PART I. OF THE MOTIVES FOR ESTABLISHING NEW COLONIES THE
INTEREST which occasioned the first settlement of the different
European colonies in America and the West Indies, was not
altogether so plain and distinct as that which directed the
establishment of those of ancient Greece and Rome. All the
different states of ancient Greece possessed, each of them, but
a very small territory, and when the people in any one of them
multiplied beyond what that territory could easily maintain, a
part of them were sent in quest of a new habitation in some
remote and distant part of the world; the warlike neighbours who
surrounded them on all sides, rendering it difficult for any of
them to enlarge very much its territory at home. The colonies of
the Dorians resorted chiefly to Italy and Sicily, which, in the
times preceding the foundation of Rome, were inhabited by
barbarous and uncivilized nations: those of the Ionians and
Eolians, the two other great tribes of the Greeks, to Asia Minor
and the islands of the Egean Sea, o