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. 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, January 1, 1607. It was a modest expedition, but it carried the fortunes of the "English Nation English Nation" on board. These vessels were the Susan Constant (100 tons), with seventy-one persons, commanded by Captain Christopher Newport, fleet captain; the Godspeed (40 tons), Captain Bartholomew Gosnold, with fiftytwo persons; and the Discovery, Captain John Ratcliffe, with twenty persons. There were thirty-nine of the crew, and one hundred and five planters, more than half classed as "gentlemen," with laborers, tradesmen, and mechanics, and two "chirurgeons." Sailing by the southern route-the way of the West Indies-they reached Chesapeake Bay on the night 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:"

"Being for most part of such tender educations, and small experience in Martiall accidents, because they found not English Cities, nor such fair houses, downe pillowes, tavernes, and ale-houses in euery breathing place, neither such plentie of gold and silver and dissolute libertie as they expected, had little or no care of anything but to pamper their bellies, to fly away with our Pinnaces, or procure their meanes to returne for England. For the Country was to them a misery, a ruine, a death, a hell, and their reports here and their actions there according.'

They planted a cross at Fort Henry, naming it for the Prince of Wales, and they named the opposite cape for his brother, the Duke of York, afterwards Charles I. The next day they named another spot Point Comfort. Ascending the Powhatan River, called by them the James, they landed at a peninsula about fifty miles from the mouth, and resolved to build their town there. They went to work, sending Smith and others farther up the river to explore, and repelling the first Indian attack during their absence. In June Newport sailed for England, leaving three months' provisions for the colonists. Again the experiment was to be tried; again Englishmen found themselves alone in the New World. Captain John Smith, always graphic, has left a vivid picture of the discomforts of that early time:

"When I first went to Virginia, I well remember, wee did hang an awning (which is an old saile) to three or foure trees to shadow us from the Sunne, our walls were rales of wood, our seats unhewed trees, till we cut plankes, our Pulpit a bar of wood nailed to two neighboring trees, in foule weather we shifted into an old rotten tent, for we had few better, and this came by the way of adventure for new; this was our Church, till wee built a homely thing like

a barne, set upon Cratchets, covered with rafts, sedge, and earth, so was also the walls the best of our houses of the like curiosity, but the most part farre much worse workmanship, that could neither well defend wind nor raine, yet wee had daily Common Prayer morning and evening, every Sunday two Sermons, and every three moneths the holy Communion, till our Minister died, but our Prayers daily, with an Homily on Sundaies we continued two or three yeares after till more Preachers came, and surely God did most mercifully heare us, till the continuall inundations of mistaking directions, factions, and numbers of unprovided Libertines neere consumed us all, as the Israelites in the wildernesse."

The place was unhealthy; they found no gold; the savages were hostile; by September one-half of their own number

had died, including Gosnold, and their provisions were almost exhausted. The council was reduced to three-Ratcliffe, Smith, and Martin. Later still their settlement was burned, and their food reduced to meal and water; the intrepid leadership of Smith alone saved them; and for years the colony struggled, as did the Plymouth colony a dozen years later, for mere existence. Its materials from the beginning were strangely put together-one mason, one blacksmith, four carpenters, fifty-two gentlemen, and a barber! The "first supply" in 1608 brought one hundred and twenty

more, but not in much better combination-thirty-three gentle

men, twenty-one laborers, six tailors, with apothecaries, perfumers, and goldsmiths, but still only one mechanic of the right sort. The “second supply," in the same year, brought seventy persons, including "eight Dutchmen and Poles," and, best of all, two women- Mistress Forrest and Anne Burras her maid -joined the company; and soon after, the maid was married to John Laydon, "which was the first marriage," Smith triumphantly says, "we had in Virginia." Smith had by this time become President of the Council, and was at last its only member. They had received supplies from England, but the continuance of these was very uncertain. Newport on his return trip had foolishly pledged himself not to return without a lump of gold, the discovery of a passage to the North Sea, some of the settlers of the lost colony, or a freight worth 2000. Unless this pledge was fulfilled, the colony was to be abandoned to its own resources; and fulfilled it never was.

Early in October, 1609, Smith sailed for England, leaving nearly five hundred settlers, with horses, cattle, cannon, fishing nets, and provisions. He never returned, though he made a successful voyage to New England. He apparently went away under a cloud, but with him went the fortunes of the colony. There followed a period known as "the starving time," which ended in the abandonment of the settlement, with its fifty or sixty houses and its defence of palisades. The colonists were met as they descended the river, in April, 1610, by Lord Delaware (or De la Warr) as he ascended with another party of settlers; and thenceforward the Virginia settlement was secure. Yet it did not grow strong; it was languishing in 1618, and it had an accession of doubtful benefit in 1619, when we read in Smith's "Generall Historie," as the statement of John Rolfe, "About the last of August came in a Dutch man-ofwarre, and sold us twenty Negars." In 1621 came a more desirable accession, through the shipment by the company of "respectable young women" for wives of those colonists who

would pay the cost of transportation-at first one hundred and twenty pounds of tobacco, afterwards one hundred and fifty. In July, 1620, the colony was four thousand strong, and shipped to England forty thousand pounds of tobacco. This was raised with the aid of many bound apprentices-boys and girls picked up in the streets of London and sent out-and of many disorderly persons" sent by order of the King. But in the year 1624 only 1275 colonists were left in Virginia.

The colony would have been more prosperous, Captain John Smith thought, without the tobacco. "Out of the relicks of our miseries," he says, "time and experience had brought that country to a great happinesse, had they not so