As years passed, the older generation among the exiles who clung loyally to the English name and tongue began to realize that a great part of their aims would be frustrated if their children should, by intermarriage with the Dutch and other outside influences, wander from their fathers’ principles, and be absorbed in the Dutch people. These dangers being recognized, and the major part of the company being agreed that it was best to avoid them by a removal, it became necessary to select a new asylum, where Englishmen might preserve their nationality undisturbed. To the new continent of America, which best satisfied the conditions, all thoughts turned as early as the summer of 1617; and the respective claims were weighed of tropical Guiana on the one hand, which Raleigh had described in 1595 as the true Eldorado, and Virginia on the other, conspicuous as the seat of the first successful English colony. A little consideration excluded Guiana, with its supposed wealth of gold tempting the jealousy of the Spaniard; and so the choice was limited to the territory somewhat vaguely known as Virginia, within the bounds assigned to the two companies chartered by King James in 1606. The objection was duly weighed “that if they lived among the English which were there planted [_i.e._ on the James River], or so near them as to be under their government, they should be in as great danger to be troubled or persecuted for the cause of religion as if they lived in England; and it might be worse. And if they lived too far off, they should neither have succor nor defence from them.” There were risks either way; but they decided, under the advice of some persons of rank and quality at home,—friends, perhaps, of Brewster’s when at court, or of Winslow’s,—to dare the dangers from wild beasts and savages in the unsettled parts of Virginia, rather than the dangers from their own bigoted countrymen, and to ask the King boldly for leave to continue as they were in church matters.