SAVAGE HOSPITALITY.

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others to bring our oars into the house for fear of stealing. When we were come into the outer room, having five rooms in her house, she caused us to sit down by a great fire, and after took off our clothes and washed them and dried them again; some of the women plucked off our stockings and washed them, some washed our feet in warm water, and she herself took great pains to see all things ordered in the best manner she could, making great haste to dress some meat for us to eat.

"After we had thus dried ourselves, she brought us into the inner room, where she set on the board standing along the house some wheat like furmety, sodden venison and roasted, fish sodden, boiled and roasted, melons raw and sodden, roots of divers kinds, and divers fruits. Their drink is commonly water, but while the grape lasteth they drink wine, and for want of casks to keep it all the year after they drink water; but it is sodden with ginger in it and black cinnamon, and sometimes sassafras, and divers other wholesome and medicinable herbs and trees. We were entertained with all love and kindness, and with as much bounty (after their manner) as they could possibly devise. We found the people most gentle, loving, and faithful, void of all guile and treason, and such as live after the manner of the golden age. The people only care how to defend themselves from the cold in their short winter, and to feed themselves with such meat as the soil affordeth. Their meat is very well sodden, and they make broth very sweet and savoury. Their vessels are earthen pots, very large, white and sweet;

E

their dishes are wooden platters of sweet timber. Within the place where they feed was their lodging, and within that their idol which they worship, of whom they speak incredible things. While we were at meat there came in at the gates two or three men with their bows and arrows from hunting, whom when we espied we began to look one towards another, and offered to reach our weapons; but as soon as she espied our mistrust she was very much moved, and caused some of her men to run out and take away their bows and arrows and break them, and withal beat the poor fellows out of the gate again. When we departed in the evening and would not tarry all night, she was very sorry, and gave us into our boat our supper half dressed, pots and all, and brought us to our boat's side, in which we lay all night, removing a pretty distance from the shore. She, perceiving our jealousy, was much grieved, and sent divers men and thirty women to sit all night on the bank side by us, and sent into our boats five mats to cover us from the rain, using very many words to entreat us to rest in their houses. But because we were few men, and if we had miscarried the voyage had been in very great danger, we durst not adventure anything, although there was no cause of doubt, for a more kind and loving people there cannot be found in the world, so far as we have hitherto had trial.”*

The lady of Roanoke had certainly little to learn in the way of politeness, when she had a mind to

* Amadas and Barlow's Narration, Hakluyt, vol. iii., p. 304.

THE GOLDEN AGE IN CAROLINA.

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exhibit it. But this indiscriminate praise shows. how Raleigh's agents were disposed to see all things in the brightest hues. By their own accounts these most kind and loving people, whose manners suggested the golden age, had recently exemplified such

high standard of virtue by inviting a number of their enemies to a feast and barbarously massacring them as they were praying before their idol. "Their wars," we are told, "are very cruel and bloody, by reason whereof and of their civil dissensions which have happened of late years amongst them, the people are marvellously wasted, and in some places the country left desolate." Something like this is what the enchanting prospect of most golden ages resolves itself into when seen too close; and our adventurers are not the first who have formed their judgment of others mainly from the treatment which they themselves have received at their hands.

After thus spending a few weeks off the coast of Carolina, and gaining some knowledge of the hundred islands which lie along it, Amadas and Barlow departed and made a short passage to England. They had on board two of the natives, who, we hope, came of their own free will, though from the too common practice of early explorers we fear it may have been otherwise. They brought home the most favourable accounts of the resources and beauties of the country, the name of which, as they reported it, was Wingandacoa. Elizabeth, entering into the enthusiasm aroused by their glowing descriptions, ordered it to be henceforth