In 1629, Jamestown was visited, from his little colony of Ferryland, in Newfoundland, by Lord Baltimore, a distinguished Catholic nobleman, who was so charmed with the scenery round Chesapeake Bay, that he asked for and obtained an extensive grant of land on its shores from King Charles I. of England. He died before he could himself take possession of his new territories, but his patent was renewed in 1632 to his son Cecilius, who endeavored to established himself on the south of James River. So bitter, however, was the opposition he met with from the English already in possession of Virginia, that he persuaded King Charles to give him the land on the north instead of the south of the original colony. Here, in that “irregular triangle” formed by the fortieth degree of latitude, the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay, the second Lord Baltimore planted a little colony of English Roman Catholics, naming their new home Maryland, in honor of Queen Henrietta Maria. The new emigrants, numbering some three hundred in all, landed on one of the islands at the mouth of the Potomac, now reduced to a mere strip of sand, on the 25th March, 1634, and, after celebrating mass on the beach, planted a cross on the loftiest point within reach, round which a second solemn service was held. From the island, excursions were then made up the river by Leonard Calvert――brother to Lord Baltimore, and first governor of the colony――and a few picked men, with a view to selecting the best spot for a first settlement, resulting in the selection of an Indian village which Calvert succeeded in purchasing from the Indians, with whom also he made an offensive and defensive treaty. To the village thus chosen the name of St. Mary’s was given, and to the neck of land in which it was situated that of St. Mary’s Point. With truly marvelous rapidity a town of comfortable houses gathered about the native wigwams, and the colony seemed likely shortly to rival in prosperity that of its older neighbor, Virginia, when that neighbor, which had from the first viewed its very existence with jealousy, picked a quarrel with its governor, which finally developed into a bitter war, extending over many years.