When White reached England he found the whole nation absorbed by the threats of a Spanish invasion; Raleigh, Grenville, and Lane, Frobisher, Drake, and Hawkins, all were employed in devising measures of resistance. It was twelve months before Raleigh, who had to depend almost entirely upon his own means, was able to despatch White with supplies; this he did in two vessels. White, who wished to profit by his voyage, instead of at once returning without loss of time to his colony, went in chase of Spanish prizes, until at length one of his ships was overpowered, boarded, and rifled, and both compelled to return to England. This delay was fatal. The great events of the Spanish Armada took place, after which Sir Walter Raleigh found himself embarrassed with such a fearful amount of debt, that it was no longer in his power to attempt the colonisation of Virginia; nor was it until the following year that White was able to return, and then also through the noble efforts of Sir Walter Raleigh, to the unhappy colony Roanoke. Again the island was a desert. An inscription on the bark of a tree indicated Croatan; but the season of the year, and the danger of storms, furnished an excuse to White for not going thither. What was the fate of the colony never was known. It has been conjectured that through the friendship of Manteo they had probably escaped to Croatan; perhaps had been, when thus cruelly neglected by their countrymen, received into a friendly tribe of Indians, and become a portion of the children of the forest. The Indians had, at a later day, a tradition of this kind, and it has been thought that the physical character of the Hatteras Indians bore out the tradition.
The kind-hearted and noble Raleigh did not soon give up all hopes of his little colony. Five different times he sent out at his own expense to seek for them, but in vain. The mystery which veils the fate of the colonists of Roanoke will never be solved in this world. “Roanoke,” says Bancroft, “is now almost uninhabited; the intrepid pilot and the hardy wrecker, rendered bold by their familiarity with the dangers of the ocean, and unconscious of the associations by which they are surrounded, are the only tenants of the spot, where the inquisitive stranger may still discern the ruins of the fort, round which the cottages of the new settlement were erected.”
Speaking of Raleigh and his many and rare virtues, Bancroft adds—“The judgments of the tribunal of the Old World are often reversed at the bar of public opinion in the New. The family of the chief author of early colonisation in the United States was reduced to beggary by the government of England, and he himself finally beheaded. After a lapse of nearly two centuries the State of North Carolina, by a solemn act of legislation, revived in its capital the City of Raleigh; and thus expressed its confidence in the integrity, and a grateful respect for the memory, of the extraordinary man, who united in himself as many kinds of glory as were ever combined in one individual, and whose name is indissolubly connected with the early period of American history.”
The fisheries of the north and the efforts of Sir Walter Raleigh at colonisation had trained a race of men for discovery. One of these, Bartholomew Gosnold, determined upon sailing direct from England to America, without touching at the Canaries and the West Indies, as had hitherto been the custom; and with the aid of Raleigh he “well nigh secured to New England the honour of the first permanent English colony.” He sailed in a small vessel directly across the ocean, and in seven weeks reached the shore of Massachusetts, but not finding a good harbour sailed southward, and discovered and landed on a promontory which he called Cape Cod, which name it retains to this day. Sailing thence, and still pursuing the coast, he discovered various islands, one of which he called Elizabeth, after the Queen, and another Martha’s Vineyard. The vegetation was rich; the land covered with magnificent forests; and wild fruits and flowers burst from the earth in unimagined luxuriance—the eglantine, the thorn, and the honeysuckle; the wild pea, tansy, and young sassafras; strawberries, raspberries, and vines. In the island was a little lake, and in the lake a rocky islet, and here the colonists resolved to build their storehouse and fort, the nucleus of the first New England colony. The natural features of the place, the historian tells us, remain unchanged—the island, the little lake, and the islet are all there; the forests are gone, while the flowers and fruit are as abundant as ever. But no trace remains of the fort.
Friendly traffic with the natives of the mainland soon completed a freight, which consisted of furs and sassafras, and Gosnold was about to sail, when the hearts of the intending colonists failed them; they dreaded the attack of Indians and the want of necessary supplies from home. All, therefore, re-embarked, and in five weeks reached England.
Gosnold and his companions brought home such favourable reports of the country and the shortness of the voyage, that the following year a company of Bristol merchants despatched two small vessels, under the command of Martin Pring, for the purpose of exploring the country and commencing a trade with the natives. They carried out with them trinkets and merchandise suited for such traffic, and their voyage was eminently successful. They discovered some of the principal rivers of Maine, and examined the coast of Massachusetts as far south as Martha’s Vineyard. The whole voyage occupied but six months. Pring repeated his voyage in 1606, making still more accurate surveys of the country.
English enterprises for discovery were rapidly continued. An expedition, promoted by the Earl of Southampton and Lord Arundel of Wardour, and commanded by George Weymouth, having explored the coast of Labrador, discovered the Penobscot River. It left England in March, and in six weeks reached the American continent near Cape Cod.
We must, however, now return to the French and their colonies, of whom we have lost sight for some time.
In 1598, the Marquis de la Roche received a commission from Henry IV. to found a French empire in America. But his enterprise utterly failed. His proposed colonists were the refuse of the jails; these he conveyed to the desolate Sable Island, on the coast of Nova Scotia, where, after languishing twelve years, they were allowed to return, and their offences pardoned in consideration of their sufferings.
Five years later, in 1603, a company of merchants of Rouen resolved to attempt a scheme of colonisation, and Samuel Champlain, a man “marvellously delighting in such enterprises,” was placed at its head. He proceeded to Canada, carefully studied the geography of the country and the manners of the Indians, and selected Quebec as a commodious situation for a settlement, near the place where, in 1541, Cartier had passed the winter and erected a fort. Champlain returned to France, and De Monts, an able patriot and an honest Calvinist, obtained a patent from the French government, which conceded to him the sovereignty of Acadia from the fortieth to the forty-sixth degree of latitude, that is, from a degree south of New York city to one north of Montreal, with a monopoly of the fur trade, control and government of the soil, and freedom of religion for the Huguenots. Wealth and honour were expected from the expedition. He set sail with two vessels in March 1604, reached Nova Scotia in May, and spent the summer in trading with the natives and examining the coasts preparatory to a settlement.