might be planted in America should be self-governing in the fullest
sense--a provision also included in the patent granted to the company
which afterwards succeeded in gaining and maintaining a foothold on the
James.

Raleigh spent nearly a million dollars in endeavoring to establish a
colony on Roanoke Island--a colony which absolutely disappeared, and
whose fate was never certainly discovered; and it was not until the
Virgin Queen, after whom all that portion of the country had been named,
was dead, and Raleigh himself, shorn of his estates, was a prisoner in
the Tower under charge of treason, that a new charter was given to an
association of influential men known as the Virginia Company, which was
destined to have permanent results. On New Year's Day, 1607, an
expedition of three ships, carrying, besides their crews, one hundred
and five colonists, started on the voyage across the ocean, under
command of Captain Christopher Newport. Among Newport's company was a
scarred and weather-beaten soldier, who was soon to assume control of
events through sheer fitness for the task, and who bore that commonest
of all English names, John Smith.

But John Smith's career had been anything but common. Born in
Lincolnshire in 1579, and early left an orphan, he had gone to the
Netherlands while still in his teens, and had spent three years there
fighting against the Spaniards. A year or two later, he had embarked
with a company of Catholic pilgrims for the Levant, intent on fighting
against the Turk, but a storm arose which all attributed to the presence
of the Huguenot heretic on board, and he was forthwith flung into the
sea. Whether the storm thereupon abated, history does not state, but
Smith managed to swim to a small island, from which he was rescued next
day. Journeying across Europe to Styria, he entered the service of