of 1606 was
organized.

The patent under which this colonization was undertaken was obtained
from King James by the solicitation of Richard Hakluyt and others.
Smith's name does not appear in it, nor does that of Gosnold nor of
Captain Newport. Richard Hakluyt, then clerk prebendary of Westminster,
had from the first taken great interest in the project. He was chaplain
of the English colony in Paris when Sir Francis Drake was fitting out
his expedition to America, and was eager to further it. By his diligent
study he became the best English geographer of his time; he was the
historiographer of the East India Company, and the best informed man in
England concerning the races, climates, and productions of all parts of
the globe. It was at Hakluyt's suggestion that two vessels were sent out
from Plymouth in 1603 to verify Gosnold's report of his new short route.
A further verification of the feasibility of this route was made
by Captain George Weymouth, who was sent out in 1605 by the Earl of
Southampton.

The letters-patent of King James, dated April 10, 1606, licensed the
planting of two colonies in the territories of America commonly called
Virginia. The corporators named in the first colony were Sir Thos.
Gates, Sir George Somers, knights, and Richard Hakluyt and Edward Maria
Wingfield, adventurers, of the city of London. They were permitted
to settle anywhere in territory between the 34th and 41st degrees of
latitude.

The corporators named in the second colony were Thomas Hankam, Raleigh
Gilbert, William Parker, and George Popham, representing Bristol,
Exeter, and Plymouth, and the west counties, who were authorized to make
a settlement anywhere between the 38th and 48th degrees of latitude.

The--letters commended and generously accepted this noble work of
colonization, "which may, by the Providence of Almighty God, hereafter
tend to the glory of his Divine Majesty, in propagating of Christian
religion to such people as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance
of all true knowledge and worship of God, and may in time bring the
infidels and savages living in those parts to human civility and to
a settled and quiet government." The conversion of the Indians was as
prominent an object in all these early adventures, English or Spanish,
as the relief of the Christians has been in all the Russian campaigns
against the Turks in our day.

Before following the fortunes of this Virginia colony of 1606, to
which Jo