The pastime grew very pleasant and merry, as there were many onlookers who applauded when one turned a bull in his course. Within the three hours that they were riding up and down they killed two beasts from the saddle; the third having taken to the sea was there shot with a musket.
Sir Thomas More, had Henry the Eighth spared his valuable life, would not have approved such sport; but he was alone in thinking on mercy to animals.
After the sport many rare gifts were exchanged; but Sir Richard said, when he regained his ship, "I always mistrust Spanish politeness. Had we not been so strong we might have met with no better treatment than Hawkins received at St. Juan de Ulloa."
On the 7th of June they sailed away and reached Virginia at the end of the month. But Sir Richard was not thinking so much of colonising as of exploring. He spent seven weeks in coasting about the islands of North Carolina; he made an eight days' expedition inland, receiving kindness from the simple natives, and not always behaving to them very considerately. For instance, we read in the report of one of his company: "One of our boats was sent to demand a silver cup which one of the savages had stolen from us, and, not receiving it according to his promise, we burnt and spoilt their corn and town, all the people being fled."
It is clear that Grenville did not know how to deal with Red Indians. But he also quarrelled with Lane and Thomas Cavendish, and they were glad when he left them on the 28th of August for England, promising to come again soon. On the 8th of September Lane vented some of his bitterness towards Grenville by writing to Walsingham thus: "Sir Richard Grenville, our General, hath demeaned himself, from the first day of his entry into government until the day of his departure, far otherwise than my hope of him, though very agreeable to the expectations and predictions of sundry wise and godly persons of his own country that knew him better than myself." He then goes on to relate how Sir Richard nearly brought him to trial for his life, only for Lane having ventured to give advice in a public council. He goes on bitterly enough: "I have had so much experience of his government as I am humbly to desire your honour and the rest of my honourablest friends to give me their favours to be freed from that place where Sir Richard Grenville is to carry any authority in chief. The Lord hath miraculously blessed this action that, in the time of his being amongst us, even through his intolerable pride and insatiable ambition, it hath not at three several times taken a final overthrow."
We cannot help noticing how difficult a matter it was for some of the Elizabethan heroes to express their thoughts in direct and pithy language. But it is evident that Lane hated Grenville—what Grenville thought of Lane we can only guess; but Lane's way of managing his colony hardly reveals an ability great enough to warrant his attack upon his superior. He wrote another letter in which he praised all he saw and smelt in Virginia: "We have not yet found, in all our search, one stinking weed growing in this land: a matter, in all our opinions here, very strange. The climate is so wholesome, yet somewhat tending to heat, as that we have not had one sick since we entered into the country; but sundry that came sick are recovered of long diseases, especially of rheums."
Lane fixed upon the fertile island of Roanoke, or Plymouth, as the residence of his hundred colonists, built a fort and made entrenchments, but sowed no seed and made no prudent preparations for the future; he seemed to be content to live on what the Indians brought them. But he spent most of his time in exploring and looking for valuables. In a four-oared barge holding fifteen men he tracked the coast northwards as far as Chesapeake Bay, which he preferred to Roanoke. "For pleasantness of seat, for temperature of climate, for fertility of soil, and for the commodity of the sea, besides multitudes of bears—being an excellent good victual—with great woods of sassafras and walnut trees, it is not to be excelled by any other whatsoever."
Lane, in conversation with an Indian chief, heard of a native king who possessed beautiful pearls, white and round and large; this made him eager to leave his colony and explore: this greed was soon to be the cause of his failure. Shortly after, Lane was told that at the head of the Roanoke River was a tribe of Indians who had stores of copper and gold; this determined him to seek it out at once. He rowed for three days up the river, finding that the natives fled at his approach, taking with them all their corn, so that his food began to fail. They had in the boat two mastiffs, and they resolved to go on a little farther, and if need were, they could kill the mastiffs and live upon their "pottage," flavoured with sassafras leaves. So they went up the river farther, and at last heard some savages call "Manteo," an Indian servant they had. "Whereof we all being very glad, hoping of some friendly conference, and making him answer them, they presently began a song, as we thought in token of welcome." Alas! it only meant war, and at once a volley of arrows came sticking into one of the boats. The English landed, and the Indians fled into the woods. No supper! no food! they were now come to the dogs' pottage. So they resolved to row down again, and having the stream with them accomplished in one day what it had taken four days to do up-stream.
But on rejoining his colony Lane found that the Indians, once so friendly, had become subtle enemies. The colonists, many of whom were rough, bad characters, had treated the Indians as slaves, and the slaves had resisted, to their loss and damage. Lane had left trusty guards to take charge of "the wild men of his own nation"; but the guards joined the rest in cruel handling of the natives. The result was that the news spread from tribe to tribe that these white men were devils, not born of women, who had come to waste their corn and slay their people.
When Lane went away, the Indians thought he was dead; now he had come back, they believed he had risen from the grave. It was hardly worth while, they thought, trying to kill people who could rise again and fight! their best plan was to retreat far into the woods. This would have been fatal to the colony, for the Indians alone knew how to make weirs for fish, and they had all the seed-corn.