[Footnote: An amusing story is told of Raleigh while he was learning to smoke. On entering his study one morning to bring his master a cup of ale, his servant saw a cloud of smoke issuing from Sir Walter's mouth. Frantically dashing the liquor in his face, he rushed down stairs imploring help, for his master would soon be burnt to ashes!]
Raleigh's Second Attempt.—Raleigh, undiscouraged by this failure, still clung to his colonizing scheme. The next time he sent out families, instead of single men. John White was appointed governor of the city of Raleigh, which they were to found on Chesapeake Bay. A granddaughter of Governor White, born soon after they reached Roanoke Island, was the first English child born in America. The governor, on returning to England to secure supplies, found the public attention absorbed by the threatened attack of the Spanish Armada. It was three years before he was able to come back. Meanwhile, his family, and the colony he had left alone in the wilderness, had perished. How, we do not know. The imagination can only picture what history has failed to record.
Raleigh had now spent about $200,000, a great sum for that day, on this American colony; and, disheartened, transferred his patent to other parties.
TRADING VOYAGES.—Fortunately for American interests, trading ventures were more profitable than colonizing ones. English vessels frequented the Banks of Newfoundland, and probably occasionally visited Virginia.
[Footnote: The English ships were at that time accustomed to steer southward along the coast of Spain, Portugal, and Africa, as far as the Canary Islands, then they followed the track of Columbus to the West India Islands, and thence along the coast of Florida]
Gosnold, a master of a small bark (1602), discovered and named Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, and other neighboring localities. Loading his vessel with sassafras-root, which was then highly esteemed as a medicine, he returned home to publish the most favorable reports of the region he had visited. Some British merchants accordingly sent out the next year a couple of vessels under Captain Pring. He discovered several harbors in Maine, and brought back his ships loaded with furs and sassafras.
[Footnote: northward to the point they wished to reach. Navigators knew this was a roundabout way, but they were afraid to try the northern route straight across the Atlantic. Gosnold made the voyage directly from England to Massachusetts, thus shortening the route 3,000 miles. This gave a great impulse to colonization, since it was in effect bringing America 3,000 miles nearer England.]
As the result of these various explorations, many felt an earnest desire to colonize the new world. James I. accordingly granted the vast territory of Virginia, as it was called, to two companies, the London and the Plymouth.
THE LONDON COMPANY, whose principal men resided at London, had the tract between the thirty-fourth and thirty-eighth degrees of latitude. This was called South Virginia. They sent out a colony in 1607 under Captain Newport. He made at Jamestown the first permanent English settlement in the United States.
[Footnote: The river was called James, and the town Jamestown, in honor of the king of England. The headlands received the names of Cape Henry and Cape Charles from the king's sons; and the deep water for anchorage "which put the emigrants in good comfort," gave the name Point Comfort.]