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WILLIAM THE THIRD.

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that some persons who had vainly applied for a passage hid chap.themselves in dark corners about the ships, and, when dis- 1(i aa.covered, refused to depart, clung to the rigging, and wereat last taken on shore by main force. This infatuation isthe more extraordinary because few of the adventurersknew to what place they were going. All that was quitecertain was that a colony was to be planted somewhere,and to be named Caledonia. The general opinion was thatthe fleet would steer for some part of the coast of America.

But this opinion was not universal. At the Dutch Embassyin Saint James’s Square there was an uneasy suspicion thatthe new Caledonia would be founded among those Easternspice islands with which Amsterdam had long carried on alucrative commerce.

The supreme direction of the expedition was entrustedto a Council of Seven. Two Presbyterian chaplains anda precentor were on board. A cargo had been laid in whichwas afterwards the subject of much mirth to the enemies ofthe Company, slippers innumerable, four thousand peri-wigs of all .kinds from plain bobs to those magnificent struc-tures which, in that age, towered high above the foreheadsand descended to the elbows of men of fashion, bales ofScotch woollen stuffs which nobody within the tropics couldwear, and many hundreds of English bibles which neitherSpaniard nor Indian could read. Paterson, flushed withpride and hope, not only accompanied the expedition, buttook with him his wife, a comely dame, whose heart hehad won in London, where she had presided over one of