A born fighter was this Lincolnshire boy, who very early ran away from home, "foreign countries for to see." He fought in France, the Netherlands, and Italy; he fought the Spanish, Tartars and Turks; and blazoned on his escutcheon were the heads of three Turkish champions that he had severed in single combat.

He encountered shipwreck and slavery; and a veritable knight-errant of English chivalry, he returned to London, at the age of twenty-five- a battle-scarred hero.

Then catching Gosnold's enthusiasm, he was seized with a mania for colonisation, and being just in time, he started in 1607, with the motley crew for Jamestown. They sailed for the riches of the South Sea - they found as their "El Dorado " only cotton and tobacco; but dependable Captain Smith endured hardships and disappointments with optimism.

In his little pinnace, Discovery, he explored the Virginian bays, so carefully surveying the coast, that among his works he published, in 1612, “A Map of Virginia, with a Description of the Country, the Commodities, People, Government, and Religion a voluminous title, but it was a fashion in those days to make a title a summary of the contents of a book.

Captain Smith bartered so skilfully with the Indians that he kept the colony from starvation. His

services were of unquestioned value: at one time. governor at another barely escaping the gallows

his zeal being always greater than his discretion. After hundred of settlers had been added to the colony, he was removed; returning afterwards to explore the New England shores, he received from King James the title "Admiral of New England." All told, he was in America less than three years.

Captain Smith's life did not seem adapted to literary achievement, but he wrote two booklets here which gave him a place in colonial literature. His other works belong to the long, quieter years that followed his going back to England.

It is strange to think of the hardy soldier, seated in his aboriginal hut of logs and mud, and on an improvised desk with goose-quill pen, recounting his deeds. His apology is, that he "admired those whose pens had writ what their swords had done." He explained that he could not "write as a clerk, but as a soldier," and he begs his friends and wellwishers to accept the results!

There being no printing-press in America, his first writings appeared in London, in 1608-the year that Milton was born. Eight volumes, large and small, related to Virginia, giving account "of Such Occurrences and Accidents of Note as hath Happened" there. In fact, Captain Smith must not only have interested others in book-making but also tempted many to the colony.

His best book, "A General History of Virginia,’ is a rough-hewn recountal of the initial contact with the wilderness, made by the adventurous pen of one who was always the centre of the adventures! His fault was boastfulness - but had he not a right to glory in his great deeds?

In speaking of Virginia, he quaintly says:

"There is but one entrance into this country, and that is at the mouth of a goodly bay eighteen or twenty miles broad. . Within is a country that may have the prerogative over the most pleasant places known, for earth and heaven never agreed better to frame a place for man's habitation. The mildness of the air, the fertility of the soil, and the situation of the rivers are as propitious to the use of man, as no place is more convenient for pleasure, profit, and man's sustenance, under any latitude or climate. So, then, here is a place, a nurse for soldiers, a practice for mariners, a trade for merchants, a reward for the good, and that which is most of all, a business to bring such poor infidels to the knowledge of God and His Holy Gospel."

Recall these words to-day! Think of his Old Point Comfort- of the many that have since found comfort within its harbour; and of its Military School which has become truly “ a nurse for soldiers "; of Hampton Roads and "its practice for mariners"; of "the trade for merchants," at Newport News and Norfolk; and best of all, of the gracious Hampton Institute, with its civilising and Christianising influences. Was not Captain Smith,