In December, 1606, three little vessels--the _Sarah Constant_, the _Discovery_ and the _Goodspeed_--set sail from England under Captain Christopher Newport, for the distant shores of Virginia.[1] After a long and dangerous voyage across the Atlantic the fleet, on the sixth of May, 1607, entered the Chesapeake Bay.[2] The adventurers spent several days exploring this great body of water, landing parties to investigate the nature of the shores, and to visit the Indian tribes that inhabited them. They were delighted with the "faire meddowes, ... full of flowers of divers kinds and colours", and with the "goodly tall trees" of the forests with "Fresh-waters running" between, but they had instructions not to settle near the coast, lest they should fall victims to the Spaniards.[3] So they entered the broad mouth of a river which they called the James, and made their way cautiously up into the country. On the twenty-third of May they found a peninsula in the river, which afforded a convenient landing place and was easy to defend, both from the Indians and the Spaniards. This place they called Jamestown. Landing their men, they set immediately to work building houses and erecting fortifications. Thus did the English begin their first permanent settlement in the New World. The bold band of adventurers that came thus hopefully into this beautiful and smiling country little realized that before them lay only dangers and misfortunes. Could they have foreseen the terrible obstacles to founding a colony in this land, they would have hesitated before entering upon the enterprise. Four things conspired to bring misfortune and disaster upon Virginia. The form of government prescribed by the King and the Company was unsuited to the infant settlement, and its defects kept the colonists for many months in turmoil and disorder. The Indians proved a constant source of danger, for they were tireless in cutting off stragglers, ambushing small parties and in destroying the crops of the white men. Famines came at frequent intervals to weaken the colonists and add to their misfortunes. But by far the most terrible scourge was the "sicknesse" that swept over Virginia year after year, leaving in its wake horrible suffering and devastation.