lung to the rigging, and
were at last taken on shore by main force. This infatuation is the more
extraordinary because few of the adventurers knew to what place they
were going. All that was quite certain was that a colony was to be
planted somewhere, and to be named Caledonia. The general opinion was
that the fleet would steer for some part of the coast of America. But
this opinion was not universal. At the Dutch Embassy in Saint James's
Square there was an uneasy suspicion that the new Caledonia would be
founded among those Eastern spice islands with which Amsterdam had long
carried on a lucrative commerce.

The supreme direction of the expedition was entrusted to a Council of
Seven. Two Presbyterian chaplains and a preceptor were on board. A cargo
had been laid in which was afterwards the subject of much mirth to the
enemies of the Company, slippers innumerable, four thousand periwigs of
all kinds from plain bobs to those magnificent structures which, in that
age, towered high above the foreheads and descended to the elbows of
men of fashion, bales of Scotch woollen stuffs which nobody within the
tropics could wear, and many hundreds of English bibles which neither
Spaniard nor Indian could read. Paterson, flushed with pride and hope,
not only accompanied the expedition, but took with him his wife, a
comely dame, whose heart he had won in London, where she had presided
over one of the great coffeehouses in the neighbourhood of the Royal
Exchange. At length on the twenty-fifth of July the ships, followed by
many tearful eyes, and commended to heaven in many vain prayers, sailed
out of the estuary of the Forth.

The voyage was much longer than a voyage to the Antipodes now is; and
the adventurers suffered much. The rations were scanty; there were
bitter complaints both of the bread and of the meat; and, when the
little fleet, after passing round the Orkneys and Ireland, touched at
Madeira, those gentlemen who had fine clothes among their baggage were
glad to exchange embroidered coats and laced waistcoats for provisions
and wine. From Madeira the adventurers ran across the Atlantic, landed
on an uninhabited islet lying between Porto Rico and St. Thomas, took
possession of this desolate spot in the name of the Company, set up a
tent, and hoisted the white cross of St. Andrew. Soon, however, they
were warned off by an officer who was sent from St. Thomas to inform
them that they were trespassing on the territory of the