ere especially
advised to choose a high and dry situation, divested of trees and up
some river, a considerable distance from the mouth. The emigrants
numbered one hundred and twenty men--no women. Besides Captain
Newport, the admiral, in the _Sarah Constant_, of a hundred tons, the
leading persons in the exploration were Bartholomew Gosnold, who
commanded the _Goodspeed_, of forty tons; Captain John Ratcliffe, who
commanded the _Discovery_, of twenty tons; Edward Maria Wingfield;
George Percy, brother of the earl of Northumberland; John Smith;
George Kendall, a cousin of Sir Edwin Sandys; Gabriel Archer; and Rev.
Robert Hunt.

Among these men John Smith was distinguished for a career combining
adventure and romance. Though he was only thirty years of age he had
already seen much service and had many hairbreadth escapes, his most
remarkable exploit having been his killing before the town of Regal,
in Transylvania, three Turks, one after another, in single combat.[15]
The ships sailed from London December 20, 1606, and Michael Drayton
wrote some quaint verses of farewell, of which perhaps one will
suffice:

"And cheerfully at sea
Success you still entice,
To get the pearl and gold,
And ours to hold
Virginia,
Earth's only paradise!"

The destination of the colony was Chesapeake Bay, a large gulf opening
by a strait fifteen miles wide upon the Atlantic at thirty-seven
degrees, and reaching northward parallel to the sea-coast one hundred
and eighty-five miles. Into its basin a great many smooth and placid
rivers discharge their contents. Perhaps no bay of the world has such
diversified scenery. Among the rivers which enter the bay from the
west, four--the Potomac, Rappahannock, York, and James--are
particularly large and imposing. They divide what is called tide-water
Virginia into long and narrow peninsulas, which are themselves
furrowed by deep creeks making numerous necks or minor peninsulas of
land. Up these rivers and creeks the tide ebbs and flows for many
miles. In 1607, before the English arrived, the whole of this
tide-water region, except here and there where the Indians had a
cornfield, was covered with primeval forests, so free from undergrowth
that a coach with four horses could be driven through the thickest
groups of trees.

The numerous tribes of Indians who inhabited this region belonged to
the Algonquin race, and at the time Captain Newport set sail from
England they were members o