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The next spring Raleigh and Grenville, who had the command of the militia in Cornwall, and were training them for the defence of the kingdom, being strongly solicited by White, provided two small barks, which sailed from Biddeford on the 22d of April, 1588. These vessels had commissions as ships of war, and, being more intent on gain to themselves than relief to the colony, went in chase of prizes, and were both driven back by ships of superior force, to the great mortification of their patron and the ruin of his colony.

These disappointments were a source of vexation to Raleigh. He had expended forty thousand pounds, of his own and other men's money, in pursuit of his favourite object, and his gains were yet to come. He therefore

made an assignment of his patent (March 7, 1589) to Thomas Smith, and other merchants and adventurers, among whom was Governor White, with a donation of one hundred pounds for the propagation of the Christian religion in Virginia. Being thus disengaged from the business of colonization, he had full scope for his martial genius in the war with Spain.

His assignees were not so zealous in the prosecution of their business. It was not till the spring of 1590 that Governor White could

return to his colony.* Then, with three ships, he sailed from Plymouth, and, passing through the West Indies in quest of Spanish prizes, he arrived at Hatteras on the 15th of August. From this place they observed a smoke arising on the Island of Roanoke, which gave them some hope that the colony was there subsisting; on their coming to the place, they found old trees and grass burning, but no human being. On a post of one of the houses† they saw the word Croatan, which gave them some hope that at the island of that name they should find their friends. They sailed for that island, which lay southward of Hatteras; but a violent storm arising, in which they lost their anchors, they were obliged to

* [Governor White's account of this voyage is preserved in Hakluyt, iii., 287-295. The three ships were furnished "at the special charges of Mr. John Wattes, of London, marchant." They were the Hopewell, the John Evangelist, and the Little John, accompanied with two small shallops. They sailed from Plymouth March 20th, remained on the coast of Virginia but a few days, and reached home October 24th. Mr. White says this was his fifth voyage to Virginia, and complains bitterly, in his letter to Hakluyt, that "governors, masters, and sailors regarded very smally the good of their countrymen in Virginia, but wholly disposed themselves to seeke after purchase and spoiles."-H.]

[They found that the houses had been taken down, and the place on which they had been enclosed with a strong palisade, and the word Croatan "in fayre capitall letters graven on one of the chief trees or posts at the entrance."-White's Narrative, in Hakluyt, iii., 293.-H.J

quit the inhospitable coast and return home; nor was anything afterward heard of the unfortunate colony.

The next year (1591) Sir Richard Grenville was mortally wounded in an engagement with a Spanish fleet, and died on board the admiral's ship, where he was prisoner.*

* [The heroism of his death deserves a particular narration. The following account of it is taken from Miss Aikin's Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth, ii., 264: "A squadron, under Lord Thomas Howard, which had been waiting six months at the Azores to intercept the homeward-bound ships from Spanish America, was there surprised by a vastly more numerous fleet of the enemy, which had been sent out for their convoy. The English admiral got to sea in all-haste, and made good his retreat, followed by his whole squadron excepting the Revenge, which was entangled in a narrow channel between the port and an island. Sir Richard Grenville, her commander, after a vain attempt to break through the Spanish line, determined, with a kind of heroic desperation, to sustain alone the conflict with a whole fleet of fifty-seven sail rather than strike his colours. From three o'clock in the afternoon till daybreak he resisted, by almost incredible efforts of valour, all the force which could be brought to bear against him, and fifteen times beat back the boarding-parties from his deck. At length, when all his bravest had fallen, and he himself was disabled by many wounds, his powder also being exhausted, his small arms lost or`broken, and his ship a perfect wreck, he proposed to his gallant crew to sink her, that no trophy might remain to the enemy. But this proposal, though applauded by several, was overruled by the majority: the Revenge struck to the Spaniards, and two days after her brave commander died on board their admiral's ship of his glorious wounds, with a joyful and quiet mind,' as he expressd himself, and admired by all his enemies themselves for his gh spirit and invincible resolution."-H.]

Raleigh, though disengaged from the business of colonizing Virginia, sent five times at his own expense to seek for and relieve his friends; but the persons whom he employed, having more profitable business in the West Indies, either went not to the place, or were forced from it by stress of weather, it being a tempestuous region, and without any safe harbour. The last attempt which he made was in 1602, the year before his imprisonment; an event which gratified the malice of his enemies, and prepared the way for his death, which was much less ignominious to him than to his sovereign, King James I., the British Solomon, successor to Elizabeth, the British Deborah.*

This unfortunate attempt to settle a colony in Virginia was productive of one thing which will always render it memorable, the introduction of tobacco into England. Cartier, in

* As a specimen of the language of that time, let the reader take the following extract from Purchas:

"He [i. e., King James] is beyond comparison a meer transcendent, beyond all his predecessors, princes of this realm; beyond the neighbouring princes of his own time; beyond the conceit of subjects dazzled with so much brightness; beyond our victorious Deborah, not in sex alone, but as peace is more excellent than war, and Solomon than David; in this also that he is, and we enjoy his present sunshine."

his visit to Canada fifty years before, had observed that the natives used this weed in fumigation, but it was an object of disgust to Frenchmen. Ralph Lane, at his return in 1586, brought it first into Europe; and Raleigh, who was a man of gayety and fashion, not only learned the use of it himself, but introduced it into the polite circles, and even the queen herself gave encouragement to i Some humorous stories respecting it are still remembered. Raleigh laid a wager with the queen that he would determine exactly the weight of smoke which issued from his pipe. This he did by first weighing the tobacco and then the ashes. When the queen paid the wager, she pleasantly observed that many labourers had turned their gold into smoke, but that he was the first who had converted smoke into gold.

It is also related that a servant of Sir Walter, bringing a tankard of ale into his study as he was smoking his pipe and reading, was so alarmed at the appearance of smoke issuing out of his mouth, that he threw the ale into his face, and ran down to alarm the family, crying out that his master was on fire.

King James had so refined a taste, that he not only held this Indian weed in great abhorrence himself, but endeavoured, by proc

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