Numerous colonizing parties and individual settlers ventured into North Carolina during the next twenty years, and purchased lands of the Indians. Among these were many Baptists and Quakers who had found life intolerable in the northern settlements. The story goes that in 1660 a number of New Englanders, desiring to raise cattle, settled at the mouth of Cape Fear River; but they incurred the hatred of the Indians, and the colony soon melted away. The survivors, upon taking their departure, affixed to a post a "scandalous writing, ... the contents whereof tended not only to the disparagement of the land about the said river, but also to the great discouragement of all such as should hereafter come into those parts to settle." This was said to have been found in 1663 by a company of wanderers from the English community on the island of Barbados, which had been founded in 1625. These West Indian colonists, headed by a wealthy planter, Sir John Yeamans, established themselves (1664), to the number of several hundred, on the Cape Fear, in the district which soon came to be known as Clarendon. 37. Proprietorship of the Carolinas (1663-1671) Sidenotes: The Lords Proprietors acquire the Carolinas. Early prosperity. It is probable that Charles II. knew little of these infant settlements of Virginians and Barbados men at Albemarle and Clarendon,--which were some three hundred miles apart,--or of the numerous small holdings between them; but he cautiously confirmed all private purchases from the Indians, in giving Carolina (1663) to a coterie of his favorites. Chief among these were the Earl of Clarendon, the Duke of Albemarle, the Earl of Shaftesbury, and Sir William Berkeley, then governor of Virginia. The proprietaries had been commanded to recognize the land-claims of the settlers already on the ground. William Drummond, a Scotch colonist in Virginia, was made governor of Albemarle, while Yeamans remained governor of Clarendon, these two districts roughly corresponding to the North and South Carolina of to-day. The proprietaries at first authorized a popular government on the simplest plan, and the settlers, particularly in Albemarle, looked forward to a prosperous career. A considerable trade in lumber and fur at once sprang up, and the crops were good; for the soil proved richer than in any other of the American colonies then occupied. Sidenotes: An enlargement of bounds. Immigrants attracted.