dition commanded by Captain Newport, which made a lodgement on the north shore of the James River, in the present State of Vir

ginia, on the 13th of May, 1607. They called their settlement Jamestown, and the river on which it was located, the James, in honor of their sovereign. The command of this expedition was vested in Captain Newport, but the life and soul of the whole undertaking was the celebrated Captain John Smith, to whom alone is due the credit of carrying the colony firmly through the dangers and trials which surrounded its infancy, and planting it upon a permanent basis. He explored the Chesapeake and its tributaries, of which he made maps and sketches which are noted to-day for their accuracy.

These voyages of discovery were made in an open boat, the crew of which he could not always depend upon. They were full of romantic adventure. In one of them he was captured and condemned to death by the Indians, but was rescued by Pocahontas, the daughter of king Powhatan. Captain Smith made

several voyages between England and America, and in 1614 explored and made excellent drawings of the coast from Cape Cod to the Penobscot. To this part of the country he gave the name of New England, by which it has since been known. He won the friendship of the Indians for the whites in Virginia, and by his maps and descriptions did more in England than was done by any other man to arouse that enthusiasm which finally led to the successful planting of the whole Atlantic coast of America with English settlements.

The government of the Colony of Virginia was at first vested in a council appointed by the king, but this arrangement was found to work so badly that a change was made, which was followed by several others, until at length a House of Burgesses, chosen by the people, was established. This Assembly, which was the first representative body that ever sat in America, met on the 19th of June, 1619. This event, so important in our history, was followed by two of equal moment, one in August, of the same year, when a Dutch man-of-war entered the James River and sold a cargo of 20 Africans to the planters of Virginia, thus introducing negro slavery into the Colonies; and another in 1621, when the cultivation of cotton was begun in Virginia.

The Plymouth Company made extensive preparations on paper for the settlement of their immense territory. Their charter gave them absolute property in and authority over the vast region lying between the Atlantic and Pacific, and bounded by the 40th and 48th parallels of North latitude, and they prepared to make very hard bargains with those who wished to buy lands of them. The first settlement in their domain, however, was made without their consent or authority, by a band of Puritans, under the leadership of John Carver, William Brewster, William Bradford, Edward Winslow, and Miles Standish. This colony sailed from England on the 6th of September, 1620, in a vessel of 180 tons burthen, called the Mayflower, and landed on the coast of Massachusetts Bay, on the 21st of December of the same year. They numbered 100 men, women, and children, and at once proceeded to found a settlement, which they named Plymouth, in honor of the last English port from which they had sailed, and where they had been kindly treated. They had no charter from the king, or sanction from the Plymouth Company, but conducted their enterprise upon their own responsibility, looking to God for assistance and protection. While still on their voyage, they arranged the form of their government. They organized it upon a basis of religion as well as

of civil justice. Their religious system is well described by Robertson, who says: "They united together in a religious society, by a solemn covenant with God, and with one another, and in strict conformity, as they imagined, to the rules of Scripture. They elected a Pastor, an Elder, and a Teacher, whom they set apart by the imposition of the hands of the brethren. All who were that day admitted members of the church, signified their assent to a confession of faith drawn up by their Teacher, and gave an account of their own hopes as Christians; and it was declared that no person should hereafter be

received into communion until he gave satisfaction to the church with respect to his faith and sanctity. The form of public worship which they instituted was without a liturgy, disencumbered of every superfluous ceremony, and reduced to the lowest standard of Calvinistic simplicity." Their civil system was thoroughly republican. The governor was chosen by the people, and his acts were subject to the approval of a council consisting at first of 5 and afterwards of 7 assistants. In the beginning the legislative power was vested in the whole people, but as the colony expanded a legislature elected by the people was established. In 1629, the colony received a charter from Charles I. of England. It prospered from the first, and its success brought over other arrivals from England. In 1628, a settlement was made by a band of Puritans from England, under John Endicott, at Salem, on Massachusetts Bay, which general name was given to the new colony. In 1630, a fleet with 840 new settlers, under John Winthrop, arrived from England, and in September of that year founded the city of Boston, which they named in honor of the village in England from which the Rev. John Cotton, their pastor, came. * New settlers now came over by scores, the number of inhabitants increased rapidly, and in 1690 the colonies of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay were united under one government.

In 1623, Sir Fernando Gorges and John Mason took out a patent for a territory called Taconia, lying between the Atlantic and the St. Lawrence, and the Merrimack and the Kennebec. In the same year they settled the cities of Portsmouth and Dover, in New Hampshire. A French colony had been planted in Maine in 1613, but had been broken up by an expedition from Virginia, and the first permanent settlements in Maine were made by the English at Saco and on Monhegan Island, in 1622 or 1623. These settlements some years later became a part of the territory of Massachusetts, and were retained by her until the formation of the State of Maine in 1820.

In 1635, a company of emigrants from Massachusetts, under the pious Hooker, settled the region now comprised in the State of Connecticut, by founding the towns of Hartford and Wethersfield. The Dutch had built a trading post and fort at Hartford in 1633, and a few huts at Wethersfield in 1634, and claimed the territory in consequence of this, but their claim was not regarded by the English.

* It is not a little curious that the Puritan Fathers should have given their metropolis the name of a famous Roman Catholic Saint.

In 1636, Roger Williams, who had been exiled from Massachusetts on account of his religious opinions, founded the colony of Rhode Island, by settling the town of Providence, which is now the capital of the State.

New York was settled by the Dutch, but the State was first entered by a French navigator named Samuel Champlain, who discovered the lake to which he has given his name, in July, 1609, and fought a battle on its shores with a band of Mohawks. He inflicted a severe defeat upon them, and from that time the Six Nations were the bitter