French had one hundred and fifty, the Spaniards one hundred, and the British and Portuguese fifty ships, fishing there. The English are said to have had the best ships, and to have there given the law to those of other nations; and it is said, to account for the small number of their ships in that part of the world, that they employed many in the fishery at Iceland, where the French from Biscay, had twenty or thirty ships, to kill whales for train oil,

Purchas-Smith-Stith-Marshall.

N, CARO.

4

CHAPTER II.

Sir Walter Raleigh, in the year 1586, had provided a ship of one hundred tons, to carry succour to governor Lane and his men; she, however, did not sail till the middle of April, and did not reach Virginia, till the latter part of June; a few days after the departure of the colonists in Sir Frances Drake's fleet. Her commander, after having spent some time in fruitless endeavors to discover them, returned to England with his lading.

A fortnight after, Sir Richard Grenville arrived with three other ships, and an ample supply of provisions, but was unable to obtain any account of the ship which had preceded him, or of the men, whom, in the preceding year, he had left on Roanoke; he sailed up and down the principal sounds and rivers, in useless quest of them; at last, unwilling to forego the right of possession, he returned to the island, where he landed fifteen (some writers say fifty) men, to whom he gave a supply of provisions, and returned to England.

In the following year, three ships were sent to Virginia, under the command of Juin White, who was appointed governor of the colony, and was accompanied by eleven persons, who were to be his counsellors and assistants. Their names were Roger Baily, Ananias Dare, Simeon Fernando, Christopher Cowper, Thomas Stephens, John Sampson, Thomas Smith,

Dyonisius Harvey, Roger Pratt, George Howe, Anthony Cage. Sir Walter gave them a charter, incorporating them under the style of "the governor and assistants, of the city of Raleigh, in Virginia;" and directed them to make their first settlement on the shores of the bay of Chesapeake, and to erect a fort there. This expedition took the old route, by the way of the West Indies, and narrowly escaped destruction, on the shores of cape Fear. The danger which they ran was imputed to the carelessness, and by some, to the design of a sailor, who had accompanied Amidas in his first voyage, and was now acting as a pilot; he was suspected of an intention of occasioning the miscarriage of the expedition; but the vigilance of captain Strafford, who commanded the vessel on board of which this man was, prevented any fatal consequence; and they all arrived safe at cape Hatteras, on the 22d of July.

The governor, with forty of his best men, went on board of the pinnace intending to pass up to Roanoke, in the hope of finding the men, whom Sir Richard Grenville had left there the year before; and after a conference with them, concerning the state of the country and the Indians, to return to the fleet, and proceed along the coast to the bay of Chesapeake, according to the orders of Sir Walter Raleigh; but no sooner had the pinnace left the ship, than Simon Fernando, the principal naval commander, who was named as one of the governor's assistants, although he was destined to return soon to England, called to the sailors on board the pinnace, and charged them not to bring back any of the colonists, except the governor, and two or three others whom he approved, but to leave them on the island; for the summer, he observed, was far spent, and he would

not land the planters in any other place. The sailors on board the pinnace, as well as those on board of the ship, having been persuaded by the master, to this measure, the governor judging it best not to contend with them, proceeded to Roanoke. At sun set, he landed with his men at the part of the island, on which Sir Richard Grenville landed his men, but discovered no sign of them, except the skeleton of a man who had been killed by the Indians. The next day, the governor and seve ral of the new comers, went to the north end of the island, where governor Lane had built a fort and several dwelling houses, the year before, hoping there to find some sign, if not certain information of the men left there by Sir Richard Grenville. But on coming to the place, and finding the fort razed, and all the houses, though standing unhurt, overgrown with weeds and vines, and deer feeding within them: they returned in despair of ever seeing their looked-for countrymen alive. Orders were given on the same day, for the clearing and repair of the houses, and the erection of new cottages. All the colony, consisting of ninety-one men, seventeen women, and nine children, in all, one hundred and seventeen persons, soon after landed, and commenced a second plantation.

George Howe, one of the governor's assistants, having wandered to some distance into the woods, was attacked and slain, by a party of the Dassamonpeake, a tribe who dwelt on the main opposite to the island, in the neck formed by the river Alligator and the narrows, which now forms the lower part of the county of Tyrell.

As soon as the houses were cleared, and measures taken for sheltering the colonists, governor White sent