-4-                             
 
 
agriculture were most appealing to the more ambitious emigrants.
However, it was not easy to persuade unemployed folk -more numerous in
proportion and more helpless then now- to migrate and become workers on
the proposed manorial estates.  Storms and strange diseases caused the
death of one-fourth of all those who ventured to cross the Atlantic in
hundred to two hundred ton ships; and more than a fourth of those who
settled in Virglnia and Maryland died within two years.  Thus it was
only the bravest and most self-respecting of the unemployed who yielded
to the persuasions of entrepreneurs and ship captains to migrate to
North America.
 
 
The terms on which the poorer freemen and the unemployed of England
agreed to cross the dangerous Atlantic were vital elements in the
makeup of the early North American character.  Most men and women who
went to the Chesapeake Bay country between 1620 and 1660 stipulated
that they would take the risks and become indentured servants for five
or six years only on definite terms. And entrepreneurs who controlled
vast areas of land, like the second Lord Baltimore or the lesser
Claibornes and Wilioughbys of Virginia, were glad to meet these
demands.  They paid six pounds each