The first settlement of a permanent character, effected by the English in North America, was at _Jamestown_, in Virginia, in 1607. To that portion of the continent, as has been just detailed, more numerous and vigorous efforts at settlement had been directed than to any other on the coast, and with what results has also appeared. No one can read the account of these early and unfortunate attempts to settle our country, without deeply lamenting the fate of those brave adventurers who were engaged in them. In the Virginia enterprise, religion and its blessings were not the direct moving influences on the minds of the adventurers; but they were a gallant and public spirited class of the English people, and many of them of the better orders of society. Their failure, however, did not check the spirit of enterprise; a settlement was determined on, and it was providentially effected. Under the sanction of a grant from King James, of the southern equal half of the territory lying between the thirty-fourth and forty-fifth degrees of latitude, an association was constituted, called the London Company, who undertook the colonization of their portion of the country. This was called the _Southern Colony_. The expedition consisted of three small vessels, under the command of Captain Christopher Newport, a man of great nautical experience. Neither they who were designed for the magistracy, nor the code of laws, could be known until the arrival of the fleet in Virginia, when the sealed orders, committed to the commander, might be broken. It would seem, from the early accounts, that a portion of the emigrants were but little influenced by the considerations of religion or propriety, from the disorders that occurred during the voyage; but their pious preacher, Mr. Hunt, at length, "with the water of patience and his godly exhortations (but chiefly by his true-devoted examples) quenched these flames of envy and dissension."