The best accounts of early exploration and settlement in America are in Channing's _History of the United States_, I, chaps. III-VII; and Bourne's _Spain in America_, chaps, VI-IX. An admirable account of the activities of English seamen in the sixteenth century is given by Walter Raleigh in volume XII of his edition of Hakluyt's _Voyages_. An interesting contemporary narrative of Drake's voyage around the world is in Hakluyt's _Voyages_ (Raleigh ed.), XI, pp. 101-33. Hakluyt's _Discourse on Western Plantinge_ is in the Maine Historical Society Collections, series II, vol. II. For the rise of the chartered trading companies, and their connection with early American colonizing companies, see Cheyney's _Background of American History_, chaps. VII-VIII. The best discussion of the English interest in colonization at the opening of the seventeenth century is in Beer's _The Origins of the British Colonial System_, chaps. I-III. The most elaborate and learned account of the colonies in the seventeenth century is that of Osgood, _The American Colonies in the 17th Century_, 3 vols. Macmillan, 1904. The most readable account of the founding of Virginia is in Fiske's _Old Virginia and Her Neighbours_, I chaps. I-VI. John Smith's account of the settlement of Jamestown is in his _True Relation_, printed in Arber, _Works of Captain John Smith_. Birmingham, 1884. FOOTNOTES: [1] _Pesos_=approximately $3.00. CHAPTER III THE ENGLISH MIGRATION IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY _They are too delicate and unfitte to beginne new Plantations and Collonies, that cannot endure the biting of a muskeeto._ WILLIAM BRADFORD. _To authorize an untruth, by toleration of State, is to build a sconce against the Walls of Heaven, to batter God out of his chair._ _The Cobler of Aggawam._ _I have often wondered in my younger dayes how the Pope came to such a height of arogancie, but since I came to New England I have perceived the height of that tripple crowne, and also the depth of that sea._ SAMUEL GORTON. I Those who looked to America for great financial profit or immediate political advantage were disappointed. The seventeenth century had run half its course before the colonies became an important asset to the English Government: no gold came from them to enrich its treasury, few supplies to furnish its navy, while the revenue, derived from its slowly growing trade was insignificant. Equally deceptive was the New World as a field for corporate exploitation. The sagacity of Thomas Smythe and the idealism of Edwin Sandys were alike unavailing. Before the Virginia Company was dissolved in 1624 it had sunk nearly two hundred thousand pounds in its venture "withoutt returne either of profitt or of any part of the principall"; and in 1660 Lord Baltimore, whose colony was well established, was himself living in straitened circumstances.