As soon as the settlements began fairly to demonstrate that they would succeed, they were of course vigorously patronized, and in fact “encumbered with help.” Plenty of people there were then who at first, at the bare mention of American settlements, had placed their thumbs to their noses, and irreverently given their fingers a quick gyratory motion in the air, but who now came forward and claimed the merit of having always been the especial friends of the colonists, and pointed, like the very lieutenants and aid-de-camps of General Success, to their uniformly entertained convictions, triumphantly exclaiming, “Did we not always tell you so?” As candid historians, we cannot withhold our pencils from sketching the portraits of these burly friends of the early years of America; these large-hearted souls, who, sitting at home over their comfortable cannel-coal fires, piled cheerily up with the dividends from the stock of some of the companies formed for planting these shores, which they would not touch until it got up to par, and who then, fearing that their attachments might not be appreciated, cried out their undeviating devotion in voices that fairly drowned all others. From these characters, which only shine in the full noonday of prosperity, we gladly turn to Sir Francis Drake, who, as early as 1586, did not hesitate to divide his last crust with the feeble and struggling colony of Roanoke Island, succoring them by timely aid, and not sucking from them the little feeble strength which short crops and long watchings against wary foes had left them. Although born in England, Drake had a soul which compassed the world, around whose waist he passed the second girdle which had ever belted it. [Illustration: DRAKE WITH HIS FLEET SAILS ROUND THE WORLD. (p. 94) ] CHAPTER II. THE SETTLEMENTS OF VIRGINIA, DELAWARE, MARYLAND, THE CAROLINAS, AND GEORGIA. Colored Views whitened.—Blue Ridges and Black Welts in Virginia.—Virginia, smothered up in Infancy by Charters, survives Royal nursing.—Her Vigilance against her Suitors.—Cotton introduced.—How the World managed previously.—Charles I. and his numerous Autographs.—Georgia and Oglethorpe.—Charleston set up.—A Point on Old Point Comfort.—Tobacco first piped about.—Unmarried Girls as Articles of Import.—Estimated in, if not by, Pounds.—The Fancy Constitution of John Locke for North Carolina.—Its own Length, but Short Life.—South Carolina Rivers do not run up.—Popular Errors corrected.—John Wesley.—Singular Effect of his Preaching on the Indians.—Maryland as a Duck of a Colony canvassed. Colored views are too apt to be given and taken of these six States, shading down from the dead African black, through every gradation of tint, to a hue almost unimpeach-ably Caucasian.