Most of Smith's
companions were unfitted for the ordeal which he survived. They
perished miserably in the "starving time." But he was of the
stuff from which triumphant immigrants have ever been made, and
it is our recognition of the presence of these qualities in the
Captain which makes us think of his books dealing with America as
if they were "American books." There are other narratives by
colonists temporarily residing in the Virginia plantations which
gratify our historical curiosity, but which we no more consider a
part of American literature than the books written by Stevenson,
Kipling, and Wells during their casual visits to this country.
But Captain Smith's "True Relation" impresses us, like Mark
Twain's "Roughing It," with being somehow true to type. In each
of these books the possible unveracities in detail are a
confirmation of their representative American character.
In other words, we have unconsciously formulated, in the course
of centuries, a general concept of "the pioneer." Novelists,
poets, and historians have elaborated this conception.
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