sunk at the ship's side as soon as ever he and his men were out of it." That was on the last day of August: on September 18 he sailed into Plymouth harbour, wellcontented with his prize, "and was courteously received by divers of his worshipful friends."

But Ralph Lane was left behind in Virginia with his colonists, to the number of some hundred householders, and the hostile natives. From the New Fort he writes an enthusiastic letter, on September 3, to Master Richard Hakluyt. His report of the fertility of the country is more glowing even than the account of Amadas and Barlow, or than Ralegh himself could have dared imagine in his brightest dreams. "It is the goodliest and most pleasing territory of the world; for the continent is of a huge and unknown greatness, and very well peopled and towned, though savagely: and the climate is wholesome, that we had not one sick since we touched the land here." Horses and kine and sufficient Englishmen are alone needed, and no realm in Christendom would be comparable with Virginia. The men set to work to build themselves a settlement, making use of the equipment with which each man was provided.

Captain John Smith, who succeeded, some thirty years later, in erecting the colony on the ruins of these previous failures, gives an exact outfit, with the cost of each article, which a colonist would require. He could learn from the experience of others, and was wise enough to tabulate his own experience in minute lists that others might learn from him. Lane's colonists could not have been so well provided. They must have lacked many little necessaries which the wisest forethought could not have provided, they must have encumbered themselves with much that was comparatively useless.

PERSONAL OUTFIT

85

Here are some articles of personal outfit which John Smith-and John Smith knew-deemed indispensable. They read quaintly with their prices :

Lane's colonists remained exactly one year in Virginia. Their life was varied and exciting. At first the Indians, in spite of the silver cup and the summary vengeance for its theft, were still inclined towards friendliness. Their kings visited New Fort. Menatonou, King of Chawanook, was especially well-disposed. He was a "man impotent in his limbs, but otherwise, for a savage, a very grave and wise man, and of a very singular good discourse in matters concerning the state, not only of his own country and the disposition of his own men, but also of his neighbours round about him. as well far as near, and of the commodities that each country yieldeth." Among other things, he told Lane where pearls in large quantities could be found, and Lane devised a plan for making an expedition to that river of Moratoc.

And from this plan, which Lane records in full in a subsequent letter to Ralegh, peers out the mistake in judgment which brought disaster upon this first

enterprise. These colonists had too much the spirit of Sir Richard Grenville. They were too adventurous, and esteemed the natives of too little account. Instead of quietly settling and making their base secure, while the Indians became gradually used to their presence, they must needs be hurrying further inland in pursuit of immediate and enormous wealth. Theirs was too much the spirit of the lion-hearted freebooter and not enough the spirit of the determined settler.

Misfortune awaited them. For there lived an old king in this land of fabulous wealth by the swift river of Moratoc or Moratico. Ensenore was his name, and he was friendly to the English. Not so his son Pemisapan. And at this crucial time Ensenore died and Pemisapan took his place at the head of the province, and immediately began his endeavours to undermine the little influence which the English had already gained among the neighbouring peoples. The position of the colonists became one of extreme danger in consequence. They found that they must not only struggle against the elements to secure food and shelter, but also fight for their lives against the inhabitants. They had expected support from England in the spring, with reinforcements of every kind. None, however, came, and probably the fear of isolation, brought about by events of which they had heard nothing, was added to their other fears. Small wonder then that, when Sir Francis Drake came to them with twenty tall ships, they should clamour to leave the perilous spot and return to England. They returned in June, Drake's fleet laden with the spoils he had garnered from the sack of the Spanish cities, St. Iago, St. Domingo, Carthagena, St. Anthony, and St. Helens. With them, too, they are said to have brought, for the first time,

specimens of the plant Nicotiana, of which Ralegh discovered the sovereign virtues, and which, in despite of King James from Scotland and his counterblast, has soothed many millions of honest Englishmen.

A fortnight after the colonists departed, fearing that they were forsaken, the ship of a hundred tons which Ralegh had stored with provisions and other necessaries arrived, and a month after Sir Richard Grenville came with three ships, and found neither colonists nor the ship which Ralegh had sent out for their relief. Accordingly, after he had searched long in vain and made certain explorations on his own initiative, he landed fifteen brave men to retain possession of the country for England and sailed home. Nothing more was heard of the fifteen brave men.

So ended the first series of attempts to found an English colony in Virginia, doubtless, efforts which themselves just failed of success, but without which the final colonization of Virginia would have been impossible.

CHAPTER VII

BUSINESS MAN

The Stannaries-His grasp of detail-" Do it with thy might "Estimate of squadron-Scheme of coast defence-The clashmills of Mr. Crymes-Irish plans.

THE 'HE Virginian enterprise did not engage all Ralegh's energy in affairs. Undoubtedly it was his

greatest scheme.

Its eventual results were of no less than world-wide importance, for they include the American nation, they include tobacco; and without either commodity modern civilization would surely be desolate. Ralegh had a capacity for business which approached genius; and would have attained to genius had his imagination not run a little in advance of his power over detail.

In his hands the posts which he obtained were no sinecures. Proper arrangement of things in being fascinated him almost as deeply as the possible development of the embryonic.

The various expeditions to Virginia involved a vast amount of work. But during that time he was actively engaged in the management of lesser matters.

As Lord Warden of the Stannaries his duties were to look after the interests of the tin-miners in Devonshire and Cornwall. He was head of the Stannary Courts in which justice was legally administered to the tinners; and he would be obliged to see that his