The colony was abandoned; but only for three days, and then began the time of uninterrupted English dominance. There is, however, in its history nothing of importance to our subject until we reach 1621,--very near the limit which has been set as the end of the "period of settlement." At this time there occurred an event so peculiar and so far-reaching in its social results and withal so intimately connected with the general, though not the particular, chronicle of woman in the early colonies that it may be set forth in some fulness, even though it was one that does not give us any instance of feminine development. But it was so typical of its time and so ominous of the mothers that moulded the characters of the native-born pioneers in the southern settlements that it has its legitimate place in a history of American women. That event is the coming of the "maids," as they were called in the old chronicle from which we draw most of our knowledge concerning the early settlers of Virginia. Sir Edwin Sandys, being at the head of the London Company, in whose hands were now the interests of the Virginia plantations, devised the plan of sending out as wives to the Virginia adventurers a number of respectable young women. It is probable that Sandys was instigated by the thought of the dangers of mixed marriages with the Indians, which were apt to result from the paucity of women of Caucasian race,--for many young men had of late been tempted to try their fortunes in the New World, and the proportion of women had failed among the settlers. Sandys was in every way a believer in vigorous immigration, and in one year he sent out one thousand two hundred and sixty-one new settlers; these he was desirous of attaching to the soil of their new country,--a thing that could be done only by aiding them there to establish a home. So he secured a cargo of young women, ninety in number, who were willing to go to a far land in search of husbands. Whether he had great difficulty in finding such women, or whether matrimony as a prospect, even though with an indeterminate partner, was so attractive to the average spinster of the day as to make her eager to embrace any opportunity which held certainty of result, cannot be known; but the "maids" went, though under somewhat peculiar and even, to modern eyes, degrading conditions. For the thrifty company was not minded that the prospective husbands should have their wives as free gifts; no, they must pay for them as for any other chattel, and the price fixed was one hundred and twenty pounds of tobacco each, the value of this amount of the weed being about eighty dollars at present values. One would think that, if the matter was to be one of barter, the company might have set a higher price upon a wife, even if only out of compliment to the sex; but doubtless the company knew the true value of the goods which it purveyed.