to have “discovered,” and in which he had no foothold.  Failing to get employment anywhere, he petitioned the Virginia Company for a reward out of the treasury in London or the profits in Virginia.

At one of the hot discussions in 1623 preceding the dissolution of the Virginia Company by the revocation of their charter, Smith was present, and said that he hoped for his time spent in Virginia he should receive that year a good quantity of tobacco.  The charter was revoked in 1624 after many violent scenes, and King James was glad to be rid of what he called “a seminary for a seditious parliament.”  The company had made use of lotteries to raise funds, and upon their disuse, in 1621, Smith proposed to the company to compile for its benefit a general history.  This he did, but it does not appear that the company took any action on his proposal.  At one time he had been named, with three others, as a fit person for secretary, on the removal of Mr. Pory, but as only three could be balloted for, his name was left out.  He was, however, commended as entirely competent.

After the dissolution of the companies, and the granting of new letters-patent to a company of some twenty noblemen, there seems to have been a project for dividing up the country by lot.  Smith says:  “All this they divided in twenty parts, for which they cast lots, but no lot for me but Smith’s Isles, which are a many of barren rocks, the most overgrown with shrubs, and sharp whins, you can hardly pass them; without either grass or wood, but three or four short shrubby old cedars.”

The plan was not carried out, and Smith never became lord of even these barren rocks, the Isles of Shoals.  That he visited them when he sailed along the coast is probable, though he never speaks of doing so.  In the Virginia waters he had left a cluster of islands bearing his name also.

In the Captain’s “True Travels,” published in 1630, is a summary of the condition of colonization in New England from Smith’s voyage thence till the settlement of Plymouth in 1620, which makes an appropriate close to our review of this period: 

“When I first went to the North part of Virginia, where the Westerly Colony had been planted, it had dissolved itself within a year, and there was not one Christian in all the land.  I was set forth at the sole charge of four merchants of London; the Country being then reputed by your westerlings a most rocky, barren, desolate desart; but the good return I brought from thence, with the maps and relations of the Country, which I made so manifest, some of them did believe me, and they were well embraced, both