their own weight of sugar_, by the simple agency of one of the cheapest
and most abundant acids?--that dry bones could be a magazine of nutriment,
capable of preservation for years, and ready to yield up their sustenance
in the form best adapted to the support of life, on the application of
that powerful agent, steam, which enters so largely into all our processes,
or of an acid at once cheap and durable?--that sawdust itself is
susceptible of conversion into a substance bearing no remote analogy to
bread; and though certainly less palatable than that of flour, yet noway
disagreeable, and both wholesome and digestible as well as highly
nutritive?

* * * * *


FIRST ENGLISH COLONY IN AMERICA.


The first attempt of the English to effect any settlement in America, was
made by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who, in the month of June, 1578, obtained a
patent from Queen Elizabeth, authorizing him to plant a colony in that
country. Gilbert's project failed; but it was afterwards resumed by his
half-brother, the celebrated Sir Walter Raleigh, who, in 1584, obtained a
patent similar to that which had been granted to Gilbert, and next year
planted a colony at the mouth of the Roanoke, naming the country
_Virginia_ in honour of his royal mistress. But all these settlers, as
well as others who crossed the Atlantic during the next twenty years,
either perished by famine and disease, or by the hands of the Indians, or
returned to England.--_Cabinet Cyclopaedia_, vol. xiii.; _being_ vol. i.
_of the History of the Western World--United States of America_.