eceding summer. In this
exploration Captain Smith had pointed the way for the colony's later
expansion, but at the moment the adventurers seem to have viewed the
Chesapeake as having value chiefly for its fish and trade and for
further exploration. Dissatisfied with Jamestown, as a place that was
both unhealthy and exposed to attack from the sea, they advised Sir
Thomas Gates, on the eve of his departure for Virginia in the spring of
1609 as the newly appointed lieutenant governor of the colony, to move
his principal city above the falls on the James, where he would enjoy
every advantage in an attack by a European foe, or better still, that
he locate it on the Chowan River in modern North Carolina, "foure
dayes Journey from your forte Southewards." In an earlier passage of
his instructions, he had already been advised that he should be guided
by the general principle of seeking the sun, "which is under God the
first cause both of health and Riches."

Those who bother to read Gates' instructions will notice the emphasis
they place on the choice of a _principal_ seat. There were to be other
towns, and Jamestown would be kept as the chief port of entry, though
not as the site of the main magazine and storehouse. All told, perhaps
three "habitations" would be enough for the settlers now to be
transported. Their number was nothing less than 600 persons, men,
women, and children--more than all the men who had been sent to
Virginia in the preceding two years. If the reported statement of Lord
Chancellor Egerton be accepted, the adventurers after two years of
exploratory effort had come to feel that "the proper thing is to
fortify ourselves all at once, because when they will open their eyes
in Spain they will not be able to help it, and even tho' they may hear
it, they are just now so poor that they will have no means to prevent
us from carrying out our plan." It was indeed a poor year for Spain,
which in 1609 had to agree to a truce in the long struggle with the
Dutch that ultimately brought legal recognition of the independence of
Holland. This was the year which also witnessed the exploration by
Henry Hudson of the river that has ever since borne his name, a river
on which the Dutch would soon lay the foundations of a shortlived North
American empire. Only the year before had the French built their fort
at Quebec. And now the English were determined to fortify Virginia "all
at once." A once proud monopoly of the new world,