Virginia, yet there was no longer that wild fancy which taught that the gold was to be had for the gathering, and all was to be smiles, and sunshine, and smooth sailing in the experiment. There was work to be done, and dangers were to be met, and toils endured; and hence the importance of a man like Smith, to whom these were not only familiar but grateful. It required the active parties more than a year of zealous service in England before they could move (( certain of the nobility, gentry and marchantes" to entertain their schemes; in other words, furnish the necessary funds for their prosecution-Gosnold, Wingfield, Hunt, Smith and others, being thought to have risked quite enough when they perilled their lives upon the adventure. The letters patent, bearing date April 10th, 1606, were issued to Sir Thomas Gates, Sir George Somers, Richard Hackluyt and their associates. This, the first charter under which the English succeeded in planting a colony in America, was one which was designed to establish a mercantile corporation. It allotted a sufficiently ample territory, extending on the sea-coast of America from the thirty-fourth to the forty-fifth degrees of north latitude, together with all islands within a hundred miles of their shores. This was to be divided beone of which, however

tween two rival companies, that in which Smith was a leader-alone succeeded, and to this alone will our attention be directed. The territory actually yielded by the charter to the one company, occupied exclusively "the regions from thirty-four to thirtyeight degrees of North latitude; that is, from Cape Fear to the southern limit of Maryland." The territory was ample, but the charter was one of the narrowest limitations. The selfish monarch granted nothing but a desert waste of forest, with the privilege of peopling and subduing it, reserving to himself all authority. He framed the

laws, controlled the appointments, and looked largely to the future revenues. With that morbid jealousy of his sovereign prerogative, which rendered him tyrannical, when nature perhaps only designed that he should be ridiculous, he tenaciously took to himself the labor of devising the whole scheme of the colonial government; and contrived-very happily as he thought, but very unroyally as we may be permitted to think, to say nothing of the blindness and peevishness of the whole proceeding-tc withhold from the emigrants themselves every elective franchise, to deny them every attribute of self-government. "They were subjected," to employ the language of a modern historian,* "to the ordinances of a commercial corporation, of which they could not be members; to the dominion of a domestic council, in appointing which they had no voice; to the control of a superior council in Eng. land, which had no sympathies with their rights; and, finally, to the arbitrary legislation of their sovereign." This was only so much rare fooling, by which the feebie king endangered the power, in the assertion of which his morbid jealousy kept him in continual and feverish apprehension. The transmission of this miserable quality of jealousy to his unhappy descendants, without his own accompanying love of approbation, was the true secret of all that was vile and wretched in their subsequent career and fate.

But the folly of James did not end here. The names of governor and council, and his instructions how they should proceed, were all carefully sealed up and confided to them in a strong box, not to be opened till after their arrival in Virginia. They were consequently under no authority until that period, and to this circumstance some

* Bancroft.

of the misfortunes which marked their voyage may be ascribed. Their squadron consisted of three small vessels, the largest not exceeding one hundred tons burthen; the whole being under the command of Captain Christopher Newport, an experienced mariner. The colonists were but one hundred and five in number, of whom we learn that forty-eight were gentlemen, twelve were laborers, four were carpenters, one was a blacksmith, one a bricklayer, one a tailor, one a mason, one a barber, one a drummer, but one a sailor, two were chirurgeons, and there were four boys. The exceeding disproportion between the gentlemen and the mechanics and laborers reminds irresistibly of the limited allowance of bread to sack in the domestic economy of Falstaff. Why gentlemen should be wanted in a wilderness would somewhat puzzle the philosopher; and of those who went on this expedition we have a sufficient glimpse, contained in a single passage of the narrative of William Simons, reported by Smith, who describes "some few of the greatest ranke amongst us as little better than atheists."

us

CHAPTER II.

THUS motley in the composition of their members, the colonists set sail from Blackwall, on the 19th day of De cember, 1606—a little more than one hundred years after the discovery of the continent by Cabot. The commencement of their voyage was inauspicious, and its progress was unhappy. They were not suffered for six weeks after anchor had been weighed, by reason of contrary winds, to lose sight of the English coast. In this time our adventurers employed themselves in the most scandalous dissensions, which arose at length to such a height of violence as to task all the best efforts of the more judicious among them to maintain the peace. Mr. Hunt, the preacher, a mild and sensible person, who had actively participated with Smith, Gosnold, and Wingfield, in originating the adventure, now approved himself worthy of the Christian ministry in the activity which he displayed in restoring harmony, or at least the appearance of harmony, among these ungenial spirits. But it was an appearance only, to be thrown aside upon the first new provocation, however slight. The substance of peace was wholly wanting to the company. The elements among them were of too mixed and conflicting character; and these elements, from the silly commands of the king, that their instructions should not be opened until they had reached Virginia, by leaving them without any recognized authority, left them free to the indulgence of all their capricious moods and impulses. What share Smith had in these troubles and controversies does not appear. We are left only to conJecture from what we know of his claims and character,

and from what is subsequently revealed to us of his treat ment, that the provocation to their violence, in all proba bility,came from him. That he was the true man of the expedition was probably very soon apparent to all parties. That he was not the most beloved on this account, is a fair presumption from what we know of the insolence, the insufferable pride and vanity of many of his companions. The account from which we draw our own, at this point of the narrative, is that of William Simons, "Doctour of Divinitie," who was not of the voyage, but who is very likely to have procured his intelligence from Hunt. Simons distinctly ascribes this dissension to envy of,and hostility to Smith, on the part of those "godlesse foes, whose disasterous designes (could they have prevailed) had even then overthrowne the businesse." The history is a com mon one, and the motive insisted upon is, unhappily, in the weak and vicious state of our depraved humanity, natural enough. The world-man cordially hates the Godman, and will destroy him if he can; and the conflict, for life,and for all lives, is inevitable between them. We can readily conceive how such a man, so taught by experience and all sorts of fortune, should, in their wretched windbound and storm-impeded progress to the Canaries, have given provocation in a thousand ways, by his very address and energy and natural command of character, to the herd of conceited gentlemen sent out to seek their fortunes, by whom he found himself surrounded. man, among such men, to stir up the provoke bile, and bitterness, and wrath. ble genius, his notorious experience, his ready decision, these in all probability acquired him a command during the voyage, in place of the sealed authority of King James, to which a peevish vanity would not always be ready to submit. The storm which Preacher

Easy for such a acrid humors, to His unquestionanoble aspect, his