hundred
persons designed to form the proposed settlement. The colonists
arrived safely on the American coast in autumn, and took possession of
a piece of ground near the river Sagahadoc, where they built fort St.
George. Their sufferings during the ensuing winter were extreme. Many
of the company, among whom were Gilbert their admiral, and George
Popham their president, sank under the diseases by which they were
attacked; and the vessels which brought them supplies in the following
spring, brought also the information that their principal patron, Sir
John Popham, chief justice of England, was dead. Discouraged by their
losses and sufferings, and by the death of a person on whom they
relied chiefly for assistance, the surviving colonists determined to
abandon the country, and embark on board the vessels then returning to
England. The frightful pictures they drew of the country, and of the
climate, deterred the company, for some time, from farther attempts to
make a settlement, and their enterprizes were limited to voyages for
the purposes of taking fish, and of trading with the natives for furs.
One of these was made by captain Smith, so distinguished in the
history of Virginia. Having explored, with great accuracy, that part
of the coast which stretches from Penobscot to Cape Cod, he delineated
it on a map; which he presented to the young Prince of Wales, with
descriptions dictated by a sanguine mind, in which enthusiasm was
combined with genius. The imagination of the Prince was so wrought
upon by the glowing colours in which Smith painted the country, that
he declared it should be called New England, which name it has ever
since retained.[48]

[Footnote 48: Robertson. Chalmer. Hutchison.]

The languishing company of Plymouth, however, could not be stimulated
to engage in farther schemes of colonisation, the advantages of which
were distant and uncertain, while the expense was immediate and
inevitable. To a stronger motive than even interest, is New England
indebted for its first settlement.

An obscure sect, which had acquired the appellation of Brownists from
the name of its founder, and which had rendered itself peculiarly
obnoxious by the democracy of its tenets respecting church government,
had been driven by persecution to take refuge at Leyden in Holland,
where its members formed a distinct society under the care of their
pastor, Mr. John Robinson. There they resided several years in safe
obscurity. Thi