-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 |