“Such,” says Bancroft, “were the men and the voyages which led the way to the colonisation of the United States. The daring and skill of these earliest adventurers on the ocean deserve the highest admiration. The difficulties of crossing the Atlantic were new; the characters of the prevalent winds and currents were unknown. The possibility of making a direct passage was but gradually discovered. The ships at first employed for discovery were generally of less than one hundred tons burden. Frobisher sailed in a vessel of but twenty-five tons; two of those of Columbus were without decks; and so perilous were voyages considered, that the sailors were accustomed, before embarking, to perform acts of solemn devotion.” CHAPTER IV. COLONISATION OF VIRGINIA. At the commencement of the seventeenth century a considerable revolution had taken place in the objects of American enterprise and discovery. As the greatness and the immense resources of the new world opened before the European mind, the grasp of mind itself and of human interests widened in proportion. The vain hope of the new passage to the East Indies, which prompted Columbus and others to sail first westward, was now becoming a secondary motive. To this had succeeded the desire for the acquisition of gold, a rabid appetite, whether a more bitter curse to the aborigines or the European it is hard to say; the islands and equatorial regions had also ministered to the luxury and indulgence of the conqueror by all their affluence of tropical productions. Selfishness and aggrandisement had prevailed; but gradually, as morning will succeed to night, a nobler and better purpose had begun to operate, and these new-found realms were regarded as a wide field on which to found states and establish Christian colonies; they had already become the refuge of the oppressed, they might be still more so: they had already given an impulse to commercial enterprise, they would do so still more.