A Century Too Soon: The Age of Tyranny

by John R. Musick

The furrow followed free;

We were the first that ever burst

Into that silent sea.

Down dropped the breeze, the sails dropped down,

'Twas sad as sad could be;

And we did speak only to break

The silence of the sea.

--COLERIDGE.

Since the art of navigation became known, there have been castaways in romance and reality without number. De Foe's celebrated Robinson Crusoe stands first, but not alone among the shipwrecked mariners of truth and fiction. How many countless thousands have suffered shipwreck and disaster at sea, whose wild narratives have never been recorded, will never be known.

John Stevens was not a reader of romance and poetry, which at his age were in their infancy in Virginia. The hardy pioneers of the New World were kept too busy fighting Indians and building plantations and cities to read romance or history. Consequently he had no similar adventures to compare with his own. John had enough of the sturdy Puritan in his nature to deeply feel the duty incumbent on him, and enough of the cavalier to be a gentleman, unselfish and kind.