234

VI.

VIRGINIA AND ITS INHABITANTS.

CHAP. and, as men believed, breaking with their weight the boughs of trees on which they alighted,-were all honored with frequent commemoration, and became the subjects of the strangest tales. The concurrent relation of all the Indians justified the belief, that, within ten days' journey towards the setting of the sun, there was a country where gold might be washed from the sand, and where the natives themselves had learned the use of the crucible; but definite and accurate as were the accounts, inquiry was always baffled; and the regions of gold remained for two centuries an undiscovered land.

2

Various were the employments by which the calmness of life was relieved. George Sandys, an idle man, who had been a great traveller, and who did not remain in America, a poet, whose verse was tolerated by Dryden and praised by Izaak Walton, beguiled the ennui of his seclusion by translating the whole of Ovid's Metamorphoses. To the man of leisure, the chase furnished a perpetual resource. It was not long before the horse was multiplied in Virginia; and to improve that noble animal was early an object of pride, soon to be favored by legislation. Speed was especially valued; and "the planter's pace" became a proverb.

Equally proverbial was the hospitality of the Virginians. Labor was valuable; land was cheap; competence promptly followed industry. There was no need of a scramble; abundance gushed from the earth for all. The morasses were alive with water-fowl; the creeks abounded with oysters, heaped together in inexhaustible beds; the rivers were crowded with

1 E. Williams, Virginia, &c. 17. Comp. Silliman's Journal, on the mines of N. C. xxiii. 8, 9.

2 Rymer, xviii. 676, 677. Walton's Hooker, 32.

VIRGINIA AND ITS INHABITANTS.

235

VI.

fish; the forests were nimble with game; the woods CHAP rustled with coveys of quails and wild turkeys, while they rung with the merry notes of the singing-birds; and hogs, swarming like vermin, ran at large in troops. It was "the best poor man's country in the world.” "If a happy peace be settled in poor England," it had been said, "then they in Virginia shall be as happy a people as any under heaven." But plenty encouraged indolence. No domestic manufactures were established; every thing was imported from England. The chief branch of industry, for the purpose of exchanges, was tobacco-planting; and the spirit of invention was enfeebled by the uniformity of pursuit.

1 ii. Mass. Hist. Coll. ix. 116. 106. Hammond's Leah and Rachel, 9, 10, 5.

CHAPTER VII.

CHAP.

VII.

COLONIZATION OF MARYLAND.

THE limits of Virginia, by its second charter, extended two hundred miles north of Old Point Com1609. fort, and therefore included all the soil which subsequently formed the state of Maryland. It was not long before the country towards the head of the Chesapeake was explored; settlements in Accomack were extended; and commerce was begun with the tribes which Smith had been the first to visit. Porey, the 1621. secretary of the colony, "made a discovery into the great bay," as far as the River Patuxent, which he ascended; but his voyage probably reached no farther to the north. The English settlement of a hundred men, which he is represented to have found already established,' was rather a consequence of his voyage, and seems to have been on the eastern shore, perhaps within the limits of Virginia. The hope "of a very good trade of furs," animated the adventurers; and if the plantations advanced but slowly, there is yet evidence, that commerce with the Indians was earnestly pursued under the sanction of the colonial government.3

2

An attempt was made to obtain a monopoly of this commerce by William Clayborne, whose resolute and

1 Chalmers, 206.

1635. Smith's History of Virginia,

2 Purchas, iv. 1784. Smith, ii. ii. 63 and 95. 61-64.

3 Relation of Maryland, 4; ed.

4 Rel. of Maryland, 1635, p. 10.

4

EARLIEST SETTLEMENTS IN MARYLAND.

237

VII.

to

enterprising spirit was destined to exert a powerful chap. and long-continued influence. His first appearance in America was as a surveyor,1 sent by the London com- 1621. pany to make a map of the country. At the fall of the corporation, he had been appointed by King James a 1624. member of the council; and, on the accession of Charles, was continued in office, and, in repeated com- 1625. missions, was nominated secretary of state. At the 1627 same time, he received authority from the governors 1629. of Virginia to discover the source of the Bay of the Chesapeake, and, indeed, any part of that province, from the thirty-fourth to the forty-first degree of latitude. It was, therefore, natural that he should become familiar with the opportunities for traffic which the country afforded; and the jurisdiction and the settlement of Virginia seemed about to extend to the forty-first parallel of latitude, which was then the boundary of New England. Upon his favorable representation, a company was formed in England for trading with the natives; and, through the agency of 1631. Sir William Alexander, the Scottish proprietary of May Nova Scotia, a royal license was issued, sanctioning the commerce, and conferring on Clayborne powers of government over the companions of his voyages. Harvey enforced the commands of his sovereign, and 1632 confirmed the license by a colonial commission. The 8. Dutch plantations were esteemed to border upon Virginia. After long experience as a surveyor, and after years employed in discoveries, Clayborne, now acting under the royal license, formed establishments, not only on Kent Island, in the heart of Maryland, but

1 Hening, i. 116.

2 Hazard, i. 189.

3 Ibid. 234 and 239.

4 Papers in Chalmers, 227.

5 Chalmers, 227, 228.

6 Ibid. 228, 229.

16.

Mar.

238

LIFE AND CHARACTER OF SIR GEORGE CALVERT.

CHAP. also near the mouth of the Susquehannah.1 Thus the

VII. colony of Virginia anticipated the extension of its

commerce and its limits; and, as mistress of all the vast and commodious waters of the Chesapeake, and of the soil on both sides of the Potomac, indulged the hope of obtaining the most brilliant commercial success, and rising into powerful opulence, without the competition of a rival.

It was the peculiar fortune of the United States, that they were severally colonized by men, in origin, religious faith, and purposes, as various as the climes which are included within their limits. Before Virginia could complete its settlements, and confirm its claims to jurisdiction over the country north of the Potomac, a new government was erected, on a foundation as extraordinary as its results were benevolent. Sir George Calvert had early become interested in colonial establishments in America. A native of York1580. shire, educated at Oxford,3 with a mind enlarged by extensive travel, on his entrance into life befriended

2

4

by Sir Robert Cecil, advanced to the honors of knight1619. hood, and at length employed as one of the two secretaries of state, he not only secured the consideration of his patron and his sovereign, but the good opinion 1621. of the world. He was chosen by an immense majority to represent in parliament his native county of Yorkshire. His knowledge of business, his industry, and his fidelity, are acknowledged by all historians. In an age when religious controversy still continued

1 Hazard, i. 430. Relation of Maryland, 34. Thurloe, v. 486. Hazard, i. 630. Maryland Papers, in Chalmers, 233.

2 Fuller's Worthies, 201.

3 Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses, 522, 523.

4 Stow, edition of 1631, p. 1031.

5 Winwood, ii. 58, and iii. 318 and 337.

6 Debates of 1620 and 1621, i.

175.