region by the Dutch East India Company. This was about 1610. Rude settlements followed on Manhattan Island, the site of the present city of New York, and at or near the site of Albany. New Netherlands was the name first given to the country; and the infant settlement on Manhattan Island was called New Amsterdam. The date of actual colonization has been commonly fixed as 1623, in which year a company of well-equipped settlers arrived on the ground. Some of these settlers established themselves across the river in New Jersey. In this same year, 1623, the first white child was born in the colony, named Sarah Rapelje. Two or three years later Brooklyn was founded. During all this time the Dutch at the mouth of the Hudson were little more than a company of traders.

1612-1616. Baffin's Voyages. William Baffin, Englishman, made several voyages in search of the northwest passage, in the course of which he discovered and explored the arctic bay now known by his name.

1613. Pocahontas was an Indian girl, daughter of Powhatan, Indian chief. of Virginia. Tradition attributes to her many friendly and heroic services in behalf of the English settlers, Captain John Smith especially. In April, 1613, at Jamestown, she was married to an Englishman, John Rolfe by name, and after a few years visited England, where she suddenly died on the eve of embarking on her

return.

1614. Captain John Smith, who had played a very 1564-1616. Wil- prominent part in the settlement of Virliam Shakspeare. ginia, and had made extensive explora1618-1648. Thir- tions of the Chesapeake and along the ty Years' War, between the Prot- coast, prosecuted his discoveries this estants and Ro- year along the coast of New England, man Catholics of from the Penobscot to Cape Cod, visited Germany.

the Isles of Shoals, and returned to England with a map of the country.

1620. The Pilgrims and Plymouth. On the 16th of September the band of English fugitives, who had crossed to England from Holland on their way to America, set sail for their home in the wilderness over the sea. Of their two vessels, one, the Speedwell, was obliged to put back because unseaworthy. The other, the Mayflower, with a company of about 100 persons, kept on. The Hudson River was the point aimed at, but Cape Cod was struck instead. The voyage was long and trying. For nearly a month they reconnoitred the shores seeking a place to land; and finally, on the 21st of December, disembarked where the town of Plymouth now stands. Having no charter, they signed a compact in the cabin of the Mayflower before landing, binding themselves into “a civil body politic." John Carver was chosen governor, and Miles Standish military commander. Upon reaching the shore, they at once set to work to build themselves cabins, a storehouse, and some suitable defences, and thus to make themselves comfortable and secure for the winter.

1620. The First Slaves. The year of the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth was also the year of the landing of the first slaves upon what is now territory of the United States. These were brought by a Dutch vessel to Jamestown, and there offered for sale. They were twenty in number. The system thus introduced soon extended into other colonies, though some of them protested against the trade.

1623. Sir F. Gorges and Laconia. Sir Ferdinand Gorges and John Mason were both members of the "Plymouth Company." (See p. 16.) Gorges had already

engaged in the unsuccessful attempt to colonize Maine. In 1622, he and Mason obtained from the Company a grant of a tract lying partly in each of the present States of Maine and New Hampshire. To this they gave the name Laconia, and the following year sent out parties to settle it. The present city of Dover marks the site of 1561-1626. one of those settlements. Shortly afFrancis Bacon. terwards a certain part of this tract was assigned to Mason alone, and then received the name of New Hampshire.

1628-1630. Boston and Massachusetts Bay. In 1628 a colony, chartered by the "Plymouth Company (see p. 16), headed by John Endicott, entered Salem Harbor, and effected a settlement. The following year a reenforcement arrived, and Charlestown was settled. The next year, 1630, still larger accessions were received, all of excellent people, among them John Winthrop. This same year Boston was founded, as also Roxbury, Dorchester, Watertown, Cambridge (under the name of Newtown), and some other towns in the vicinity. The Massachusetts Bay colonists, like their brethren at Plymouth, were people of strong religious sentiments and elevated character, who likewise had left England because of oppression for opinion's sake; but there were some important differences of temper between them, and though they combined to lay the foundations of New England they should be carefully distinguished from each other. The Massachusetts Bay colonists alone are properly called "Puritans," the Plymouth colonists "6 Pilgrims." For many years, until 1692, the two colonies remained distinct from each other.

1631. The first vessel built on the Massachusetts shore was launched July 4. She was named the "Blessing of the Bay."

1631. Connecticut. The English Lords Say-andSeal, Brooke, and their associates, re- 1632. Battle of ceived a patent from the Earl of War- Lutzen. Death wick, to settle Connecticut; to which of Gustavus Adolphus, the territory, however, the Dutch also laid great Protestant claim. hero of Germany.

1634. Maryland. The settlement of Maryland was due primarily to George Calvert, Englishman, first Lord Baltimore, and a Roman Catholic, who, having in 1625 made an unsuccessful attempt to colonize Newfoundland, obtained from King James a grant of the territory now forming the States of Maryland and Delaware. Dying before the papers were actually executed, the charter was transferred to his second son, Cecil, who gave up the management of the projected colony to his elder brother, Leonard. Leonard Calvert sailed in November, 1633, with a company of about 200 persons, and, in March following, reached the Chesapeake, and on one of its estuaries founded the town of St. Mary's, of which, however, scarcely a trace now remains. Considerable difficulty was experienced with a previous trading settler of the region, William Clayborne, but he was finally dispossessed of his claim. A legislative assembly was convened at St. Mary's, in 1635, and soon after the Roman Catholic religion was made the religion of the State, but with entire toleration towards Christians of other beliefs. Religious freedom was a corner-stone of this colony from the first.

1635-1638. Further Settlements in Connecticut. In 1635, parties from Massachusetts removed to the valley of the Connecticut, and founded the towns of Windsor, Wethersfield, and Hartford. A settlement was made at the mouth of the river, and named Saybrooke after Lord

Say-and-Seal, and Lord Brooke. Among those who followed thither from Massachusetts in 1636, was Rev. Thomas Hooker, who had just come over from England, and who became a minister of the church in Hartford; and, in 1638, Rev. John Davenport, who with his associates settled New Haven. These early settlers in Connecticut were involved in a formidable war with the Pequod Indians.

1636. Roger Williams and Rhode Island. Roger Williams was a Welshman by birth, who came to America in 1631, and was for a time a minister of the church in Salem. He soon provoked opposition by his opinions on various subjects; and particularly for his protest against the right of the magistrates to punish other offences than those against the civil law; and by order of the general court was presently banished. This act would seem to have confirmed what was a previous purpose in his mind, of founding a colony of his own upon the principles of the broadest civil and religious freedom. Eluding the attempt of the authorities to send him back to England, he proceeded with a few companions to the shores of Narragansett Bay and founded Providence, giving that name to the settlement in recognition of what he esteemed to be the divine leading. The organization of the First Baptist Church in America soon followed on this spot, and in time the colony secured a charter from England, Williams himself serving as president for between two and three years. The fundamental principle of this Rhode Island Colony was an absolute prohibition of all interference with the rights of conscience.

1638. Harvard College. This, the oldest collegiate institution in the United States, was projected by the Massachusetts colonists as early as 1636, who appropriated £400 as its foundation. But its actual existence began two