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sanguine hopes of fortune and domains in
America,
and, in the next year, two ships were despatched to
Northern Virginia, commanded by
Raleigh Gilbert, and bearing emigrants for a plantation under the presidency of
George Popham.
1 After a tedious voyage, the adventurers reached the coast of
America near the
mouth of the
Kennebec, and, offering public thanks to God for their safety, began their settlement under the auspices of religion, with a government framed as if for a permanent colony.
Rude cabins, a storehouse, and some slight fortifications, were rapidly prepared, and the ships sailed for
England, leaving forty-five
emigrants in the plantation, which was named
St. George.
But the winter was intensely cold; the natives, at first friendly, became restless; the storehouse caught fire, and part of the provisions was consumed; the emigrants grew weary of their solitude; they lost
Popham, their president, “the only one
2 of the company that died there; ‘the ships which revisited the settlement with supplies, brought news of
the death of the
chief justice, the most vigorous friend of the settlement in
England; and
Gilbert, the sole in command at
St. George, had, by the decease of his brother, become heir to an estate which invited his presence.
So the plantation was abandoned; and the colonists, returning to
England,’ did coyne many excuses,” and sought to conceal their own deficiency of spirit by spreading exaggerated accounts of the rugged poverty of the soil, and the inhospitable severity