have with common consent looked to him as the preserver of their commonwealth in its infancy; and there is hardly room. to doubt that, but for his vigor, industry, and resolution, it would have been deserted like the Virginia of the north, and with better excuse. Of government under the forms of civil liberty he had no adequate comprehension; but his administration was the most wise, provident, and just of any one known to the colony under its first charter. It was his weakness to be apt to boast. As a writer, he deals in exaggeration and romance, but in a less degree than the foreign historians who served as his models; his reports and his maps are a proof of his resolute energy, his keenness of observation, and his truthfulness of statement. His official report to the company is replete with wise remarks and just reproof. He was public spirited, brave, and constantly employed, and, with scanty means, did more toward the discovery of the country than all others of his time.

After the desertion of the northern part of Virginia, intercourse was kept up with that part of the country by vessels annually employed in the fisheries and the trade in furs; and it may be that once at least, perhaps oftener, some part of a ship's company remained during the winter on the coast. John Smith, on his return to England, still asserted, with unwearied importunity and firmness of conviction, that colonization was the true policy of England; and, in April, 1614, sailed with two ships for the region that had been appropriated for the second colony of Virginia. This private adventure of "four merchants of London and himself" was very successful. The freights were profitable, the health of the mariners did not suffer, and the voyage was accomplished in less than seven months. While the sailors were busy with their hooks and lines, Smith examined the shore from the Penobscot to Cape Cod, prepared of the coast a map-the first which gives its outline intelligibly well; and he named the country New England-a title which Prince Charles confirmed; though the French could boast, with truth, that New France had been colonized before New England obtained a name; that Port Royal was older than Plymouth, Quebec than Boston.

Encouraged by commercial success, Smith, in the next

year, in the employment of Sir Ferdinando Gorges and of friends in London who were members of the Western company, endeavored to establish a colony, though but of sixteen men, for the occupation of New England. The attempt was made unsuccessful by violent storms.

Again renewing his enterprise, Smith was captured by French pirates. His ship having been taken away, he escaped alone, in an open boat, from the harbor of Rochelle. The severest privations in a new settlement would have been less wearisome than the labors which his zeal now prompted him to undertake. Having published a map and description of New England, he spent many months in visiting the merchants and gentry of the west: he proposed to the cities mercantile profits, to be realized in short and safe voyages; to the noblemen, vast domains; to men of small means he drew a lively picture of the rapid advancement of fortune by colonial industry, of the abundance of game, the delights of unrestrained liberty, the pleasures to be derived from "angling, and crossing the sweet air from isle to isle over the silent streams of a calm sea." His private fortunes never recovered from his disastrous capture by the French; but his zeal for the interests of the nation redounded to his honor; and he retired from American history with the rank of Admiral of New England for life.

CHAPTER VII.

VIRGINIA OBTAINS CIVIL LIBERTY.

THE golden anticipations of the London company from the colonization of Virginia had not been realized, for it had grasped at sudden emoluments. Undaunted by the train of misfortunes, the kingdom awoke to the greatness of the undertaking, and designs worthy of the English nation were conceived. The second charter of Virginia, which, at the request of the former corporation, passed the seals on the twenty-third of May, 1609, intrusted the colonization of that land to a very numerous, opulent, and influential body of adventurers. The name of Robert Cecil, earl of Salisbury, appears at the head of those who were to carry into execution the grand design to which Raleigh, now a close prisoner in the Tower, had aroused the attention of his countrymen. Among the many hundreds whose names followed were the earls of Southampton, Lincoln, and Dorset, George Percy, Sir Oliver Cromwell, uncle to the future protector, Sir Anthony Ashley, Sir Edwin Sandys, Sir Francis Bacon, Captain John Smith, Richard Hakluyt, George Sandys, many tradesmen, and five-and-fifty public companies of London; so that the nobility and gentry, the army and the bar, the industry and commerce of England, were represented.

The territory granted to the company extended two hundred miles to the north, and as many to the south of Old Point Comfort, "up into the land throughout from sea to sea, west and north-west," including "all the islands lying within one hundred miles along the coast of both seas of the precinct."

At the request of the corporation, the new charter trans

ferred to the company the powers which had before been reserved to the king. The perpetual supreme council in England was to be chosen by the shareholders themselves, and, in the exercise of the functions of legislation and government, was independent of the monarch. The governor in Virginia, whom the corporation was to appoint, might rule the colonists with uncontrolled authority, according to the tenor of instructions and laws established by the council, or, in want of them, according to his own good discretion, even in cases capital and criminal, not less than civil; and, in the event of mutiny or rebellion, he might declare martial law, being himself the judge of the necessity of the measure, and the executive officer in its administration. If not one valuable civil privilege was guaranteed to the emigrants, they were at least withdrawn from the power of the king; and the company could at its pleasure endow them with all the rights of Englishmen.

Lord Delaware, distinguished for his virtues as well as rank, received the appointment of governor and captain-general for life; and was surrounded, at least nominally, by stately officers, with titles and charges suited to the dignity of a flourishing empire. The public mind favored colonization; the adventurers, with cheerful alacrity, contributed free-will offerings; and such swarms of people desired to be transported that the company could despatch a fleet of nine vessels, containing more than five hundred emigrants.

ware.

The admiral of the expedition was Newport, who, with Sir Thomas Gates and Sir George Somers, was authorized to administer the affairs of the colony till the arrival of Lord DelaThe three commissioners had embarked on board the same ship, which, near the coast of Virginia, was separated by a hurricane from all its companions, and stranded on the rocks of the Bermudas. A small ketch perished; so that seven ships only had arrived in Virginia.

After the departure of Smith, the old colonists, and the newcomers, no longer controlled by an acknowledged authority, abandoned themselves to improvident idleness. Their ample stock of provisions was rapidly consumed, and further supplies were refused by the Indians, who began to regard them with a fatal contempt. Stragglers from the town were cut

off; parties, which begged food in the Indian cabins, were murdered; and plans were laid to starve and destroy the whole company. The horrors of famine ensued, while a band of about thirty, seizing on a ship, escaped to become pirates, and to plead desperate necessity as their excuse. In six months, indolence, vice, and famine reduced the number in the colony to sixty; and these were so feeble and dejected that, if relief had been delayed but ten days longer, they must have perished.

Sir Thomas Gates and the passengers, whose ship had been wrecked on the rocks of the Bermudas, had reached the shore without the loss of a life. The uninhabited island, teeming with natural products, for nine months sustained them in affluence. From the cedars which they felled, and the wrecks of their old ship, they constructed two vessels, in which they embarked for Virginia, in the hope of a happy welcome to a prosperous colony. How great, then, was their dismay, as in May, 1610, they came among scenes of death and misery and scarcity! Four pinnaces remained in the river; nor could the extremity of distress listen to any other course than to make sail for Newfoundland. The colonists desired to burn the town in which they had been so wretched, but were prevented by Gates, who was himself the last to desert the settlement. "None dropped a tear, for none had enjoyed one day of happiness." On the eighth they fell down the stream with the tide; but, the next morning, as they drew near the mouth of the river, they encountered the long-boat of Lord Delaware, who had arrived on the coast with emigrants and supplies. The fugitives bore up the helm, and, favored by the wind, were that night once more at the fort in Jamestown.

It was on the tenth day of June that the restoration of the colony was begun. "Bucke, chaplain of the Somer islands, finding all things so contrary to their expectations, so full of misery and misgovernment, made a zealous and sorrowful prayer." A deep sense of the infinite mercies of Providence revived hope in the colonists who had been spared by famine, the emigrants who had been shipwrecked and yet preserved, and the new-comers who found wretchedness and want where they had expected abundance. "It is," said they, "the arm of the Lord