panied him well
established. Queen Elizabeth gave the name VIRGINIA to the new country.
Drake, tending homeward from one of his raids on the Spanish coast, in
1586, offered the settlers supplies, but finding them wholly
discouraged, he carried them back to England.

[Illustration: Queen Elizabeth.]

[1587]

Determined to plant an agricultural community, Raleigh next time, l587,
sent men with their families. A daughter to one of these, named Dare,
was the first child of English parents born in America. Becoming
destitute, the colony despatched its governor home for supplies. He
returned to find the settlement deserted, and no tidings as to the fate
of the poor colonists have ever been heard from that day to our own. The
Jamestown settlers mentioned in the next chapter found among their
Indian neighbors a boy whose whitish complexion and wavy hair induced
the interesting suspicion that he was descended from some one of these
lost colonists of Roanoke.

Thus Sir Walter's enterprise had to be abandoned. In the 40,000 pounds
spent upon it his means were exhausted. Besides, England was now at war
with Spain, and the entire energies of the nation were in requisition
for the overthrow of the Spanish Armada.

CHAPTER IV.

THE PLANTING OF VIRGINIA

[1606]

We have now arrived at the seventeenth century. In 1606 King James I.
issued the first English colonial charter. It created a first and a
second Virginia Company, the one having its centre in London, and coming
to be known as the London Company; the other made up of Bristol, Exeter,
and Plymouth men, and gradually taking the title of the Plymouth
Company. This latter company, the second, or Plymouth Company,
authorized to plant between 38 degrees and 45 degrees north, effected a
settlement in 1607 at the mouth of the Kennebec River. Little came of it
but suffering, the colonists, after a severe winter, returning to
England.

[Illustration: King James I. Mr. Henry Irving's Collection.]

[1607]

A colony of one hundred and five planters sent out by the first or
London Company, proceeded, also in 1607, to Chesapeake Bay, entering
James River, to which they indeed gave this name, and planted upon its
banks Jamestown, the first permanent English colony on the continent.
This London Company consisted of a council in England, appointed by the
king, having the power to name the members of a local council which was
to govern the colony, the colonists themselves havin