Even as late as this time many supposed New England to be an island, but Smith again asserts, what he had always maintained—­that it was a part of the continent.  The expedition of Winthrop was scattered by a storm, and reached Salem with the loss of threescore dead and many sick, to find as many of the colony dead, and all disconsolate.  Of the discouraged among them who returned to England Smith says:  “Some could not endure the name of a bishop, others not the sight of a cross or surplice, others by no means the book of common prayer.  This absolute crew, only of the Elect, holding all (but such as themselves) reprobates and castaways, now made more haste to return to Babel, as they termed England, than stay to enjoy the land they called Canaan.”  Somewhat they must say to excuse themselves.  Therefore, “some say they could see no timbers of ten foot diameter, some the country is all wood; others they drained all the springs and ponds dry, yet like to famish for want of fresh water; some of the danger of the ratell-snake.”  To compel all the Indians to furnish them corn without using them cruelly they say is impossible.  Yet this “impossible,” Smith says, he accomplished in Virginia, and offers to undertake in New England, with one hundred and fifty men, to get corn, fortify the country, and “discover them more land than they all yet know.”

This homily ends—­and it is the last published sentence of the “great Smith”—­with this good advice to the New England colonists: 

“Lastly, remember as faction, pride, and security produces nothing but confusion, misery and dissolution; so the contraries well practised will in short time make you happy, and the most admired people of all our plantations for your time in the world.

“John Smith writ this with his owne hand.”

The extent to which Smith retouched his narrations, as they grew in his imagination, in his many reproductions of them, has been referred to, and illustrated by previous quotations.  An amusing instance of his care and ingenuity is furnished by the interpolation of Pocahontas into his stories after 1623.  In his “General Historie” of 1624 he adopts, for the account of his career in Virginia, the narratives in the Oxford tract of 1612, which he had supervised.  We have seen how he interpolated the wonderful story of his rescue by the Indian child.  Some of his other insertions of her name, to bring all the narrative up to that level, are curious.  The following passages from the “Oxford Tract” contain in italics the words inserted when they were transferred to the “General Historie”: 

“So revived their dead spirits (especially the love of Pocahuntas) as all anxious fears were abandoned.”

“Part always they brought him as presents from their king, or Pocahuntas.”

In the account of the “masques” of girls to entertain Smith at Werowocomoco we read: 

“But presently Pocahuntas came, wishing him to kill her if any hurt were intended, and the beholders, which were women and children, satisfied the Captain there was no such matter.”