AMERICAN LITERATURE. PERIOD I.-COLONIAL. 1607-1765. OLONIAL America is divided historically into two periods. The first beginning with the settlement of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, ends with the date of Bacon's Rebellion and King Philip's War, in 1676. In those seventy years a section of the English people snatched from country towns and busy cities made new dwellings in a primitive and dangerous wilderness, where they were home-sick and yearning to keep in touch with absent friends; or, as in the case of the Puritans, in love with their freedom, perilous as it was, and anxious to coax and win others to try the dangers of the deep and of their environment, for sweet Liberty's sake. Naturally enough, their records were, at first, in the form of letters, the daily happenings, work, perils of the colonists, with accounts of strange fauna and flora, and descriptions of that horrible man-monster, the American Indian. Yet Captain John Smith wrote a book called "The True Relation of Virginia" (1608), enlarged later into "The General History of Virginia," mostly a compilation, vigorously colored with his own personality, and containing the rude germ of the charming legend of Pocahontas. In the second period Robert Berkeley wrote a "History of Virginia," published in London in 1705, less personal, full of observation of plants, animals and Indians, but not free from prejudice. The Virginians were churchmen and royalists, a wealthy, ༼ད༽ |