In April, 1606, King James I. issued two patents, one to an association of noble gentlemen and merchants, called the “London Company,” the other to an association organized in the southwest part of England, called the “Plymouth Company.” The grants were alike liberal, but only the London Company succeeded under its charter, in planting an American colony. The other company lost their first ship that was sent out, captured by a Spanish man-of-war. The year following they sent out a company of one hundred colonists, and began a settlement on the Kennebec river under what seemed favorable circumstances. But the winter of 1607-’8 proved very severe. Some were starved, some frozen, their storehouse burned, and when summer came the survivors, as in other unfortunate attempts, escaped to England. The London Company’s fleet of three vessels, under command of Christopher Newport, carried one hundred and five colonists, reached the American coast in April, intending to land in the neighborhood of Roanoke Island, but a storm carried them into the Chesapeake. Coasting along the southern shore of the magnificent bay, they entered the mouth of a broad, beautiful river that they called James, in honor of the King. Proceeding up the river about fifty miles they founded Jamestown, the first English settlement in America. This was more than a hundred years after the discovery of the continent by Cabot, so long a time did it take for the English to get any permanent possession of the country discovered. For all these long years they seemed to reap nothing but loss and misfortune from their enterprise. Not a single spot on the vast continent, now mostly peopled by their children, was as yet the settled habitation of an Englishman; while Spain and France had wonderful successes in the first century of their career of conquest and colonization. But their prosperity was not enduring. The invaders who treated the native inhabitants with murderous cruelty, were in turn oppressed by the home government, and, struggling for relief, plunged into the most deplorable anarchy. By injustice, mismanagement and tyranny, Spain alienated her once numerous dependencies. France too, whose subjects planted many flourishing colonies, lost them, not because of her oppression, but from want of ability to afford them sufficient protection. England, the last to commence settling the western hemisphere, but finally bringing to the task a spirit of progress and strength unknown to her predecessors, has founded an empire mightier and more enduring than any of its compeers; now lost indeed to her private aggrandizement, but not to the honor of her name, or the best interest of mankind; an empire already prosperous beyond all example in history, and destined, it is probable, to yet unite under its genial protection every league of the vast continent, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the tropical forests of Darien to the eternal snows of the Arctic circle.[C]