List Of Contents | Contents of Captain John Smith by, Charles Dudley Warner
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of settlers left by Sir Ralph Lane and other agents of Raleigh in
colonization.  Sir Walter Raleigh never saw any portion of the coast
of the United States.

In 1592 he planned an attack upon the Spanish possessions of Panama,
but his plans were frustrated.  His only personal expedition to the
New World was that to Guana in 1595.

The expedition of Captain Amadas and Captain Barlow is described by
Captain Smith in his compilation called the "General Historie," and
by Mr. Strachey.  They set sail April 27, 1584, from the Thames.  On
the 2d of July they fell with the coast of Florida in shoal water,
"where they felt a most delicate sweet smell," but saw no land.
Presently land appeared, which they took to be the continent, and
coasted along to the northward a hundred and thirty miles before
finding a harbor.  Entering the first opening, they landed on what
proved to be the Island of Roanoke.  The landing-place was sandy and
low, but so productive of grapes or vines overrunning everything,
that the very surge of the sea sometimes overflowed them.  The
tallest and reddest cedars in the world grew there, with pines,
cypresses, and other trees, and in the woods plenty of deer, conies,
and fowls in incredible abundance.

After a few days the natives came off in boats to visit them, proper
people and civil in their behavior, bringing with them the King's
brother, Granganameo (Quangimino, says Strachey).  The name of the
King was Winginia, and of the country Wingandacoa.  The name of this
King might have suggested that of Virginia as the title of the new
possession, but for the superior claim of the Virgin Queen.
Granganameo was a friendly savage who liked to trade.  The first
thing he took a fancy was a pewter dish, and he made a hole through
it and hung it about his neck for a breastplate.  The liberal
Christians sold it to him for the low price of twenty deer-skins,
worth twenty crowns, and they also let him have a copper kettle for
fifty skins.  They drove a lively traffic with the savages for much
of such "truck," and the chief came on board and ate and drank
merrily with the strangers.  His wife and children, short of stature
but well-formed and bashful, also paid them a visit.  She wore a long
coat of leather, with a piece of leather about her loins, around her
forehead a band of white coral, and from her ears bracelets of pearls
of the bigness of great peas hung down to her middle.  The other
women wore pendants of copper, as did the children, five or six in an
ear.  The boats of these savages were hollowed trunks of trees.
Nothing could exceed the kindness and trustfulness the Indians
exhibited towards their visitors.  They kept them supplied with game
and fruits, and when a party made an expedition inland to the
residence of Granganameo, his wife (her husband being absent) came
running to the river to welcome them; took them to her house and set
them before a great fire; took off their clothes and washed them;
removed the stockings of some and washed their feet in warm water;
set plenty of victual, venison and fish and fruits, before them, and
took pains to see all things well ordered for their comfort.  "More
love they could not express to entertain us."  It is noted that these
savages drank wine while the grape lasted.  The visitors returned all
this kindness with suspicion.

They insisted upon retiring to their boats at night instead of
lodging in the house, and the good woman, much grieved at their
jealousy, sent down to them their half-cooked supper, pots and all,
and mats to cover them from the rain in the night, and caused several
of her men and thirty women to sit all night on the shore over
against them.  "A more kind, loving people cannot be," say the
voyagers.

In September the expedition returned to England, taking specimens of
the wealth of the country, and some of the pearls as big as peas, and
two natives, Wanchese and Manteo.  The "lord proprietary" obtained
the Queen's permission to name the new lands "Virginia," in her
honor, and he had a new seal of his arms cut, with the legend,
Propria insignia Walteri Ralegh, militis, Domini et Gubernatoris
Virginia.

The enticing reports brought back of the fertility of this land, and
the amiability of its pearl-decked inhabitants, determined Raleigh at
once to establish a colony there, in the hope of the ultimate
salvation of the "poor seduced infidell" who wore the pearls.  A
fleet of seven vessels, with one hundred householders, and many
things necessary to begin a new state, departed from Plymouth in
April, 1585.  Sir Richard Grenville had command of the expedition,
and Mr. Ralph Lane was made governor of the colony, with Philip
Amadas for his deputy.  Among the distinguished men who accompanied
them were Thomas Hariot, the mathematician, and Thomas Cavendish, the
naval discoverer.  The expedition encountered as many fatalities as
those that befell Sir Humphrey Gilbert; and Sir Richard was destined
also to an early and memorable death.  But the new colony suffered
more from its own imprudence and want of harmony than from natural
causes.

In August, Grenville left Ralph Lane in charge of the colony and
returned to England, capturing a Spanish ship on the way.  The
colonists pushed discoveries in various directions, but soon found
themselves involved in quarrels with the Indians, whose conduct was
less friendly than formerly, a change partly due to the greed of the
whites.  In June, when Lane was in fear of a conspiracy which he had
discovered against the life of the colony, and it was short of
supplies, Sir Francis Drake appeared off Roanoke, returning homeward
with his fleet from the sacking of St.  Domingo, Carthagena, and St.
Augustine.  Lane, without waiting for succor from England, persuaded
Drake to take him and all the colony back home.  Meantime Raleigh,
knowing that the colony would probably need aid, was preparing a
fleet of three well appointed ships to accompany Sir Richard
Grenville, and an "advice ship," plentifully freighted, to send in
advance to give intelligence of his coming.  Great was Grenville's
chagrin, when he reached Hatorask, to find that the advice boat had
arrived, and finding no colony, had departed again for England.
However, he established fifteen men ("fifty," says the "General
Historie") on the island, provisioned for two years, and then
returned home.


[Sir Richard Grenville in 1591 was vice-admiral of a fleet, under
command of Lord Thomas Howard, at the Azores, sent against a Spanish
Plate-fleet.  Six English vessels were suddenly opposed by a Spanish
convoy of 53 ships of war.  Left behind his comrades, in embarking
from an island, opposed by five galleons, he maintained a terrible
fight for fifteen hours, his vessel all cut to pieces, and his men
nearly all slain.  He died uttering aloud these words: "Here dies Sir
Richard Grenville, with a joyful and quiet mind, for that I have
ended my life as a true soldier ought to do, fighting for his
country, queen, religion, and honor."]


Mr. Ralph Lane's colony was splendidly fitted out, much better
furnished than the one that Newport, Wingfield, and Gosnold conducted
to the River James in 1607; but it needed a man at the head of it.
If the governor had possessed Smith's pluck, he would have held on
till the arrival of Grenville.

Lane did not distinguish himself in the conduct of this governorship,
but he nevertheless gained immortality.  For he is credited with
first bringing into England that valuable medicinal weeds called
tobacco, which Sir Walter Raleigh made fashionable, not in its
capacity to drive "rheums" out of the body, but as a soother, when
burned in the bowl of a pipe and drawn through the stem in smoke, of
the melancholy spirit.

The honor of introducing tobacco at this date is so large that it has
been shared by three persons--Sir Francis Drake, who brought Mr. Lane
home; Mr. Lane, who carried the precious result of his sojourn in
America; and Sir Walter Raleigh, who commended it to the use of the
ladies of Queen Elizabeth's court.

But this was by no means its first appearance in Europe.  It was
already known in Spain, in France, and in Italy, and no doubt had
begun to make its way in the Orient.  In the early part of the
century the Spaniards had discovered its virtues.  It is stated by
John Neander, in his " Tobaco Logia," published in Leyden in 1626,
that Tobaco took its name from a province in Yucatan, conquered by
Fernando Cortez in 1519.  The name Nicotiana he derives from D.
Johanne Nicotino Nemansensi, of the council of Francis II., who first
introduced the plant into France.  At the date of this volume (1626)
tobacco was in general use all over Europe and in the East.  Pictures
are given of the Persian water pipes, and descriptions of the mode of
preparing it for use.  There are reports and traditions of a very
ancient use of tobacco in Persia and in China, as well as in India,
but we are convinced that the substance supposed to be tobacco, and
to be referred to as such by many writers, and described as
"intoxicating," was really India hemp, or some plant very different
from the tobacco of the New World.  At any rate there is evidence
that in the Turkish Empire as late as 1616 tobacco was still somewhat
a novelty, and the smoking of it was regarded as vile, and a habit
only of the low.  The late Hekekian Bey, foreign minister of old
Mahomet Ali, possessed an ancient Turkish MS which related an
occurrence at Smyrna about the year 1610, namely, the punishment of
some sailors for the use of tobacco, which showed that it was a
novelty and accounted a low vice at that time.  The testimony of the
trustworthy George Sandys, an English traveler into Turkey, Egypt,
and Syria in 1610 (afterwards, 1621, treasurer of the colony in
Virginia), is to the same effect as given in his "Relation,"
published in London in 1621.  In his minute description of the people
and manners of Constantinople, after speaking of opium, which makes
the Turks "giddy-headed" and "turbulent dreamers," he says: "But
perhaps for the self-same cause they delight in Tobacco: which they

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