Ponce de Leon remained in the country for some time, wandering about and drinking the water of stream and lake, yet as you may believe, he failed to discover the fountain he sought. And, alas! instead of youth, he met death, for, as he was about to leave, he was pierced by the poisoned arrow of an Indian who did not trust the white men like his brothers of the West Indies.
Through Ponce de Leon’s discovery on that beautiful Easter Sunday other Spaniards followed him to Florida and settled there with their wives and children.
The Coming of the English.
French settlers followed the Spaniards to the New World, but except in Canada, they did not stay long.
Nearly a hundred years passed when at last English ships began to visit the country north of Florida. They carried home wonderful stories of necklaces set with pearls as big as peas and worn commonly by the Indian maidens, of countless hares and deer in the woods, of delicious grapes, cucumbers and melons that grew wild on the vines, and of rich forests of oak trees that grew larger and better than those of England. Then, too, a strange plant grew abundantly in the fields. This plant the Indians put in pipes and smoked.
“A colony should certainly be planted in that beautiful country,” Sir Walter Raleigh told the queen.
She listened thoughtfully to what he said, and not long afterwards a party of men and women sailed from England and crossed the ocean to live in Virginia, as the new home was called in honor of the virgin queen, Elizabeth. Governor Dare was the leader.
The colony settled on an island near the shore, and here was born the first English white child of the United States. The new baby, whose grandfather was Governor Dare, was called Virginia like her home, but sad to say, no one knows how long she lived nor what befell her, for Governor Dare went back to England for a time, and when he returned little Virginia and her people had disappeared and there was no one to tell where they had gone. Perhaps the Indians had killed them, or had made slaves of them and taken them far inland. At any rate, none of the neighboring red men would tell what had happened to the white strangers who had come to live among them.
Other English settlers followed soon afterwards, however, and built villages among the Indians; and among the oak forests of Virginia little white children were born in rough log houses and played on the beaches along the shore. Their fathers planted fields of corn, and tobacco which they had learned to smoke. They hunted deer, hares, and wild turkeys in the forests.
These early English settlers built walls around their villages in case of sudden attack, for they could not trust their red neighbors, who were not pleased to have the white strangers settling in the country around them.