th's accounts of the New
World, but proved either unable or unwilling to render him any useful
assistance. The next year this brave adventurer again crossed the seas
in a small vessel containing only sixteen emigrants. The little
expedition was captured by the French, and the leader, with great
difficulty, effected his return to England.

Meanwhile, a man named Hunt, who had been left in charge of one of the
ships in Smith's first expedition, committed an outrage upon the natives
that led to deplorable results (1616); he inveigled thirty of them on
board, carried them suddenly away, and sold them into slavery. The
savages rose against the next English party that landed upon their
coast, and killed and wounded several in revenge. Captain Dormer, a
prudent and conciliatory person, with one of the betrayed natives, was
sent by the company to explain to the furious Indians that Hunt's crime
was the act of an individual, and not of the nation: this commission was
well and wisely executed. For about two years Dormer frequently repeated
his visits with advantage to his employers, but finally was attacked by
strange savages and wounded fatally.

But still, through all these difficulties and disasters, adventurers
pressed on to the fertile Western desert, allured by liberal grants of
land from the chartered companies. The undefined limits of these
concessions led to constant and mischievous quarrels among the settlers,
often attended with violence and bloodshed; from these causes the early
progress of the colony was very slow. One hundred and twenty years after
England had discovered North America, she only possessed a few scattered
fishing huts along the shore. But events were now at hand which at once
stamped a peculiar character upon the colonization of this part of the
New World,[312] and which were destined to exercise an influence upon
the human race of an importance even yet incalculable.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 288: See Preface to Bancroft's _History of the United
States_.]

[Footnote 289: "Sir Humphrey had published, in 1576, a treatise
concerning a northwest passage to the East Indies, which, although
tinctured with the pedantry of the age, is full of practical sense and
judicious argument."--P.F. Tytler's _Life of Sir Walter Raleigh_, p.
26.]

[Footnote 290: "Sir Walter Raleigh, step-brother to Sir Humphrey
Gilbert, was one of his companions in this enterprise, and, although it
proved unsuccessful, the instru