List Of Contents | Contents of Captain John Smith by, Charles Dudley Warner
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take through reedes that have joyned with them great heads of wood to
containe it, I doubt not but lately taught them as brought them by
the English; and were it not sometimes lookt into (for Morat Bassa
[Murad III.?] not long since commanded a pipe to be thrust through
the nose of a Turke, and to be led in derision through the Citie), no
question but it would prove a principal commodity.  Nevertheless they
will take it in corners; and are so ignorant therein, that that which
in England is not saleable, doth passe here among them for most
excellent."

Mr. Stith ("History of Virginia," 1746) gives Raleigh credit for the
introduction of the pipe into good society, but he cautiously says,
"We are not informed whether the queen made use of it herself: but it
is certain she gave great countenance to it as a vegetable of
singular strength and power, which might therefore prove of benefit
to mankind, and advantage to the nation."  Mr. Thomas Hariot, in his
observations on the colony at Roanoke, says that the natives esteemed
their tobacco, of which plenty was found, their "chief physicke."

It should be noted, as against the claim of Lane, that Stowe in his
"Annales" (1615) says: "Tobacco was first brought and made known in
England by Sir John Hawkins, about the year 1565, but not used by
Englishmen in many years after, though at this time commonly used by
most men and many women."  In a side-note to the edition of 1631 we
read: "Sir Walter Raleigh was the first that brought tobacco in use,
when all men wondered what it meant."  It was first commended for its
medicinal virtues.  Harrison's "Chronologie," under date of 1573,
says: "In these daies the taking in of the smoke of the Indian herbe
called 'Tabaco' by an instrument formed like a little ladell, whereby
it passeth from the mouth into the hed and stomach, is gretlie taken-
up and used in England, against Rewmes and some other diseases
ingendred in the longes and inward partes, and not without effect."
But Barnaby Rich, in "The Honestie of this Age," 1614, disagrees with
Harrison about its benefit: "They say it is good for a cold, for a
pose, for rewmes, for aches, for dropsies, and for all manner of
diseases proceeding of moyst humours; but I cannot see but that those
that do take it fastest are as much (or more) subject to all these
infirmities (yea, and to the poxe itself) as those that have nothing
at all to do with it."  He learns that 7,000 shops in London live by
the trade of tobacco-selling, and calculates that there is paid for
it L 399,375 a year, "all spent in smoake."  Every base groom must
have his pipe with his pot of ale; it "is vendible in every taverne,
inne, and ale-house; and as for apothecaries shops, grosers shops,
chandlers shops, they are (almost) never without company that, from
morning till night, are still taking of tobacco."  Numbers of houses
and shops had no other trade to live by.  The wrath of King James was
probably never cooled against tobacco, but the expression of it was
somewhat tempered when he perceived what a source of revenue it
became.

The savages of North America gave early evidence of the possession of
imaginative minds, of rare power of invention, and of an amiable
desire to make satisfactory replies to the inquiries of their
visitors.  They generally told their questioners what they wanted to
know, if they could ascertain what sort of information would please
them.  If they had known the taste of the sixteenth century for the
marvelous they could not have responded more fitly to suit it.  They
filled Mr. Lane and Mr. Hariot full of tales of a wonderful copper
mine on the River Maratock (Roanoke), where the metal was dipped out
of the stream in great bowls.  The colonists had great hopes of this
river, which Mr: Hariot thought flowed out of the Gulf of Mexico, or
very near the South Sea.  The Indians also conveyed to the mind of
this sagacious observer the notion that they had a very respectably
developed religion; that they believed in one chief god who existed
from all eternity, and who made many gods of less degree; that for
mankind a woman was first created, who by one of the gods brought
forth children; that they believed in the immortality of the soul,
and that for good works a soul will be conveyed to bliss in the
tabernacles of the gods, and for bad deeds to pokogusso, a great pit
in the furthest part of the world, where the sun sets, and where they
burn continually.  The Indians knew this because two men lately dead
had revived and come back to tell them of the other world.  These
stories, and many others of like kind, the Indians told of
themselves, and they further pleased Mr. Hariot by kissing his Bible
and rubbing it all over their bodies, notwithstanding he told them
there was no virtue in the material book itself, only in its
doctrines.  We must do Mr. Hariot the justice to say, however, that
he had some little suspicion of the "subtiltie" of the weroances
(chiefs) and the priests.

Raleigh was not easily discouraged; he was determined to plant his
colony, and to send relief to the handful of men that Grenville had
left on Roanoke Island.  In May, 1587, he sent out three ships and a
hundred and fifty householders, under command of Mr. John White, who
was appointed Governor of the colony, with twelve assistants as a
Council, who were incorporated under the name of "The Governor and
Assistants of the City of Ralegh in Virginia," with instructions to
change their settlement to Chesapeake Bay.  The expedition found
there no one of the colony (whether it was fifty or fifteen the
writers disagree), nothing but the bones of one man where the
plantation had been; the houses were unhurt, but overgrown with
weeds, and the fort was defaced.  Captain Stafford, with twenty men,
went to Croatan to seek the lost colonists.  He heard that the fifty
had been set upon by three hundred Indians, and, after a sharp
skirmish and the loss of one man, had taken boats and gone to a small
island near Hatorask, and afterwards had departed no one knew
whither.

Mr. White sent a band to take revenge upon the Indians who were
suspected of their murder through treachery, which was guided by
Mateo, the friendly Indian, who had returned with the expedition from
England.  By a mistake they attacked a friendly tribe.  In August of
this year Mateo was Christianized, and baptized under the title of
Lord of Roanoke and Dassomonpeake, as a reward for his fidelity.  The
same month Elinor, the daughter of the Govemor, the wife of Ananias
Dare, gave birth to a daughter, the first white child born in this
part of the continent, who was named Virginia.

Before long a dispute arose between the Governor and his Council as
to the proper person to return to England for supplies.  White
himself was finally prevailed upon to go, and he departed, leaving
about a hundred settlers on one of the islands of Hatorask to form a
plantation.

The Spanish invasion and the Armada distracted the attention of
Europe about this time, and the hope of plunder from Spanish vessels
was more attractive than the colonization of America.  It was not
until 1590 that Raleigh was able to despatch vessels to the relief of
the Hatorask colony, and then it was too late.  White did, indeed,
start out from Biddeford in April, 1588, with two vessels, but the
temptation to chase prizes was too strong for him, and he went on a
cruise of his own, and left the colony to its destruction.

In March, 1589-90, Mr. White was again sent out, with three ships,
from Plymouth, and reached the coast in August.  Sailing by Croatan
they went to Hatorask, where they descried a smoke in the place they
had left the colony in 1587.  Going ashore next day, they found no
man, nor sign that any had been there lately.  Preparing to go to
Roanoke next day, a boat was upset and Captain Spicer and six of the
crew were drowned.  This accident so discouraged the sailors that
they could hardly be persuaded to enter on the search for the colony.
At last two boats, with nineteen men, set out for Hatorask, and
landed at that part of Roanoke where the colony had been left.  When
White left the colony three years before, the men had talked of going
fifty miles into the mainland, and had agreed to leave some sign of
their departure.  The searchers found not a man of the colony; their
houses were taken down, and a strong palisade had been built.  All
about were relics of goods that had been buried and dug up again and
scattered, and on a post was carved the name "CROATAN."  This signal,
which was accompanied by no sign of distress, gave White hope that he
should find his comrades at Croatan.  But one mischance or another
happening, his provisions being short, the expedition decided to run
down to the West Indies and "refresh" (chiefly with a little Spanish
plunder), and return in the spring and seek their countrymen; but
instead they sailed for England and never went to Croatan.  The men
of the abandoned colonies were never again heard of.  Years after, in
1602, Raleigh bought a bark and sent it, under the charge of Samuel
Mace, a mariner who had been twice to Virginia, to go in search of
the survivors of White's colony.  Mace spent a month lounging about
the Hatorask coast and trading with the natives, but did not land on
Croatan, or at any place where the lost colony might be expected to
be found; but having taken on board some sassafras, which at that
time brought a good price in England, and some other barks which were
supposed to be valuable, he basely shirked the errand on which he was
hired to go, and took himself and his spicy woods home.

The "Lost Colony" of White is one of the romances of the New World.
Governor White no doubt had the feelings of a parent, but he did not
allow them to interfere with his more public duties to go in search
of Spanish prizes.  If the lost colony had gone to Croatan, it was
probable that Ananias Dare and his wife, the Governor's daughter, and
the little Virginia Dare, were with them.  But White, as we have
seen, had such confidence in Providence that he left his dear

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