DESCRIPTION OF THE PROVINCE OF NEW ALBION. And a Direction for Adventurers with small stock to get two for one, and good land freely: And for Gentlemen, and all Servants, Labourers and Artificers to live plentifully. And a former Description re-printed of the healthiest, pleasantest, and richest Plantation of New Albion in North Virginia, proved by thirteen witnesses. TOGETHER WITH A Letter from Master Robert Evelin, that lived there many years, shewing the particularities, and excellency thereof. With a briefe of the charge of victuall, and necessaries, to transport and buy stock for each Planter, or Labourer, there to get his Master 50 1. per Annum, or more in twelve trades, at 101. charges onely a man. Printed in the Year 1648, This Epistle and Preface shews Catoes best rules for a Plantation. To the right honourable and mighty Lord Edmund by Divine Providence Lord Proprietor, Earl Palatine, Governour and Captain Generall of the Province of New Albion, and to the Right Honourable the Lord' Vicount Monson of Castlemain, the Lord Sherard Baron of Letrim: and to all other the Vicounts, Barons, Baronets, Knights, Gentlemen, Merchants, Adventurers, and Planters of the hopefull Company of New Albion, in all 44 undertakers and subscribers, bound by Indenture to bring and settle 3000 able trained men in our said severall Plantations, in the said Province. Beauchamp Plantagenet of Belvil in New Albion Esquire, one of the Company, wisheth all health, happinesse, and heavenly blessings. May it please your good Lordships and fellow Adventurers, H Aving been blasted with the whirlwind of this late, unnaturall and civill English war, seeing the Storm more likely to encrease then to calm, I recollected my former Journal and Manuall notes of my Travails by Land and Sea forty years since in Italy, France, Germany, Poland, and Belgia, and finding Omne solum forti patria, ut piscibus æquor; I perused all the books of any English Colonies, and by often conferences of the traders and resident planters, of the present state, condition, numbers, enemies, bad neighbours, air, health, government, fortification and saftety, religion, quietnesse, profit, and returns, shipping for supplie and vent of the growing commodities; I conferred with my fellow patients, 7 Knights and Gentlemen, my kindred and neighbours, and reporting the true state of all our Colonies; and whiles thus musing I stood all a maze unresolved, the storm grew far more tempestuous with thundering and lightning, black and terrible gusts, and spouts, that made the rivers rise and my friends to hide : for the roaring |