emigrants; and they had not much difficulty, as at this time there
were many unemployed people in England. The wool culture had converted
great tracts of arable land in England into mere pastures for
sheep,[8] and the closure of the monasteries and religious houses
removed the support from thousands of English families. Since 1585
this surplus humanity had found employment in the war with Spain, but
the return of peace in 1605 had again thrown them upon society, and
they were eager for chances, no matter how remote, of gold-mines and
happy homes beyond the seas.[9]

Hence, in three months' time the Plymouth Company had all things in
readiness for a trial voyage, and August 12, 1606, they sent out a
ship commanded by Henry Challons with twenty-nine Englishmen and two
Indians brought into England by Weymouth the year before. Two months
later sailed another ship (of which Thomas Hanham was captain and
Martin Pring master), "with all necessary supplies for the seconding
of Captain Challons and his people." Unfortunately, Captain Challons's
vessel and crew were taken by the Spaniards in the West Indies, and,
though Hanham and Pring reached the coast of America, they returned
without making a settlement.[10] Nevertheless, they brought back, as
Sir Ferdinando Gorges wrote many years after, "the most exact
discovery of that coast that ever came to my hands since," which
wrought "such an impression" on Chief-Justice Popham and the other
members of the Plymouth Company that they determined upon another and
better-appointed attempt at once.[11]

May 31, 1607, this second expedition sailed from Plymouth with one
hundred and twenty settlers embarked in two vessels--a fly boat called
the _Gift of God_ and a ship called _Mary and John_. August 18, 1607,
the company landed on a peninsula at the mouth of the Sagadahoc, or