south of the thirty-eighth degree; and north of the forty-first parallel the Western company was to plant what the king called "THE SECOND COLONY OF VIRGINIA." The three intermediate degrees were reserved for the eventual competition of the two companies, except that each was to possess the soil extending fifty miles north and south of its first settlement. The conditions of tenure were homage and rent; the rent was no other than one fifth of the net produce of gold and silver, and one fifteenth of copper. The right of coining money was conceded. The natives, it was hoped, would receive Christianity and the arts of civilized life. The general superintendence was confided to a council in England; the local administration of each colony to a resident council. The members of the superior council in England were appointed exclusively by the king, and were to hold office at his good pleasure. Their authority extended to both colonies, which jointly took the name of VIRGINIA. Each of the two was to have its own resident council, of which the members were from time to time to be ordained and removed according to the instructions of the king. To the king, moreover, was reserved supreme legislative authority over the several colonies, extending to their general condition and the most minute regulation of their affairs. A duty of five per cent, to be levied within their precincts, on the traffic of strangers not owing obeisance to the British crown, was, for one-and-twenty years, to be wholly employed for the benefit of the several plantations; at the end of that time was to be taken for the king. To the emigrants it was promised that they and their children should continue to be Englishmen.

The charter for colonizing the great central territory of the North American continent, which was to be the chosen abode of liberty, gave to the mercantile corporation nothing but a wilderness, with the right of peopling and defending it. By an extension of the prerogative, which was in itself illegal, the monarch assumed absolute legislative as well as executive powers. The emigrants were subjected to the ordinances of a commercial corporation, in which they could not act as members; to the dominion of a domestic council, in appointing which they had no voice; to the control of a superior council

in England; and, finally, to the arbitrary legislation of the sovereign. The first "treasurer or governor of the London company, to whom fell the chief management of its affairs, was Sir Thomas Smythe, a merchant zealous for extending the commerce of his country, and equally zealous for asserting the authority of the corporation.

The summer was spent in preparations for planting the first colony, for which the king found a grateful occupation in framing a code of laws. The superior council in England was permitted to name the colonial council, which was independent of the emigrants, and had power to elect or remove its president, to remove any of its members, and to supply its own vacancies. Not an element of popular liberty or control was introduced. Religion was established according to the doctrine and rites of the church within the realm; and no emigrant might avow dissent, or affect the superstitions of the church of Rome, or withdraw his allegiance from King James. Lands were to descend according to the laws of England. Not only murder, manslaughter, and adultery, but dangerous tumults and seditions, were punishable by death, at the discretion of the magistrate, restricted only by the trial by jury. All civil causes, requiring corporal punishment, fine, or imprisonment, might be summarily determined by the president and council, who possessed legislative authority in cases not affecting life or limb. Kindness to the savages was enjoined, with the use of all proper means for their conversion. It was further ordered that the industry and commerce of the several colonies should, for five years at least, be conducted in a joint stock.

The council of the English company added instructions to the emigrants to search for navigable rivers, and, if any of them had two branches, to ascend that which tended most toward the north-west to its sources, and seek for some stream running the contrary way toward the South sea. Then, on the nineteenth day of December, in the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and six, one hundred and nine years after the discovery of the American continent by Cabot, forty-one years from the settlement of Florida, the squadron of three vessels, the largest not exceeding one hundred tons' burden, with the favor of all England,

stretched their sails for "the dear strand of Virginia, earth's only paradise." Michael Drayton, the patriot poet" of Albion's glorious isle," cheered them on, saying:

Go, and in regions far such heroes bring ye forth

As those from whom we came; and plant our name
Under that star not known unto our north.

Yet the enterprise was ill concerted. Of the one hundred and five on the list of emigrants, there were but twelve laborers, and few mechanics. They were going to a wilderness, in which, as yet, not a house was standing; and there were fortyeight gentlemen to four carpenters. Neither were there any men with families.

Newport, who commanded the ships, was acquainted with the old passage, and sailed by way of the Canaries and the West India islands. As he turned to the north, a severe storm, in April, 1607, carried his fleet beyond the settlement of Raleigh, into the magnificent bay of the Chesapeake. The headlands received and retain the names of Cape Henry and Cape Charles, from the sons of King James; the deep water for anchorage, "putting the emigrants in good Comfort," gave a name to the northern Point; and within the capes a country opened, which appeared to "claim the prerogative over the most pleasant places in the world." "Heaven and earth seemed never to have agreed better to frame a place for man's commodious and delightful habitation." A noble river was soon entered, which was named from the monarch; and, after a search of seventeen days, during which the comers encountered the hostility of one savage tribe, and at Hampton smoked the calumet of peace with another, on the thirteenth of May they reached a peninsula about fifty miles above the mouth of the stream, where the water near the shore was so very deep that the ships were moored to trees. Here the council, except Smith, who for no reason unless it were jealousy of his superior energy was for nearly a month kept out of his seat, took the oath of office, and the majority elected Edward Maria Wingfield president for the coming year. Contrary to the earnest and persistent advice of Bartholomew Gosnold, the peninsula was selected for the site of the colony, and took the name of Jamestown.

While the men toiled in felling trees to make room for their tents, and in gathering freight for the two ships which were soon to return to England, Newport, Smith, and twenty others ascended the river, with a perfect resolution not to return till they should have found its head and a passage through the mountains to the western ocean. Trading on their way with the riparian tribes, they were soon arrested by the falls of the river, below which they were hospitably entertained by the great chief of the country. They examined the cataract to find a mode of passing around it, but "the water falleth so rudely and with such violence not any boat could possibly pass them." The next day in idle admiration they gazed upon the scene, while Newport erected a cross with the inscription, "James the king, 1607," and proclaimed him to have most right unto the river. They were again at Jamestown on the twenty-seventh of May.

During their absence the Indians had shown a hostile disposition. Captain Newport set things in order, made peace with one of the neighboring chiefs, and completed the palisado around the fort. On the twenty-first of June, in a church which consisted only of a sail spread from tree to tree to keep off the midsummer sun, with rails for walls and logs for benches, the communion was administered, and on the next day he embarked for England, leaving behind him a colony of one hundred and four persons, reported to be "in good health and comfort."

Meantime the adventurers of the west of England had wholly disconnected themselves from the London company by obtaining for the superintendence of their affairs a separate council resident in the kingdom, and had completed their arrangements for the colonization of the northern part of Virginia.

Five months after the departure of the southern colony, one hundred and twenty passengers sailed as planters from Plymouth in the Mary and John, with Raleigh Gilbert for its captain, and in the Gift of God, a fly boat commanded by a kinsman of the chief justice, George Popham, who was "well strickened in years and infirm, yet willing to die in acting something that might be serviceable to God and honorable

VOL. 1.-8

to his country." The corps with which they went forth, to plant the English monarchy and the English church in that part of Virginia which lay north of the forty-first parallel, was more numerous and more carefully chosen than that of their rivals.

After a voyage of two months, in the afternoon of the last day of July, they stood in for the shore, and found shelter under Monhegan island. Their first discovery was that the fishermen of France and Spain had been there before them. They had not ridden at anchor two hours when a party of Indians in a Spanish shallop came to them from the shore and rowed about them; and the next day returned in a Biscay boat with women, bringing beaver-skins to exchange for knives and beads. In the following days the emigrants explored the coast and islands, and on the sixteenth of August both ships entered the Kennebec.

On the nineteenth all the members of this "second colony of Virginia" went on shore, made choice of the Sabine peninsula, near the mouth of that river, for the site of their fort, and "had a sermon delivered unto them by their preacher.' After the sermon they listened to the reading of the commission of George Popham, their president, and of the laws appointed for them by King James. Five men were sworn assistants. Without delay, most of the company, under the oversight of the president, labored hard on a fort which they named St. George, a storehouse, fifty rude cabins for their own shelter, and a church. The shipwrights set about the building of a small pinnace, the chief shipwright being one Digby, the first constructor of sea-going craft in that region. Meantime Gilbert coasted toward the west, judged the land to be exceeding fertile, and brought back the news of the beauty of Casco bay with its hundreds of isles. When, at the invitation of the mighty Indian chief who ruled on the Penobscot, Gilbert would have visited that river, he was driven back by foul weather and cross winds. Remaining faithfully in the colony, in December he sent back his ship under another commander, who bore letters announcing to the chief justice the forwardness of the plantation, and importuning supplies for the coming year. A letter from President Popham informed King James that his praises and his virtues had been proclaimed to