IMPERFECT COLONIZATION 35 



member of her own mother's body. I deny that such as are 

 gone out from the State are cut off from the State. The 

 roots that issue out from the trunk of the tree though they 

 be dispersed yet they are not severed, but do good offices by 

 drawing nourishment to the main body ' ; and Ralegh's belief, 

 ' I shall yet live to see it (Virginia) an English nation ' (August 2 1 , 

 1602), showed that Ralegh as well as White held ideals of 

 colonization which are only beginning to revive in our own day. 



To descend from these lofty heights, trade, too, was an in- whose 

 centive. By trade men meant gold, silver, and spices; but a very 

 little experience taught them to substitute the three F's fish, only grow- 

 firs, and furs for the three vanities. Experience too taught 

 them larger views of wealth, and we read in Purchas that 

 'that then is the richest land which can feed most men'. 11 

 The north-west passage, which successive colonizers found 

 at or near Saguenay River, Chesapeake Bay, Hudson River. 

 Kennebec River, and a Canadian lake ' believed to be salt at 

 the other end and lead to the Gulf of California', 10 faded 

 further and further into the background or towards the 

 North Pole. The north-westers went one way and the 

 colonizers another, although it must not be forgotten that both 

 drank at the same fountain-head, and that splendid visions of 

 India and Cathay floated before the eyes of all the founders 

 of all the early American colonies. Indeed, the historian is 

 more and more surprised at the quickness with which so per- 

 sistent and universal a delusion was dispelled or lost its 

 power to mislead. Conquest and conversion belonged also and whose 

 to the order of vanishing ideas, and self-defence took their "^^ ere 

 place. The first effort to colonize Newfoundland was due to still de- 

 the necessity for self-defence ; but in the sixteenth century s n ' e "/^ e ' 

 men did not draw nice distinctions between self-defence and defensive. 

 counter-attack. Indeed the distinction now drawn between 

 offensive and defensive war would have been an anachronism 

 in the Elizabethan age. The Spanish monopoly of the sea 

 south of the latitude of the Azores produced during the reign of 



I) 2 



