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As late as 1623, George Sandys, the treasurer, referred to the extreme likelihood of its being situated not far from the plantations in Virginia, and he declared that if he were furnished with a sufficient escort, he would gladly risk his life in the attempt to reach it.^[1] The belief in its comparative nearness was still universal, the General Assembly in this year going so far as to say that it was only six days’ journey from Jamestown.^[2] In May, 1669, sixty years after the memorable expedition of Newport into the Monacan country, Berkeley, at that time the Governor of the Colony, wrote to the authorities in England that two hundred gentlemen had agreed to accompany him in an expedition to the west, which he had arranged for the discovery of the East India Sea, but that unusually heavy and prolonged rains had for that season disconcerted his plans. He petitioned that a commission should be sent to him, which would empower him to undertake the expedi-

king whose country is near the sea, he having that box from a people who come thither in ships, wear clothes, and dwell in houses.”

1. George Sandys to John Ferrer, British State Papers, Colonial, vol. II, No. 27; Sainsbury Abstracts for 1623, p. 91, Va. State Library.
2. British State Papers, Colonial, vol. III, No. 7; Sainsbury Abstracts for 1623, p. 203, Va. State Library. It is interesting in this connection to note that when in 1626 the Governor and Council recommended the erection of a palisade from Martin’s Hundred on the Powhatan to Kiskiack on the Charles or the modern York, it was urged that one benefit to result from this would be the creation of a protected area of ground, in which might be bred horses and asses that could be used in extending knowledge of the western country, and thus opening up a route to the South Sea. See Affairs in Virginia in 1626, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. II, p. 53. This is a copy of the original report of the Governor and Council, now in the British Public Record Office. It was believed by many that Gondomar, the Spanish Ambassador in England in 1624, had been largely instrumental in inducing James to revoke the letters patent of the London Company, because he thought that the Colony would thus be destroyed, and the gateway to the South Sea forever closed. New Description of Virginia, pp. 8, 9, Force’s Historical Tracts, vol. II.