his time. The freshness of the story is in its clear exposition of the
terrible difficulties in the way of founding self-sustaining
colonies--the unfamiliar soil and climate, Indian enemies, internal
dissensions, interference by the English government, vague and
conflicting territorial grants. Yet out of these difficulties, in
forty-five years of actual settlement, two southern and six or seven
northern communities were permanently established, in the face of the
opposition and rivalry of Spain, France, and Holland. For this task
the editor has thought that President Tyler is especially qualified,
as an author whose descent and historical interest connect him both
with the northern and the southern groups of settlements.


AUTHOR'S PREFACE

This book covers a period of a little more than three-quarters of a
century. It begins with the first attempt at English colonization in
America, in 1576, and ends with the year 1652, when the supremacy of
Parliament was recognized throughout the English colonies. The
original motive of colonization is found in English rivalry with the
Spanish power; and the first chapter of this work tells how this
motive influenced Gilbert and Raleigh in their endeavors to plant
colonies in Newfoundland and North Carolina. Though unfortunate in
permanent result, these expeditions familiarized the people of England
with the country of Virginia--a name given by Queen Elizabeth to all
the region from Canada to Florida--and stimulated the successful
settlement at Jamestown in the early part of the seventeenth century.
With the charter of 1609 Virginia was severed from North Virginia, to
which Captain Smith soon gave the name of "New England"; and the story
thereafter is of two streams of English emigration--one to Virginia