Columbus and Other Heroes of American Discovery

by N. D'Anvers

The fleet of Sir Francis Drake had scarcely left the coast, before a vessel, under the command of Sir Richard Grenville, arrived sent out by Raleigh, with supplies for the colonists. Finding the settlement deserted, the leader of the relief party left fifteen men at Roanoake to retain possession of it for England, and returned home. Determined not to allow his brother’s work to remain unfinished, Sir Walter, in spite of these repeated failures, lost no time in fitting out yet another expedition consisting of 150 men, and commanded by John White as governor, and Simon Ferdinando as admiral. The two leaders quarreled before Virginia was reached, and, as a result their trip was as unsatisfactory as any which had preceded it. No trace could be found of Grenville’s fifteen men, and the only incidents of this visit to Virginia worthy of record were the murder by Indians of a Mr. Howe, with the terrible vengeance exacted on some natives who had had nothing whatever to do with the outrage, and the birth, on the 18th August, 1587, of Virginia Dare, grand-daughter of White, and the first child of English parents born on North American soil.

Finding himself unable to cope with the difficulties of his position, White soon made excuse for returning to England, and leaving a small detachment of his forces, his daughter, and her infant alluded to above, in the “City of Raleigh,” as the new settlement was called, he set sail at the end of August, 1587, promising to return speedily with reinforcements.

Three years elapsed before this promise was fulfilled, and of the history of the deserted colony during that period no details have ever been gathered. Arrived at Roanoake in the spring of 1590, the indefatigable Sir Walter Raleigh again bearing the expense of the expedition, White found no trace of the city of his benefactor. The light of a distant fire was the sole sign of life which met his eyes when he reached the spot where he had expected to find his former comrades, his daughter, and his now three-year old grandchild. Eagerly pressing on in the direction of the fire, some of White’s men discovered the letters “C R O” carved on the trunk of a tree on a little hill. The sight of these letters reminded the leader that the colonists had agreed, should they have to leave the City of Raleigh, to carve the name of the place to which they went on some tree or trunk, and, further, to add beneath the name a cross, in the event of any misfortune having befallen them.

What, then, could the three letters mean? Nothing worse, surely, than that the emigrants had removed to some place the name of which began with them. “Cro—Cro—” repeated one after another, until at length the remainder of the word flashed across the minds of all. The friendly village of Croatoan, already known to White, must be now the home of the lost emigrants. There was no cross beneath the initial letters to damp the delight at this discovery, and the march was resumed. A little further on the full word “Croatoan” was found carved upon a tree, still without the cross; but, in spite of this reassuring token, all further efforts to find the colony were unavailing. The fire had been lighted by Indians, who could give no information; and when after many days of disheartening search, a number of empty chests, frameless pictures, and other relics were found in a trench, White—who seems, to say the least of it, to have been strangely ready to accept the loss of his daughter and grandchild—threw up the search and returned home, without, so far as we can make out, actually visiting the village of Croatoan after all.

This silent disappearance of a colony of white men, including at least one woman and an infant girl, has given rise to many a legend of the presence, among the dusky warriors of the West, of princesses of alien race ruling the simple savages by virtue of their superior intelligence; but though Raleigh sent out expedition after expedition to scour Virginia and the surrounding districts for traces of his lost people, not one trustworthy word was ever obtained as to their fate, though the name of many another Englishman was added to the already long roll of martyrs to the cause of colonization in the West.

With the death by drowning, off Chesapeake Bay, of his nephew, Bartholomew Gilbert, early in 1602, ended Raleigh’s direct connection with North America. In 1603, when the loss of his beloved mistress had converted him from a court favorite into a “spider of hell” and a “viperous traitor”—to quote the forcible language of his prosecutor, Coke—the patent, which he had reserved in his own name on the death of his brother, Sir Humphrey, expired by his attainder for high treason; but to his influence was due, first, the sending out, in 1602, of the little ship Concord, under Bartholomew Gosnold; and, secondly, the great expedition of 1606, inseparably connected with the names of Captain John Smith and the fair Pocahontas.

To Bartholomew Gosnold we owe the first practical corroboration of the ancient sagas, on which is founded our account of the visits to the western coast of America by the Northmen.

Arriving in his little bark off the modern Cape Ann, in N. lat. 42° 37′, our hero sailed southward across Massachusetts Bay, landed on Cape Cod, N. lat. 42° 5′, and thence visited some of the adjoining islands, one of which he found so full of vines that he named it Martha’s Vineyard, thereby unconsciously following the example of the old sea-kings, who had called it, or some not very distant locality, Vinland.

Unable, with the very limited means at his disposal, himself to found a colony, though he made an unsuccessful attempt to do so in the westernmost of the islands viewed, and which he named Elizabeth, Gosnold took home such proofs of the wealth of the newly-discovered districts that the interest of many influential noblemen and merchants was aroused. An association—including the great Richard Hakluyt—whose name still lives in the valuable society to which we owe so much of our knowledge of the progress of geographical research—was quickly formed, and as early as 1606, when Raleigh was expiating his imaginary crimes in the Tower, letters patent were issued in the name of James I. to Sir George Summers, Edward Maria Wingfield, and others, granting them all lands on the American coast, with the adjacent islands, between 34° and 45° N. lat.

Among the conditions annexed to these letters patent was the important one that two companies should be formed—one to be called the Southern, the other the Northern Colony.