The .5. Chap [ter]

Shewing what means they used for preparation to this waightie vioag.

A

ND first, after thir humble praiers unto God, for his direction, and assistance, and a generall confferrence

held hear aboute, they consulted what perticuler place to pitch upon, and prepare for. Some (and none of the meanest) had thoughts, and were ernest for Guiana,1 or some of those

1 Sir Walter Ralegh issued his Discoverie of the large, rich and bewtiful Empyre of Goiana, with a relation of the great and Golden Citie of Manoa (which the Spanyards call El Dorado,) in 1596. It was translated into Dutch and printed in 1598; into Latin, to be included in De Bry, in 1599; and in the same year and the same language, in Hulsius. Later Hulsius issued a German edition. The

subject and manner of presentation appealed to the cupidity of adventurers, and this will account for the popularity of the book. Lawrence Keymis's Relation of the Second Voyage to Guiana, dedicated to Ralegh, was also printed in 1596, and passed into a Dutch translation in 1598. Ralegh's Discoverie, with Keymis's at the end, was again issued in the Dutch tongue in 1617, by Michiel Colijn, of Amsterdam, an overdrawn picture of possible wealth. Ralegh had now paid by his life the penalty of his eagerness to obtain the favor of his royal mistress by realizing his dreams of enormously rich mines of the precious metals in Guiana. In the re-issue of Hakluyt's Principall Navigations, by the Hakluyt Society (x. 384), Ralegh's own map of Guiana is reproduced, with the fabled city and lake of Manoa and El Dorado upon it, sufficient evidence, even for that day, of the wildness of his project and the absence of knowledge of the region. Robert Harcourt, with a company of adventurers, sailed to Guiana in 1609, and took possession in the king's name of a tract of country lying between the Amazon and the Dollesquebe. He left a colony there, under his brother Michael, and returning to England, obtained a patent giving him power to plant and inhabit the land he had taken. A series of misfortunes followed, and in the end the colony came to naught. He wrote Relation of a Voyage to Gviana, which was printed in 1613, and was included in Purchas's Pilgrimes, pt. iv. Like Captain John Smith's Description of New England, it was dedicated to Prince Charles. This colony must have been

and doe well, the jealous Spaniard would never suffer them long; but would displante, or overthrow them. As he did the French in Florida; who were seated furder from his richest countries; and the sooner because they should have none to protect them; and their owne strength, would be too smale to resiste so potente an enemie, and so neare a neighbor.1

"Many of our men fell sicke, some of Agues, some of Fluxes, some of giddinesse in their heads, whereby they would often fall downe: which grew chiefly of the excessiue heate of the Sunne in the day, and of the extreame dampe of the earth." They suffered also from a worm or tick, called niguas, which crept under the nails of the toes and tortured them. Purchas, Pilgrimes, Iv. 1252. The Indians warned Harcourt against settling in the same place, and drew him to Cooshebery, "for the most part champian ground, naturally intermixt of plaine fields, fruitefull meadowes, and goodly woods, in such admirable order, as if they had beene planted artificially by handy labour." Ib. 1271.

"The Winter and Summer as touching colde and heate differ not, neither doe the trees ever sensibly lose their leaves, but have alwayes fruit either ripe or greene, and most of them both blossome, leaves, ripe fruite, and greene at one time." Sir Walter Ralegh, Discoverie of Guiana, in Hakluyt, Principall Navigations, III. 653. "Both for health, good ayre, pleasure, and riches I am resolved it cannot bee equalled by any region either in the East or West. Moreover the countrey is so healthfull, as of an hundred persons and more (which lay without shift most sluttishly, and were every day almost melted with heate in rowing and marching, and suddenly wet againe with great showers, and did eate of all sorts of corrupt fruits, and made meales of fresh fish without seasoning, of Tortugas, of Lagartos or Crocodiles, and of all sorts good and bad, without either order or measure, and besides lodged in the open aire every night) we lost not any one, nor had one ill disposed to my knowledge, nor found any Calentura, or other of those pestilent diseases which dwell in all hot regions, and so neere the Equinoctiall line." Ib. 660. "The Spaniards are therein so dispersed, as they are no where strong, but in Nueva Espanna onely: the sharpe mountaines, the thornes, and poysoned prickles, the sandie and deepe wayes in the valleys, the smothering heate and aire, and want of water in other places are their onely and best defence." Ib. 661.

1 The destruction of the French colony of Ribault by Menendez in 1565. The crime and its punishment are detailed in Parkman, Pioneers of France in the New World, chaps. VII. VIII. IX. The letters of Menendez to Philip II. in 1565 and 1566, giving an account of his actions, are printed in 2 Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, v111. 416. The account by Ribault of his first voyage was printed in English in 1563, and states that it is "now newly set forthe in Englishe," although no original French edition of the work is known. Three years later Le Challeux printed at Dieppe his account of the

On the other hand, for Virginia, it was objected; that if they lived among the English which wear ther planted, or so near them as to be under their goverment; they should be in as great danger to be troubled, and persecuted for the cause of religion, as if they lived in England, and it might be worse. And if they lived too farr of, they should neither have succour, nor defence frome them.1

But at length the conclusion was, to live as a distincte body by them selves, under the generall Goverment of Virginia; and by

last voyage of Ribault and the destruction of the French colony in Florida, and an English translation issued from a London press in the same year. These volumes are in the John Carter Brown library, Providence, R. I.

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1 By the first charter granted April 10, 1606, Virginia, a strip of land one hundred miles in width, lying on the Atlantic coast of North America from the thirty-fourth to the forty-fifth degree of north latitude, was divided into two parts. The southerly, reaching to the forty-first degree, was given to the "first colony," composed of certain "knights, Gentlemen, Merchants and other Adventurers of London and else where;" the northerly, extending from the thirty-eighth to the forty-fifth degree, was granted to a second colony made up of adventurers from the cities of Bristol and Exeter, the town of Plymouth and else where. The territory afterwards known as New England thus fell to the second colony, and the persons mentioned in the charter were Thomas Hanham, Ralegh Gilbert, William Parker, and George Popham. In 1607 was sent out the so-called Popham colony, for the Sagadahoc or Kennebec River, a commercial venture begun by Chief Justice John Popham, brother to George Popham, and whose daughter was mother of Thomas Hanham. It failed, and not until the voyage of Smith in 1614 could interest in the second colony be revived, when Sir Ferdinando Gorges becomes the ruling spirit. The charter of 1606 is in Hazard, 1. 50.

2 New England, the northern part of the Virginia Company's grant of 1606, does not appear to have been considered by the Leyden church company as a possible place of settlement. On the failure of the Popham colony, near the mouth of the Kennebec, in 1608, the region came to be esteemed "a cold, barren, mountainous, rocky Desart," and to be branded as "over cold, and in respect of that not habitable by our nation." Smith, Generall Historie, 204; Gorges, Briefe Narration, II.

Upon his return from New England in August, 1614, Smith confided to his "honorable friende Sir Ferdinando Gorge" his ambitions to make a settlement, and was encouraged to believe that he would be given the means and authority. He even retained in his service Michael Cooper, the master, but the London Company not only enticed Cooper away, but offered employment to Smith. Four ships were sent out from London "before they at Plimouth had made any prouision at all." Later one