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             Excerpt from "A Description of New England" (1616) by John Smith.

             The author of "A Description of New England" (1616), Captain John Smith was an English explorer best known for founding Jamestown, the first English settlement of the New World. Smith and about a hundred other Englishmen hired by the Virginia Company an English business entity whose goal was to eventually profit from the natural resources of America and businesses and industries the company could establish in America went about the difficult business of settling Virginia in the early 17th century. This excerpt from Smith's "Description of New England" extols t hard work; independence; freedom, and accomplishment through forging an independent destiny for oneself in the New World. Smith encourages his fellow Englishmen to go about the work of building, planting, fishing, and settling the new area, as a way of creating their own destinies, rather than sitting back in England waiting to inherit property, or simply being idle. As he asks rhetorically in this piece, for example ". who would live at home idly (or think in himself any worth to live) only to eat, drink, and sleep, and so die?" (p. 115). Smith also suggests in "A Description of New England" that work is its own reward, and that hard work promises its own satisfactions for those who work toward a goal, without allowing themselves to become discouraged. Smith's "A Description of New England is also perhaps the earliest work of literature written in America to argue for self-reliance; perseverance; industriousness; and personal independence, ideas that became key concepts within American thought and life.

             "A Description of New England" reads like an exhortation to Smith's fellow British settlers working with him for the Virginia Company, to work long; hard; diligently, and patiently: i.e., to follow Smith's own example, in order to create their own destinies in the New World.