Mr. W. W. Duffield, the Superintendent of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, supplied the artist with the coast charts from which the maps in this volume were drawn. To avoid misapprehension, it is needful to say that this is not a re-issue of anything I have heretofore produced. The lectures on the culture history of the United States given at Columbia College and other institutions were never written or reported. The papers on colonial life contributed to the Century Magazine in 1882, and the years following, were on a different plan and scale; they have merely served the purpose of preliminary studies of the general subject. To the editor and publishers of the Century Magazine I am obliged for their courtesy in all affairs relating to my contract with them, and for an arrangement which enables me to have free use of my material. JOSHUA'S ROCK, LAKE GEORGE, _October, 1896_. CONTENTS. BOOK I. _RISE OF THE FIRST ENGLISH COLONY._ CHAPTER THE FIRST. English Knowledge and Notion of America at the Period of Settlement 1 CHAPTER THE SECOND. James River Experiments 25 CHAPTER THE THIRD. The Procession of Motives 73 BOOK II. _THE PURITAN MIGRATION._ CHAPTER THE FIRST. Rise and Development of Puritanism 98 CHAPTER THE SECOND. Separatism and the Scrooby Church 141 CHAPTER THE THIRD. The Pilgrim Migrations 159 CHAPTER THE FOURTH. The Great Puritan Exodus 188 BOOK III. _CENTRIFUGAL FORCES IN COLONY-PLANTING._ CHAPTER THE FIRST. The Catholic Migration 220 CHAPTER THE SECOND. The Prophet of Religious Freedom 266 CHAPTER THE THIRD. New England Dispersions 315 LIST OF MAPS. (In the coast line the American maps follow the charts of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey; the third map conforms to the British Ordnance Survey.) I.--Chesapeake Bay 1 II.--James River 28 III.--The cradle of the Pilgrims 149 IV.--Coast explored by the Pilgrims 177 V.--The colony at St. Mary's 245 VI.--Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth 275 VII.--The early settlements on Narragansett Bay 296 VIII.--New England after the dispersions 343 [Illustration: Chesapeake Bay.] BOOK I. RISE OF THE FIRST ENGLISH COLONY. CHAPTER THE FIRST. _ENGLISH KNOWLEDGE AND NOTIONS OF AMERICA AT THE PERIOD OF SETTLEMENT._ I. [Sidenote: The Elizabethan age.]