the career of investigation. The Speedwell, a ship of fifty tons and thirty men, the Discoverer, a bark of twenty-six tons and thirteen men, under the command of Martin Pring, set sail for America on the tenth of April, 1603, a few days after the death of the queen. The ship was well provided with trinkets and merchandise, suited to a traffic with the red men, and reached the American shore among the islands of Penobscot bay. Coasting toward the west, Pring made a discovery of many of the harbors of Maine; of the Saco, the Kennebunk, and the York rivers; and the channel of the Piscataqua was examined for three or four leagues. Finding no sassafras, he steered to the south, doubled Cape Ann, and went on shore in Massachusetts; but, being still unsuccessful, he again pursued a southerly track, till he anchored in Old Town harbor, on Martha's Vineyard. Here obtaining a freight, he returned to England, after an absence of about six months, which had been free from disaster or danger.

The testimony of Pring having confirmed the report of Gosnold, an expedition, promoted by the earl of Southampton and his brother-in-law, Lord Arundel of Wardour, was confided to George Waymouth, a careful and vigilant commander, who, in attempting a north-west passage, had already explored the coast of Labrador.

Weighing anchor on Easter Sunday, 1605, on the fourteenth of May he came near the whitish, sandy promontory of Cape Cod. To escape the continual shoals in which he found himself embayed, he stood out to sea, then turned to the north, and on the seventeenth anchored to the north of Monhegan island, in sight of hills to the north-north-east on the main. On Whit Sunday he found his way among the St. George's islands into an excellent harbor, which was accessible by four passages, defended from all winds, and had good mooring upon a clay ooze, and even upon the rocks by the cliff side. The climate was agreeable; the sea yielded fish of many kinds profusely; the tall and great trees on the islands were much observed; and the gum of the silver fir was thought to be as fragrant as frankincense; the land was of such pleasantness that many of the company wished themselves settled there; trade was carried on with the natives for sables, and skins of

deer and otter and beaver. Having in the last of May discovered in his pinnace the broad, deep current of the St. George's, on the eleventh of June, Waymouth, with a gentle wind, passed up with the ship into that river for about eighteen miles, which were reckoned at six-and-twenty, and "all consented in joy" to admire its width of a half mile or a mile; its verdant borders; its gallant and spacious coves; the strength of its tide, which may have risen nine or ten feet, and was set down at eighteen or twenty. On the thirteenth he ascended in a row-boat ten miles farther, and was more and more pleased with the beauty of the fertile ground on each hand. No token was found that ever any Christian had been there before; and at the point where the river trends westward into the main he set up a memorial cross, as he had already done on the rocky shore of the St. George's islands. Well satisfied with his discoveries, on Sunday, the sixteenth of June, he sailed for England, taking with him five of the natives whom he had decoyed, to be instructed in English and to serve as guides to some future expedition. At his coming into the harbor of Plymouth he yielded up three of the natives to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the governor of that town, whose curiosity was thus directed to the shores of Maine. The returning voyagers celebrated its banks, which promised most profitable fishing; its rude people, who were willing to barter costly furs for trifles; the temperate and healthful air of the country, whose "pleasant fertility bewrayed itself to be the garden of Nature." But it was not these which tempted Gorges. He had noticed that all navigations of the English along the more southerly American coast had failed from the want of good roads and havens; these were the special marks at which he levelled; and, hearing of a region safe of approach and abounding in harbors large enough to shelter the ships of all Christendom, he aspired to the noble office of filling it with prosperous English plantations.

Gorges had wealth, rank, and influence. He readily persuaded Sir John Popham, lord chief justice of England, to share his intentions. The chief justice was no novice in schemes of colonization, having "labored greatly in the last project touching the plantation of Munster" in Ireland; and

they agreed together to send out each a ship to begin a plantation in the region which Waymouth had explored. Chalons, the captain employed by Gorges, in violation of his instructions, taking the southern passage, was carried by the tradewinds even to Porto Rico; and, as he turned to the north, he was captured by the Spanish fleet from Havana. The tall and well-furnished ship provided by Popham sailed from the river of Severn, under the command of Martin Pring. The able mariner, now on his second voyage to the west, disappointed of meeting Chalons, busied himself in the more perfect discovery of all the rivers and harbors along our north-eastern coast; and, on his return, he made the most favorable report of the country which he had explored.

The daring and ability of these pioneers upon the ocean, who led the way to the colonization of the United States, deserve the highest admiration. The character of the prevalent winds and currents was unknown. The possibility of making a direct passage was but gradually discovered. The imagined dangers were infinite, the real dangers from tempests and shipwreck, famine and mutinies, heat and cold, diseases known and unknown, were incalculable. The ships at first employed were generally of less than one hundred tons' burden; two of those of Columbus were without a deck; Frobisher sailed in a vessel of but twenty-five tons. Columbus was cast away twice, and once remained for eight months on an island, without any communication with the civilized world; Roberval, Parmenius, Gilbert-and how many others!-went down at sea; and such was the state of the art of navigation that intrepidity and skill were unavailing against the elements without the favor of Heaven.

CHAPTER VI.

ENGLAND PLANTS A NEW NATION IN VIRGINIA.

99

"I SHALL yet live to see Virginia an English nation,' wrote Raleigh to Sir Robert Cecil shortly before the accession of James I. When the period for success had arrived, changes in European politics and society had moulded the forms of colonization. The Reformation had broken the harmony of religious opinion, and differences in the church began to constitute the basis of political parties. After the East Indies had been reached by doubling the southern promontory of Africa, the great commerce of the world was carried upon the ocean. The art of printing had been perfected and diffused; and the press spread intelligence and multiplied the facilities of instruction. The feudal institutions were undermined by the current of time and events. Productive industry had built up the fortunes and extended the influence of the middle classes, while habits of indolence and expense had impaired the estates and diminished the power of the nobility. These changes produced correspond ing results in the institutions which were to rise in America.

A revolution had equally occurred in the objects for which voyages were undertaken. Columbus sought a new passage to the East Indies. The passion for gold next became the prevailing motive. Then islands and countries near the equator were made the tropical gardens of Europeans. At last the higher design was matured: to plant permanent Christian colonies; to establish for the oppressed and the enterprising places of refuge and abode; to found states in a temperate clime, with all the elements of independent exist

ence.

In the imperfect condition of industry, a redundant population had grown up in England even before the peace with Spain, which threw out of employment the gallant men who had served under Elizabeth by sea and land, and left them no option but to engage as mercenaries in the quarrels of strangers, or incur the hazards of "seeking a New World." The minds of many persons of intelligence and rank were directed to Virginia. The brave and ingenious Gosnold, who had himself witnessed the fertility of the western soil, after long solicitations, prevailed with Edward Maria Wingfield, a merchant of the west of England, Robert Hunt, a clergyman of fortitude and modest worth, and Captain John Smith, an adventurer of indomitable perseverance, to risk their hopes of fortune in an expedition. For more than a year this little company revolved their project. Nor had the assigns of Raleigh become indifferent to "western planting," which the most distinguished of them all, "industrious Hakluyt," still promoted by his personal exertions, his weight of character, and his invincible zeal. Possessed of whatever information could be derived from foreign sources and a correspondence with eminent navigators of his times, and anxiously watching the progress of Englishmen in the west, his extensive knowledge made him a counsellor in colonial enterprise.

With these are to be named George Popham, a kinsman of the chief justice, and Raleigh Gilbert. They and "certain knights, gentlemen, merchants, and other adventurers of the city of London and elsewhere," and "of the cities of Bristol and Exeter, and of the town of Plymouth and other places in the west," applied to James I. for "his license to deduce a colony into Virginia." The king, alike from vanity, the wish to promote the commerce of Great Britain, and the ambition of acquiring new dominions, entered heartily into the great design. From the "coast of Virginia and America" he selected a territory of ten degrees of latitude, reaching from the thirty-fourth to the forty-fifth parallel, and into the backwoods without bound. For the purposes of colonization, he divided the almost limitless region equally between the two rival companies of London and of the West. The London company were to lead forth the "FIRST COLONY OF VIRGINIA " to lands