The history of the United States may be said to have begun with the formation in England of a company for the purpose of forming colonies in America. This was called the Virginia Company, and to it was given the right to hold all the land from Cape Fear to the St. Croix River. The Company had two divisions--the London Company, with control over the southern territory, and the Plymouth Company, controlling the northern. It was the London Company who founded the first colony. Three vessels, under Captain Christopher Newport, sailed from England in the year 1607, with instructions to land on Roanoke Island. A storm drove them into Chesapeake Bay, and so delighted were they with the beauty of its shores that they determined to settle there. Sailing up the James River, they found a convenient spot for landing, and on the 13th of May the colony of Jamestown was established. There were about a hundred men in the party, many of them gentlemen of more or less precarious fortune, whose object in leaving their native land was almost entirely selfish. They expected to find gold, and so great was their greed that they went directly to washing dust, instead of cultivating the ground. The summer that followed was a terrible one. The location proved unhealthy, and more than half the colony died of a pestilence. Only the friendly generosity of the Indians saved the rest from starvation. The situation was rendered more unendurable by quarrels and dissensions in the Governing Council, which consisted of seven men appointed before leaving England. In this Council had been Gosnold, the explorer, Captain Newport, and Captain John Smith. This latter personage was a man of marked individuality, one of those characters not uncommon in history, who are as cordially detested by half the world as they are warmly admired by the other half. At first prevented by his enemies from taking his place in the Council at all, arrested and kept under a cloud for months, the following autumn finds him in supreme and solitary control of the entire colony. Things began to brighten a little at Jamestown. Supplies were plenty, and, under the careful management of Smith, promised to last all winter. Having nothing else to complain about, the dissenters now began to mutter against Smith for not having discovered the source of the Chickahominy, the theory being that the South Sea, or Pacific Ocean, was not far distant, and that some river running from the northwest would be sure to lead to it. Whether or not Smith had much hope of reaching the Pacific via the Chickahominy River is uncertain, but he did make an attempt to trace the stream to its head.