CHAP desert. An inscription on the bark of a tree pointed to III. Croatan; but the season of the year and the dangers 1590. from storms were pleaded as an excuse for an imme diate return. Had the emigrants already perished? or had they escaped with their lives to Croatan, and, through the friendship of Manteo, become familiar with the Indians? The conjecture has been hazarded,' that the deserted colony, neglected by their own countrymen, were hospitably adopted into the tribe of Hatteras Indians, and became amalgamated with the sons of the forest. This was the tradition of the natives at a later day, and was thought to be confirmed by the physical character of the tribe, in which the English and the Indian race seemed to have been blended. Raleigh long cherished the hope of discovering some vestiges of their existence; and though he had abandoned the design of colonizing Virginia, he yet sent at his own charge, and, it is said, at five several times, to search for his liege-men. But it was all in vain; imagination received no help in its attempts to trace the fate of the colony of Roanoke. The name of Raleigh stands highest among the statesmen of England, who advanced the colonization of the United States; and his fame belongs to American history. No Englishman of his age possessed so various or so extraordinary qualities. Courage which was never daunted, mild self-possession, and fertility of invention, insured him glory in his profession of arms; and his services in the conquest of Cadiz, or the capture of Fayal, were alone sufficient to establish his fame as a gallant and successful commander. every danger, his life was distinguished by valor, and his death was ennobled by true magnanimity. In 1 Lawson's N. Carolina, 62. 2 Purchas, iv. 1653. RALEIGH A SOLDIER, A SCHOLAR, A STATESMAN. 109 III He was not only admirable in active life as a sol- CHAP. dier; he was an accomplished scholar. No statesman in retirement ever expressed the charms of tranquil leisure more beautifully than Raleigh; and it was not entirely with the language of grateful friendship, that Spenser described his "sweet verse as sprinkled with nectar," and rivaling the melodies of "the summer's nightingale."1 When an unjust verdict, contrary to probability and the evidence, "against law and against equity," on a charge which seems to have been a pure invention, left him to languish for years in prison, with the sentence of death suspended over his head, his active genius plunged into the depths of erudition; and he who had been a soldier, a courtier, and a seaman, now became the elaborate author of a learned History of the World. His career as a statesman was honorable to the pupil of Coligny and the contemporary of L'Hopital. In his public policy, he was thoroughly an English patriot; jealous of the honor, the prosperity, and the advancement of his country; the inexorable antagonist of the pretensions of Spain. In parliament, he defended the freedom of domestic industry. When, by the operation of unequal laws, taxation was a burden upon industry rather than wealth, he argued for a change: 2 himself possessed of a lucrative monopoly, he gave his voice for the repeal of all monopolies; 3 and, while he pertinaciously used his influence with his sovereign to mitigate the severity of the judgments against the nonconformists, as a legislator he resisted the sweeping enactment of persecuting laws.5 4 1 Sonnet prefixed to Faery Queen. Faery Queen, b. iii. Int. st. iv. Compare, also, Spenser's Colin Clout's come home again, verses 68-75, and Faery Queen, b. iii. c. vii. st. 36-41. 2 Tytler, 238, 239. 3 D'Ewes, 646. Tytler, 239. 5 Thomson, 55. Oldys, 165, 166. CHAP. III. In the career of discovery, his perseverance was never baffled by losses. He joined in the risks of Gilbert's expedition; contributed to the discoveries of Davis in the north-west; and himself personally explored the insular regions and broken world" of Guiana. The sincerity of his belief in the wealth of the latter country has been unreasonably questioned. If Elizabeth had hoped for a hyperborean Peru in the arctic seas of America, why might not Raleigh expect to find the city of gold on the banks of the Oronoco? His lavish efforts in colonizing the soil of our republic, his sagacity which enjoined a settlement within the Chesapeake Bay, the publications of Hariot and Hakluyt which he countenanced, if followed by losses to himself, diffused over England a knowledge of America, as well as an interest in its destinies, and sowed the seeds, of which the fruits were to ripen during his lifetime, though not for him. Raleigh had suffered from palsy1 before his last expedition. He returned broken-hearted by the defeat of his hopes, by the decay of his health, and by the death of his eldest son. What shall be said of King James, who would open to an aged paralytic no other hope of liberty but through success in the discovery of mines in Guiana? What shall be said of a monarch who could, at that time, under a sentence which was originally unjust,2 and which had slumbered for fifteen years, order the execution of the decrepit man, whose genius and valor shone brilliantly through the ravages 1 Thomson, Appendix, note U. The original document. 2 Hume, Rapin, Lingard, are less favorable to Raleigh. Even Hallam, i. 482-484, vindicates him with wavering boldness. A careful comparison of the accounts of these historians, the trial, and the biographies of Raleigh, proves him to have been, on his trial, a victim of jealousy, and entirely innocent of crime. No doubt he despised King James. See Tytler, 285–290. GOSNOLD'S VOYAGE TO NEW ENGLAND. 111 III. of physical decay, and whose English heart, within a CHAP. palsied frame, still beat with an undying love for his country? The judgments of the tribunals of the Old World are often reversed by public opinion in the New. The family of the chief author of early colonization in the United States was reduced to beggary by the government of England, and he himself was beheaded. After a lapse of nearly two centuries, the state of North 1792. Carolina, by a solemn act of legislation, revived in its capital "THE CITY OF RALEIGH;" thus expressing its Laws of grateful respect for the memory of the extraordinary man, who united in himself as many kinds of glory as were ever combined in an individual. The enthusiasm of Raleigh pervaded his countrymen. Imagination already saw beyond the Atlantic a people whose mother idiom should be the language of England. "Who knows," exclaimed Daniel, the poet laureate of that kingdom— "Who in time knows whither we may vent This gain of our best glory shall be sent T'enrich unknowing nations with our stores? What worlds, in th' yet unformed Occident, May 'come refined with th' accents that are ours?" N. Caro lina, for 1792, c. xiv. Daniel, in Musophilus. D'Ewes' 509. Already the fishing of Newfoundland was vaunted 1593. as the stay of the west countries. Some traffic may o have continued with Virginia. Thus were men trained for the career of discovery; and in 1602, Bartholomew Gosnold, who, perhaps, had already sailed to Virginia, in the usual route, by the Canaries and West Indies, conceiving the idea of a direct voyage to America, with the concurrence of Raleigh, had well nigh secured to New England the honor of the first permanent English colony. Steering, in a small bark, directly Mar. across the Atlantic, in seven weeks he reached the 1602. 26. 14. 24. CHAP. Continent of America in the Bay of Massachusetts, not III. far to the north of Nahant.' He failed to observe a 1602. good harbor, and, standing for the south, discovered May the promontory which he called Cape Cod-a name which would not yield to that of the next monarch of England. Here he and four of his men landed; Cape Cod was the first spot in New England ever trod by Englishmen. Doubling the cape, and passing Nantucket, May they again landed on a little island, now called No Man's land, and afterwards passed round the promontory of Gay Head, naming it Dover Cliff. At length they entered Buzzard's Bay—a stately sound, which they called Gosnold's Hope. The westernmost of the islands was named Elizabeth, from the queen-a name which has been transferred to the whole group. Here they beheld the rank vegetation of a virgin soil; the noble forests; the wild fruits and the flowers, bursting from the earth; the eglantine, the thorn, and the honeysuckle, the wild pea, the tansy, and young sassafras; strawberries, raspberries, grape-vines, all in profusion. There is on the island a pond, and within it lies a rocky islet; this was the position which the adventurers selected for their residence. Here they built their storehouse and their fort; and here the foundations of the first New England colony were to be laid. The natural features remain unchanged; the island, the pond, the islet, are all yet visible; the forests are gone; the shrubs are as luxuriant as of old; but the ruins of the fort can no longer be discerned. A traffic with the natives on the main land, soon enabled Gosnold to complete his freight, which consisted chiefly of sassafras root, then greatly esteemed in pharmacy as a sovereign panacea. The little 1 Belknap's Biog. ii. 103. Williamson's Maine, i. 184, 185. |