True Story of Captain John Smith

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Captain John Smith, says the late lamented Dr. John Fiske, in a volume of that brilliant series which his death left unhappily incomplete, is one of those persons about whom historians are still apt to lose their tempers. In this respect the present writer has endeavored not to imitate the historians, but to present the true story of this remarkable man with absolute fairness to all concerned. With this for my primary aim, the second has been to substantiate Smiths account of himself as far as possible by summoning the testimony of contemporary history, enclosing, so to speak, his autobiography in a framework of the manners and customs of the times, and thus demonstrating its thorough credibility.<br><br>The third object, and not the least important, has been to still once and for all those disturbing voices that have of late years been busy in aspersing his memory. The maps of Southern Russia and that of a portion of Transylvania published in this volume will, it is hoped, for the future, convict of simple ignorance him who doubts that John Smith fought the Turks in the Land of Zarkam, or was carried a slave and prisoner into Tartaria.