104

CITY OF RALEIGH FOUNDED.

CHAP. Carolina; they were saved from the dangers of Cape III. Fear; and, passing Cape Hatteras, they hastened to 1587. the Isle of Roanoke, to search for the handful of men whom Grenville had left there as a garrison. They found the tenements deserted and overgrown with weeds; human bones lay scattered on the field; wild deer were reposing in the untenanted houses, and were feeding on the productions which a rank vegetation still forced from the gardens. The fort was in ruins. No vestige of surviving life appeared. The miserable men whom Grenville had left, had been murdered by the Indians.

July

The instructions of Raleigh had designated the place for the new settlement on the Bay of the Chesapeake. It marks but little union, that Fernando, the naval officer, eager to renew a profitable traffic in the West Indies, refused his assistance in exploring the coast, and White was compelled to remain on Roanoke. The fort of Governor Lane, "with sundry decent dwelling-houses," had been built at the northern extremity of the island; it was there that the foundations 23. of the city of Raleigh were laid. The Island of Roanoke is now almost uninhabited; commerce has selected securer harbors for its pursuits; the intrepid pilot and the hardy "wrecker," rendered adventurously daring by their familiarity with the dangers of the coast, and in their natures wild as the storms to which their skill bids defiance, unconscious of the associations by which they are surrounded, are the only tenants of the spot where the inquisitive stranger may yet discern the ruins of the fort, round which the cottages of the new settlement were erected.

July

But disasters thickened. A tribe of savages dis28. played implacable jealousy, and murdered one of the

MANTEO RECEIVES BAPTISM.

105

III.

assistants. The mother and the kindred of Manteo CHAP. welcomed the English to the Island of Croatan; and a mutual friendship was continued. But even this 1587 alliance was not unclouded. A detachment of the English, discovering a company of the natives whom they esteemed their enemies, fell upon them by night, as the harmless men were sitting fearlessly by their fires; and the havoc was begun, before it was perceived that these were friendly Indians.

13.

The vanities of life were not forgotten in the New Aug. World; and Manteo, the faithful Indian chief, "by the commandment of Sir Walter Raleigh," received Christian baptism, and was invested with the rank of a feudal baron, as the Lord of Roanoke. It was the first peerage erected by the English in America, and remained a solitary dignity, till Locke and Shaftesbury suggested the establishment of palatinates in Carolina, and Manteo shared his honors with the admired philosopher of his age.

As the time for the departure of the ship for England drew near, the emigrants became gloomy with apprehensions; they were conscious of their dependence on Europe; and they, with one voice, women as well as men, urged the governor to return and use his vigorous intercession for the prompt despatch of reinforcements and supplies. It was in vain that he pleaded a sense of honor, which called upon him to remain and share in person the perils of the colony, which he was appointed to govern. He was forced to yield to the general importunity.

Yet, previous to his departure, his daughter, Eleanor Dare, the wife of one of the assistants, gave birth to a Aug. female child, the first offspring of English parents on

the soil of the United States. The infant was named

18.

106

NO RELIEF FOR THE ROANOKE COLONY.

CHAP. from the place of its birth. The colony, now comIII. posed of eighty-nine men, seventeen women, and two 1587. children, whose names are all preserved, might reason

ably hope for the speedy return of the governor, who, Aug. as he sailed for England, left with them, as hostages, his daughter and his grandchild, VIRGINIA DARE.

27.

And yet even those ties were insufficient. The colony received no seasonable relief; and the further history of this neglected plantation is involved in gloomy uncertainty. The inhabitants of " the city of Raleigh," the emigrants from England and the firstborn of America, failed, like their predecessors, in establishing an enduring settlement; but, unlike their predecessors, they awaited death in the land of their adoption. If America had no English town, it soon had English graves.1

For when White reached England, he found its whole attention absorbed by the threats of an invasion from Spain; and Grenville, Raleigh, and Lane, not less than Frobisher, Drake, and Hawkins, were engaged in planning measures of resistance. Yet Raleigh, whose patriotism did not diminish his gene1588. rosity, found means to despatch White with supplies April in two vessels. But the company, desiring a gainful voyage rather than a safe one, ran in chase of prizes; till, at last, one of them fell in with men-of-war from Rochelle, and, after a bloody fight, was boarded and rifled. Both ships were compelled to return immediately to England, to the ruin of the colony and the displeasure of its author. The delay was fatal; the independence of the English kingdom, and the security

22.

2

1 The original account of White, in Hakluyt, iii. 340-348.

The story is repeated by Smith, Stith, Keith, Burk, Belknap, Williamson,

Martin, Thomson, Tytler, and others.

2 Hakluyt, edition 1589, 771; quoted in Oldys, 98, 99.

THE ASSIGNS OF RALEIGH.

107

III.

of the Protestant reformation, were in danger; nor CHAP could the poor colonists of Roanoke, be again remembered, till after the discomfiture of the Invincible 1588 Armada.

Even when complete success against the Spanish fleet had crowned the arms of England, Sir Walter Raleigh, who had already incurred a fruitless expense of forty thousand pounds, found himself unable to continue the attempts at colonizing Virginia. Yet he did not despair of ultimate success; he admired the invincible constancy which would bury the remembrance of past dangers in the glory of annexing fertile provinces to his country; and as his fortune did not permit him to renew his exertions, he used the privilege of his patent to form a company of merchants and adventurers, who were endowed by his liberality with large concessions, and who, it was hoped, would replenish Virginia with settlers. Among the men who thus obtained an assignment of the proprietary's rights in Virginia, is found the name of Richard Hakluyt; it is the connecting link between the first efforts of England in North Carolina and the final colonization of Virginia. The colonists at Roanoke had emigrated with a charter; the new instrument' was not an assignment of 1589 Raleigh's patent, but extended a grant, already held 7. under its sanction, by increasing the number to whom the rights of that charter belonged.

Mar.

Yet the enterprise of the adventurers languished, for it was no longer encouraged by the profuse liberality of Raleigh. More than another year elapsed, before 1590 White could return to search for his colony and his daughter; and then the Island of Roanoke was a

108

THE ROANOKE COLONY IS LOST.

CHAP. desert. An inscription on the bark of a tree pointed to III. Croatan; but the season of the year and the dangers 1590. from storms were pleaded as an excuse for an immediate return. Had the emigrants already perished? or had they escaped with their lives to Croatan, and, through the friendship of Manteo, become familiar with the Indians? The conjecture has been hazarded,' that the deserted colony, neglected by their own countrymen, were hospitably adopted into the tribe of Hatteras Indians, and became amalgamated with the sons of the forest. This was the tradition of the natives at a later day, and was thought to be confirmed by the physical character of the tribe, in which the English and the Indian race seemed to have been blended. Raleigh long cherished the hope of discovering some vestiges of their existence; and though he had abandoned the design of colonizing Virginia, he yet sent at his own charge, and, it is said, at five several times, to search for his liege-men. But it was all in vain; imagination received no help in its attempts to trace the fate of the colony of Roanoke.

The name of Raleigh stands highest among the statesmen of England, who advanced the colonization of the United States; and his fame belongs to American history. No Englishman of his age possessed so various or so extraordinary qualities. Courage which was never daunted, mild self-possession, and fertility of invention, insured him glory in his profession of arms; and his services in the conquest of Cadiz, or the capture of Fayal, were alone sufficient to establish his fame as a gallant and successful commander. every danger, his life was distinguished by valor, and his death was ennobled by true magnanimity.

In

1 Lawson's N. Carolina, 62.

2 Purchas, iv. 1653.