IN the series of books on American history, upon which I have for many years been engaged, the present volumes come between "The Discovery of America" and "The Beginnings of New England." The opening chapter, with its brief sketch of the work done by Elizabeth's great sailors, takes up the narrative where the concluding chapter of "The Discovery of America" dropped it. Then the story of Virginia, starting with Sir Walter Raleigh and Rev. Richard Hakluyt, is pursued until the year 1753, when the youthful George Washington sets forth upon his expedition to warn the approaching Frenchmen from any further encroachment upon English soil. That moment marks the arrival of a new era, when a book like the present--which is not a local history nor a bundle of local histories--can no longer follow the career of Virginia, nor of the southern colonies, except as part and parcel of the career of the American people. That "continental state of things," which was distinctly heralded when the war of the Spanish Succession broke out during Nicholson's rule in Virginia, had arrived in 1753. To treat it properly requires preliminary consideration of many points in the history of the northern colonies, and it is accordingly reserved for a future work. It will be observed that I do not call the present work a "History of the Southern Colonies." Its contents would not justify such a title, inasmuch as its scope and purpose are different from what such a title would imply. My aim is to follow the main stream of causation from the time of Raleigh to the time of Dinwiddie, from its sources down to its absorption into a mightier stream. At first our attention is fixed upon Raleigh's Virginia, which extends from Florida to Canada, England thrusting herself in between Spain and France. With the charter of 1609 (see below, vol. i. p. 145) Virginia is practically severed from North Virginia, which presently takes on the names of New England and New Netherland, and receives colonies of Puritans and Dutchmen, with which this book is not concerned.