of the French; and Sir Ferdinando Gorges was planning one more fruitless colony for the English.

Gorges, perhaps a kinsman of Ralegh, knew Weymouth, and took charge for three years of some of his Indian captives. With Sir John Popham he secured the incorporation of two colonies-to be called the First and the Second, and to be under charge of the Council of Virginia, appointed by the crown. The First, or London Colony, was to be planted in "South Virginia," from north latitude 34° to 41°, and the Second, or Plymouth Colony, was to be planted in "North Virginia," between 38° and 45° north latitude. The two colonies thus overlapped three degrees; but neither colony was to extend more than fifty miles inland, and there was to be an interval of a hundred miles between their nearest settlements. That gap of a hundred miles afterwards caused a great deal of trouble.

Three ships with a hundred settlers went from Plymouth, England, in 1607, reaching the mouth of the Sagadahoc, or Kennebec, August 8th. They held religious services according to the Church of England, read their patent publicly, and proceeded to dig wells, build houses, and erect a fort. Misfortune pursued them. Nearly half their number went back with the vessels. The winter was unusually severe. Their storehouse was burned; their president, George Popham, died; their patron in England, Sir John Popham, died also; their "admiral," Ralegh Gilbert, was recalled to England by the death of his brother. In the spring all returned, and another colony was added to the list of unsuccessful attempts, It is useless to speculate on what might have been the difference in the destiny of New England had it succeeded; it

ures.

failed, and the world never cares very much for failThe contemporary verdict was that "the country was branded by the return of that plantation as being over-cold, and, in respect of that, not habitable for Englishmen." But the fortunate fact that two colonies were sent out together made the year 1607 the beginning of successful colonization in America, after all. The enterprise succeeded, not in New England, then called North Virginia, but in South Virginia, part of which territory still retains the name of the Virgin Queen. It succeeded not under the high-sounding name of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, but under the more plebeian auspices of John Smith.

John Smith was the last of the romantic school of explorers. It is impossible to tell who wrote all his numerous books, or where to draw the line in regard to his innumerable adventures. We shall never know the whole truth about Pocahontas or Powhatan. No matter; he was the ideal sailor, laboring to be accurate in all that relates to coasts and soundings, absolutely credulous as to all the wilder aspects of enterprise in a new world. He maintained the traditions of wonder; he would not have been surprised at Job Hartop's merman, or Ponce de Leon's old men made young, or Ralegh's headless Indians, or Champlain's Gougou. The flavor of all his narratives is that of insatiable and joyous adventure, not yet shadowed by that awful romance of supernatural terror which came in with the Puritans.

Yet his first service was in his accuracy of description. It is a singular fact pointed out by Kohl, that while the sixteenth century placed upon our maps with much truth the coasts of Newfoundland, Labrador, and Canada, the coasts of New England and

New York were unknown till the beginning of the seventeenth. When Hudson sailed south of Cape Cod and entered the harbor of New York, he was justified in saying that he entered "an unknown sea." If the shore north of Cape Cod was not an unknown

region, it was due largely to Smith. While his companions were plundering or kidnapping negroes, at the time he first visited those shores, in 1614, he was drawing "a map from point to point, isle to isle.

and harbor to harbor, with the soundings, sands, rocks, and landmarks." He first called the region. New England, and first gave the names of Charles River, Plymouth, Cape Ann; while other titles which he bestowed--as Boston, Cambridge, Hull-have not disappeared, but only shifted their places. He caused thousands of his maps to be printed, and yet complained he might as well have tried "to cut rocks with oyster shells" as to spread among others his interest in this matter. Fifteen years after he could only report the same discouragement. "The coast is yet still but as a coast unknown and undiscovered. I have had six or seven plots of those northern parts, so unlike each to other for resemblance of the country as they did me no more good than so much waste paper.

This illustrates Smith's methods. But it was in his first expedition to Virginia that he placed himself on record as the first successful colonizer of America. At the time, however, he would have claimed no higher title than "Adventurer," that being the name by which the members of the London Company were known. The men who were sent out on this expedition were authorized to mine for the precious metals, to coin money, and to collect a revenue for twenty-one years from all vessels. The dream of wealth had been transplanted from Spain to England, and its supposed scene of enrichment from Mexico to "Virginia. The English plays of the period show this. "I tell thee," says Seagull, in Marston's play of "Eastward, Ho!" written in 1605, "golde is more plentifull there than copper is with us; and for as much redde copper as I can bring I'll have thrise the weight in gold. Why, man, all theyre dripping pans . . . are pure

gould, and all the chaines with which they chaine up their streets are massie gold; and for rubies and diamonds, they go forth in Holydayes and gather 'hem by the seashore to hang on their children's coates and stick in their children's caps." And, to complete the picture, he promises "no more law than conscience, and not too much of eyther.

Such were the hopes with which the three ships of the Virginia Company of London sailed from the Downs, December 30, 1606. It was a modest expedition, but it carried the fortunes of the “English nation" on board. These vessels were the Sarah Constant, of one hundred tons, commanded by Captain Christopher Newport, fleet captain; the Goodspeed, of forty tons, Captain Bartholomew Gosnold; and the Discovery, of about twenty tons, Captain John Ratcliffe. The emigrants, or "planters," all of them men, numbered one hundred and twenty, more than half of them being classed as "gentlemen," together with laborers, tradesmen, and mechanics, and two "chirurgeons. Sailing by the southern route--the way of the West Indies--they reached Chesapeake Bay in the early morning of April 26th, and there for the first time opened a sealed box containing the orders from the King. This box designated as councillors the three sea - captains, with Edward Maria Wingfield (president), John Smith, John Martin, and John Kendall. Smith, however, because of some suspicion of mutinous bearing on the voyage, was excluded from office until June 10th.

It is possible that something of personal feeling may have entered into Smith's low opinion of these first colonists. He says of them, in his Generall Historie: