From whence the Generall in the name of the Almighty, weying his ankers (having bestowed us among his fleet) for the reliefe of whom hee had in that storme susteined more perill of wracke then in all his former most honourable actions against the Spanyards, with praises unto God for all, set saile the nineteenth of June 1596, and arrived in Portsmouth the seven and twentieth of July the same yeere.

[1] Ralph Lane went out to Virginia in 1585 with the ships dispatched in that year by Raleigh and commanded by Sir Richard Grenville, the company numbering one hundred householders.  After landing at Roanoke, Grenville returned to England for supplies, leaving the colony in charge of Lane.  Lane has left an important account of the experiences and sufferings of the colonists during the absence of Grenville, whose return was delayed.  Drake, meanwhile coming up from St. Augustine, which he had just destroyed, put in at Roanoke in 1586, and the whole company returned to England with him.  Grenville afterward arrived in Roanoke, finding no one there.  He then returned to England, leaving on the island fifteen men.  In the following year Raleigh sent out to Roanoke John White.  When White arrived he found that these men had all been massacred by the Indians.  Other expeditions were sent out later, but none was able to establish any colony at Roanoke.  Lane’s account is printed In “Old South Leaflets.”

III

THE BIRTH OF VIRGINIA DARE[1]

(1587)

BY JOHN WHITE

The two and twentieth day of July we came safely to Cape Hatteras, where our ship and pinnace anchored.  The Governor went aboard the pinnace accompanied by forty of his best men, intending to pass up to Roanoke.  He hoped to find those fifteen Englishmen whom Sir Richard Grenville had left there the year before.  With these he meant to have a conference concerning the state of the country and the savages, intending then to return to the fleet and pass along the coast to the Bay of Chesapeake.  Here we intended to make our settlement and fort according to the charge given us among other directions in writing under the hand of Sir Walter Raleigh.  We passed to Roanoke and the same night at sunset went ashore on the island, in the place where our fifteen men were left.  But we found none of them, nor any sign that they had been there, saving only that we found the bones of one of them, whom the savages had slain long before.

The Governor with several of his company walked the next day to the north end of the island, where Master Ralph Lane, with his men the year before, had built his fort with sundry dwelling houses.  We hoped to find some signs here, or some certain knowledge of our fifteen men.

When we came thither we found the fort razed, but all the houses standing unhurt, saving that the lower rooms of them, and of the fort also, were overgrown with melons of different sorts, and deer were in rooms feeding on those melons.  So we returned to our company without the hope of ever seeing any of the fifteen men living.