side of the place of their first plantation, and reaching into the interior 100 statute miles from the seacoast. The other of these districts, called the Second or Northern Colony of Virginia, he allotted for the settlement of Thomas Hanham, and others, his associates, mostly residents of Bristol, Exeter, and Plymouth. These he authorized to plant a colony, wherever they might choose, between 38° and 45° of north latitude, and he gave to them a territory of similar limits and extent to that given to the first colony. He provided, however, that the plantation of the said two colonies which should be last made, should not be within 100 miles of the other, that might be first established. One of these two colonies (the first) was soon distinguished as the London Company; and the other (or second) was known as the Plymouth Company; but, in after time, these names were dropped, and the name of Virginia, which was at first applied to both the colonies, was retained by the southern colony only, while the northern colony was called New England-(For a copy of this charter, see Stith's History of Virginia-appendix, No. 1.)

The London Company commenced its operations before the Plymouth Company. The former fitted out a small ship of 100 tons burthen, and two barks, the command of which was given to Captain Christopher Newport, who sailed from Blackwall December 19, 1606, his first destination being Roanoke island, in quest of the unfortunate adventurers left there many years befere. Newport had a very long passage; and before he reached his destination, his little fleet encountered a severe southern gale, the violence of which was such as to oblige them to scud before it under bare poles one whole night. This was fortunate; for, in running in for the land the next day, (April 26, 1607,) they luckily fell in with the Capes of Chesapeake Bay, and entered this great estuary. Pursuing their course along the southern shore of the bay, they came to the mouth of a noble river, called by the natives Powhatan, but which Captain Newport named James River, after his sovereign. Up this river they sailed about 40 miles from its mouth, in search of a proper place whereon to plant the intended Colony. Such a place they at length found,

in a peninsula on the northern side of the river, connected with the mainland by a narrow isthmus of naked sand, easily to be defended against any attack, let it come from what quarter it might. Here the adventurers landed on the 13th of May, 1607, and here they established their first habitation, to which they gave the name of "James Citty," in honor of King James I, the reigning monarch.-(See Smith's History of Virginia, vol. i, book iii, chap. i, page 149, &c.)

The facts stated above will enable us to determine, and with great accuracy, the limits of the grant made to the London Company, by their first charter of April 10, 1606. If a meridional line be drawn through James Citty, and extended each way to the distance of fifty statute miles from it; if parallels be drawn through the extremities of this meridian, and extended to the seacoast; if one hundred statute miles from thence be laid off upon each of these parallels, and if a straight line be drawn from the extremity of one of them so determined, to the extremity of the other, the diagram so to be constructed may be considered as a square, the base of which will be one hundred statute miles, and its area ten thousand square miles. Such a diagram, so constructed, will be delineated in precise accordance with all the calls of this charter of April 10, 1606.

We need but cast our eyes upon any map of this region to determine the ridiculous absurdity of confining the territory intended to be granted, by such limits. The only apology that can be offered for such an act, is, that the charter was granted before the country to which it was designed to apply was discovered. More than one moiety of all the lands within the prescribed limits will be found covered by wide and deep water-courses. By these, the dry land will be found divided into many small necks, widening as you advance upwards, and separated from each other by streams, the width and depth of which were such as to render them often impassable, and always dangerous; and the first plantation intended to be, and that long continued to be, the metropolis or chief-place of the Colony, will be found very near the western and most exposed frontier of the territory. Hence,

every hope of the future prosperity, and even of the security and safety of the infant colony, required that the limits given to its territory should be speedily changed and enlarged.

This was not a matter of speculation. In the year 1608 the country had been explored in every direction, throughout its whole length and breadth, and far beyond either, by the celebrated Captain John Smith, whose wonderfully accurate description of it, given in his report, we still have. (See Smith's History of Virginia, vol. i, book 3, chapters 5 and 6, and the map) Induced by this report, as well as by many defects experience had proved to exist in the form of government for the colony that had been prescribed by their charter, the London Company applied to the King to alter this charter; and it pleased his Majesty, King James the First, to grant their petition. Accordingly, on the 23d of May, 1609, he issued new letters patent of that date, for this purpose. (It should be observed here, that at the date of these new letters patent, nothing existed to prevent such an extension of the limits of Virginia as was thereby made, because no settlement had then been made anywhere by the Plymouth Company; so that the whole country granted was as open to the new grant, as it had been in 1606.)

Before this second charter was granted to the London Company, the well-known headland on the northern side of James river, at its mouth, had been discovered, and called by the name it still bears-Point Comfort. Taking this well known and wellestablished position as a starting point, the new charter granted to the company "all those lands, &c. situate, lying, and being in that part of America called Virginia, from the point of land called Cape.or Point Comfort, all along the seacoast, to the northward, two hundred miles; and from the said point of Cape Comfort, all along the seacoast, to the southward, two hundred miles; and all that space and circuit of land lying from the seacoast of the precinct aforesaid, up into the land, throughout from sea to sea, west and northwest; and also all the islands lying within one hundred miles along the coast of both seas of the

precinct aforesaid."-(See a copy of this second charter in Stith's History of Virginia, appendix No. 2, page 8, &c.)

As one of the purposes of this second charter is declared in it to be" to grant a further enlargement and explanation of the former grant" of 1606; and as no other change is made in the mode of determining the new and enlarged limits, from that required for determining the old boundaries, except that the precise point of Cape Comfort is substituted for James City, we are bound to adopt the same mode of determining the new limits, which had been adopted and approved in the former case.

Therefore, if a meridional line be drawn through the point of Cape Comfort, and extended each way to the distance of two hundred miles from thence; if parallels be drawn through the extremities of this meridian, and extended from sea to sea, (i. e. from the Atlantic to the South Sea, or Pacific,) the diagram so to be constructed may be considered as a parallelogram. The base of this parallelogram will be the seacoast of the Atlantic, having a meridional length of four hundred miles, bisected by the parallel of the point of Cape Comfort, and the altitude of this parallelogram will be the distance from sea to sea.

If any one is curious to know why Virginia was extended precisely two hundred miles to the north of the parallel of the point of Cape Comfort, his curiosity will be satisfied if he will take the trouble to calculate the difference of latitude between that parallel and the more northern parallel of 40°. In making this calculation, he must make some small allowance, however, for the trifling error caused by the imperfection of the clumsy instruments used in 1609 for making observations of latitude; as well as for the erroneous opinion then entertained as to the length of a degree of a great circle in English statute miles. We know now the exact quantity of each of these errors in our case; but it must be recollected that one of them (the last) puzzled Sir Issac Newton almost a century after 1609, and delayed the publication, because (owing to this error) he could not demonstrate the truth of the greatest of his astronomical theories. Correcting his calculations in this way, the curious inquirer will

so discover that two hundred English statute miles, measured along a meridian from the parallel of the point of Cape Comfort, will carry him to the parallel of 40° north laiitude; which last parallel, as I will show hereafter, was then made the common boundary between the two great districts of Virginia and New England.

The distance from Point Comfort north being determined in this way, there was no possible objection to adding an equal distance from the same point south; for in that direction no grant had then been made, which, by any possibility, could interfere with the extension of Virginia. Thus the new boundaries given to Virginia by the charter of May 23, 1609, were, in fact, these: On the north, the parallel of 40°; on the south, the parallel of 34°; on the east, the Atlantic ocean, between these parallels; and on the west, the Pacific ocean, between the same parallels.

These wide limits were very much contracted in after time, in many different ways: 1st. By the grant of Maryland, to Cæcilius Calvert, baron of Baltimore in Ireland, made by Charles the First, on the 20th of June, 1632. 2d. By the grant of North Carolina to the Earl of Clarendon and others, proprietaries of that province, made by Charles the Second, June 30, 1665. 3d. By the grant of Pennsylvania to William Penn, made by Charles the Second, March 4, 1681. 4th. By the treaty made between Great Britain and France, (commonly called the treaty of Paris, because it was concluded at Paris,) on the 10th of February, 1763; and, 5th. By the constitution of Virginia herself, adopted June 29, 1776. Deduct from the area of the parallelogram I have before mentioned, the several territories carved out of it by the various acts to which I have referred above, and the remainder of this area will represent what Virginia was on the 4th day of July, 1776-when she too, like the other colonies, became a free, sovereign, and independent State.