ERRATA.

The name of the Regent of Baron Steuben Chapter in the December Magazine should read Mrs. Charles F. Kingsley, not Kingsbury.

On page 588, December number, the Warren Chapter is Warren, Ohio; the Historian, Flora S. Drake.

If all contributors will carefully head reports as they want. them and sign them by full name plainly spelled, the printer will have no trouble in following copy.

American Monthly Magazine

VOL. XIV.

WASHINGTON, D. C., MARCH, 1899.

NO. 3

THE YEAR 1619 IN THE COLONY OF VIRGINIA.

THERE is a tide in the affairs of communities as well as in those of individuals.

It came to the Colony of Virginia in the year 1619 in such a flood that thoughtful men have not ceased to wonder at it from that day to this.

Because it was a great and memorable era in the Colony, I take it for my subject to-night.

You will remember that the colonization of Virginia was undertaken by a commercial company as a commercial enterprise. Under a charter granted in 1606, the London Company sent forth on the 19th of December of that year their first convoys of men and provisions, and a settlement was effected on a bend of that noble river (then named the James, in honor of the reigning monarch of England) on the 13th day of May, 1607. We need not pause to wonder at the illassorted company, and the improvidence of the managers of the venture in sending out upon such a mission men so poorly qualified by nature, education, and inclination to lay the foundations of a new State. We are bound to believe the London Company did the best they could under the circumstances. It was not an easy matter to be choice in the selection of men. An expedition across the Atlantic in those days doubtless of fered more chances of a safe landing than not, but the great majority of worthy substantial people of the time didn't think so. And thus those that were willing to go were not generally fit, and those that were fit were not as a rule willing to go. We may surmise that very few of those that landed at Jamestown on that beautiful May day ever dreamed for a mo

A paper read before the Society of Colonial Wars, New York, December 20, 1897.