Page:Columbus and other heroes of American discovery; (IA columbusotherher00bell).pdf/89

 expired by his attainder for high treason; but to his influence was due, first, the sending out, in 1602, of the little ship Concord, under Bartholomew Gosnold; and, secondly, the great expedition of 1606, inseparably connected with the names of Captain John Smith and the fair Pocahontas.

To Bartholomew Gosnold we owe the first practical corroboration of the ancient sagas, on which is founded our account of the visits to the western coast of America by the Northmen.

Arriving in his little bark off the modern Cape Ann, in N. lat. 42° 37´, our hero sailed southward across Massachusetts Bay, landed on Cape Cod, N. lat. 42° 5´, and thence visited some of the adjoining islands, one of which he found so full of vines that he named it Martha's Vineyard, thereby unconsciously following the example of the old sea-kings, who had called it, or some not very distant locality, Vinland.

Unable, with the very limited means at his disposal, himself to found a colony, though he made an unsuccessful attempt to do so in the westernmost of the islands viewed, and which he named Elizabeth, Gosnold took home such proofs of the wealth of the newly-discovered districts that the interest of many influential noblemen and merchants was aroused. An association—including the great Richard Hakluyt—whose name still lives in the valuable society to which we owe so much of our knowledge of the progress of geographical research—was quickly formed, and as early as 1606, when Raleigh was expiating his imaginary crimes in the Tower, letters patent were issued in the name of James I. to Sir George Summers, Edward Maria Wingfield, and others, granting them all lands on the American coast, with the adjacent islands, between 34° and 45° N. lat.

Among the conditions annexed to these letters patent was the important one that two companies should be formed—one to be called the Southern, the other the Northern Colony.

While the preliminary steps in the organization of these two companies were being taken, two short though important visits were paid to North America—one by Martin Pring in the Speedwell, resulting in the discovery of several of the harbors of Maine, and of the Saco, Kennebec, and York Rivers; the other by George Weymouth, who supplemented his predecessors' work by a thorough survey of the coast of Maine, and the discovery of the Penobscot River.

On the 19th December, 1606, after an unsuccessful attempt by the Plymouth Company to settle a colony in the lands assigned to it, the Lon