Note Note 3, page 38 — BOOK I. RISE OF THE FIRST ENGLISH COLONY.

His later years. He afterward explored the New England coast with characteristic thoroughness and intelligence. What he published in his later years by way of advice on the subject of colony-planting is full of admirable good sense. With rare foresight he predicted the coming importance of the colonial trade and the part to be played by the American fisheries in promoting the greatness of England by "breeding mariners." He only of the men of his time suspected the imperial size and future greatness of North America. He urged that the colonies should not annoy "with large pilotage and such like dues" those who came to trade in their ports. Low customs, he says, enrich a people. This is a strange doctrine in an age when foreign trade seemed almost an evil, and false conceptions of economic principles were nearly universal. Captain Smith's words are often pregnant with a wit whose pungency is delightful. In mental and physical hardihood, and in what may be called shiftiness, as well as in proneness to exaggeration and in boastfulness, he was in some sense a typical American pioneer—a forerunner of the daring and ready-witted men who have subdued a savage continent. Note 3.