In 1602, The English Had Suspended All Intercourse With America For Sixteen
Years, In Consequence Of The Unsuccessful Attempts Of Raleigh.
But, at this
time, the intercourse was renewed:
A ship sailed to Virginia, the name then
given to the greater part of the east coast of North America; and a traffic
was carried on with the Indians for peltry, sassafras, cedar wood, &c.
Captain Gosnol, who commanded this vessel, was a man of considerable skill
in his profession, and he is said to have been the first Englishman who
sailed directly to North America, and not, as before, by the circuitous
course of the West Indies and the Gulf of Florida. In the subsequent year
there was some traffic carried on with the Indians of the continent, and
some of the uncolonized West India islands.
Prior to the year 1606 several attempts had been made to colonize different
parts of the new world by the English, but they all proved abortive. In
this year, however, a permanent settlement was established near James
River, within the Chesapeake. It is not our plan to detail all the
particular settlements, or their progress to maturity; but merely to point
out the beginnings of them, as evidence of our extending commerce, and to
state such proofs as most strikingly display their improvement and the
advantages the mother country derived from them. In conformity with this
plan, we may mention that sugar plantations were first formed in Barbadoes
in 1641: this, as Mr. Anderson, in his History of Commerce, justly
observes, "greatly hastened the improvement of our other islands, which
soon afterwards followed it in planting sugar to very great advantage.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 622 of 1007
Words from 169878 to 170154
of 273188
