These stanzas show the reason for sending the colonizers to Virginia:--

"You brave heroic minds,
Worthy your country's name,
That honor still pursue,
Whilst loit'ring hinds
Lurk here at home with shame,
Go and subdue.
* * * * *
And cheerfully at sea,
Success you still entice,
To get the pearl and gold;
And ours to hold
Virginia,
Earth's only paradise."

The majority of the early Virginian colonists were unfit for their task.
Contemporary accounts tell of the "many unruly gallants, packed hither by
their friends to escape ill destinies." Beggars, vagabonds, indentured
servants, kidnapped girls, even convicts, were sent to Jamestown and became
the ancestors of some of the "poor white trash" of the South. After the
execution of Charles I. in 1649, and the setting up of the Puritan
Commonwealth, many of the royalists, or Cavaliers, as they were called,
came to Virginia to escape the obnoxious Puritan rule. They became the
ancestors of Presidents and statesmen, and of many of the aristocratic
families of the South.

The ideals expressed by Captain John Smith, the leader and preserver of the
Jamestown colony, are worthy to rank beside those of the colonizers of New
England. Looking back at his achievement in Virginia, he wrote, "Then