ut ships and sent forth
expeditions. And while she shared with the rest of the Europeans the
vision of India and the Orient, her "gentlemen adventurers" were not
long in seeing the possibilities that lay concealed beyond the
inviting harbors, the navigable rivers, and the forest-covered valleys
of North America. With a willing heart they believed their quaint
chronicler, Richard Hakluyt, when he declared that America could bring
"_as great a profit to the Realme of England as the Indes to the King
of Spain_," that "_golde, silver, copper, leade and perales in
aboundaunce_" had been found there: also "_precious stones, as
turquoises and emauraldes; spices and drugges; silke worms fairer than
ours in Europe; white and red cotton; infinite multitude of all kind
of fowles; excellent vines in many places for wines; the soyle apte to
beare olyves for oyle; all kinds of fruites; all kindes of odoriferous
trees and date trees, cypresses, and cedars; and in New-founde-lande
aboundaunce of pines and firr trees to make mastes and deale boards,
pitch, tar, rosen; hempe for cables and cordage; and upp within the
Graunde Baye excedinge quantitie of all kinde of precious furres_."
Such a catalogue of resources led him to conclude that "_all the
commodities of our olde decayed and daungerous trades in all Europe,
Africa and Asia haunted by us, may in short space and for little or
nothinge, in a manner be had in that part of America which lieth
between 30 and 60 degrees of northerly latitude_."

Even after repeated expeditions had discounted the exuberant optimism
of this description, the Englishmen's faith did not wane. While for
many years there lurked in the mind of the Londoner, the hope that
some of the products of the Levant might be raised in the fertile
valleys of Virginia, the practical English temperament none the less
began promptly to appease itself with the products of the vast
forests, the masts, the tar and pitch, the furs; with the fish from
the coast waters, the abundant cod, herring, and mackerel; nor was it
many years before tobacco, indigo, sugar, cotton, maize, and other
commodities brought to the merchants of England a great American
commerce.

The first attempts to found colonies in the country by Sir Humphrey
Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh were pitiable failures. But the
settlement on the James in 1607 marked the beginning of a nation. What
sort of nation? What race of people? Sir Walter Raleigh, with true
Eng