e from the infant colony at Jamestown. By a curious destiny
his fame is associated with the beginnings of both the southern and the
northern portions of the United States. To Virginia Smith may be said to
have given its very existence as a commonwealth; to New England he
gave its name. In 1614 he came over with two ships to North Virginia,
explored its coast minutely from the Penobscot river to Cape Cod, and
thinking it a country of such extent and importance as to deserve a name
of its own, rechristened it New England. On returning home he made a
very good map of the coast and dotted it with English names suggested by
Prince Charles. Of these names Cape Elizabeth, Cape Ann, Charles River,
and Plymouth still remain where Smith placed them. In 1615 Smith again
set sail for the New World, this time with a view to planting a colony
under the auspices of the Plymouth Company, but his talent for strange
adventures had not deserted him. He was taken prisoner by a French
fleet, carried hither and thither on a long cruise, and finally set
ashore at Rochelle, whence, without a penny in his pocket, he contrived
to make his way back to England. Perhaps Smith's life of hardship may
have made him prematurely old. After all his wild and varied experience
he was now only in his thirty-seventh year, but he does not seem to have
gone on any more voyages. The remaining sixteen years of his life
were spent quietly in England in writing books, publishing maps, and
otherwise stimulating the public interest in the colonization of the New
World. But as for the rocky coast of New England, which he had explored
and named, he declared that he was not so simple as to suppose that any
other motive than riches would "ever erect there a commonwealth or draw
company from their ease and humours at home, to stay in New England."
[Sidenote: John Smith]

In this opinion, however, the bold explorer was mistaken. Of all
migrations of peoples the settlement of New England is preeminently
the one in which the almighty dollar played the smallest part, however
important it may since have become as a motive power. It was left for
religious enthusiasm to achieve what commercial enterprise had failed
to accomplish. By the summer of 1617 the Pilgrim society at Leyden had
decided to send a detachment of its most vigorous members to lay
the foundations of a Puritan state in America. There had been much
discussion as to the fittest site for such a colony. Many were in